Boy bands are traditionally marketable at the teenage-girl demographic, appealing to newly-awakened sexual instincts; however, boy bands miss another hormonal phenomenon of adolescence: rebellion and angst. Unless you live in the Bible Belt somewhere, a bunch of squeaky-clean boys singing about love isn't particularly transgressive. Meanwhile, there are fucked-up, angst-ridden, nihilistic, self-destructive goth artists, but none of them have the broad teen appeal of, say, the Backstreet Boys. Certainly, you get some girls (and boys, to a lesser extent) with crushes on Trent Reznor, but they're relatively small in number.

The phenomena of goth and boy bands could be combined for optimum marketability. Imagine five boys, dressed in black. One has shaved the sides of his head, some of them have facial piercings, and two or three look a bit thinner than is necessarily healthy, but otherwise they look clean and neat. They do the tortured, angst-ridden act a bit, with songs about hating the world and feeling worthless, but other than that, they stick to the time-honoured boy band formula, and exude the sort of well-scrubbed sexual magnetism that enraptures teenagers across the malls of Middle America and the American-speaking world.

Someone should tell Lou Perlman. Or Fred Durst.
-- acb, Sep 04 2001

Dimmu Borgir http://www.dimmu-bo...html/spiritual.html
Goth lyrics: I laughed 'till I pissed. [sdm, Sep 04 2001, last modified Oct 04 2004]

dogbomb.co.uk: N'Different http://www.dogbomb..../more/00000032.html
[jutta, Sep 04 2001]

Darkness in Denver http://www.djskot.c.../bands/vox_demonna/
[mamacat, Sep 04 2001, last modified Oct 04 2004]

Cinema Strange http://www.cinemast...om/cs/welcome.shtml
Goth boys.....New kids on the block meets Andi Sexgang [Damnedgirl, Sep 19 2002, last modified Oct 04 2004]

ORGY http://umusic.ca/orgy/index.php
baked. There's even five of them with different personalities! [mongmaster, Oct 04 2004]

Baked. The Damned.
-- Aristotle, Sep 04 2001


*Munchkin* Park certainly have the dressed-in-black, tortured, angst-ridden thing down, while remaining good old-fashioned pretty-boys. Although the music isn't quite throat-slittingly depressing enough for Goth, I'd say the nu-metal nu-bucks have this one covered pretty well.

Actually, given the increasing number of minigoths ("Man, aren't they so adorable when they're three foot tall and wearing Marilyn Manson tee-shirts?") I think it's just a matter of time before all these pre-teen teen-rebels are old enough to start their own bands. Boys2Corpses coming soon.
-- Guy Fox, Sep 04 2001


A distinctly acb idea. There are lots of bands which tap into teen angst. I'm ashamed to say that I thought Nirvana was really 'cool, man'. But I'm not too sure the tone, pace and vocal stylings of, say, Dimmu Borgir will go down too well. Also I'm not sure you would find many pop songwriters who could cope with the verbosity involved. Compare "yummy yummy yummy, I got love in my tummy", to "I'll be your guide into the [sic]glourious darrkness, and enchant you like a taste of sin / Unleash the temted beast, chant theron in words of blazing scorn" et cetera [see link]

You get a croissant for giving me the opportunity to find those lyrics.
-- sdm, Sep 04 2001


sdm: Hoo, boy, is that Dimmu Borgir an interesting lyricist. Almost as funny as when I discovered the joys of reading vampire poetry aloud in a Pam Ayres accent...

Oy arm a creature orf the noight,
Oy walk in darkness, nort in loight.
-- Guy Fox, Sep 04 2001


Y'know, Backstreet Boys did actually put together a goth-ish video... but it might have just been a Halloween thing.

Rods -- Bananahaus! very funny!
-- danrue, Sep 04 2001


//The enigma lies broken (How would you know whether it wasn't meant to be that way in the first place? It is an enigma, after all.)//

Ha! Very nice, UnaBubba, o great Pedant of the Night.
-- PotatoStew, Sep 04 2001


Perhaps the kid meant 'enema'
-- thumbwax, Sep 04 2001


That might explain why they're so depressed...
-- phoenix, Sep 04 2001


GuyFox: re: pre-teen teen rebels.

Well, hip-hop/R&B has Lil' Romeo (a nine-or-so-year-old boy who raps and sings G-rated love songs), so goth could have a pint-sized vampyre boy named Lil' Dracula or something.
-- acb, Sep 05 2001


The Gothmonds
-- thumbwax, Sep 05 2001


The Cure during the early 80's could be claassed as a 'Goth Boy Band' - they look so young!
-- hippo, Sep 05 2001


Definitely croissant worthy! My old high school had a group of pot-smoking freshman who were obsessed with Slipknot. If they'd been girls, they'd be your target-market.
-- moonsprite, Oct 01 2001


Well there certainly is a teenage goth boy band...Cinema Strange. Cinema Strange.com, BOY they are older now but when they first came out they were like 19, 20 and all the 15, 14 yeah old goth girls died and went to Heaven
-- Damnedgirl, Sep 19 2002


//I sense a market here.//

And if it were a train you wouldn't have time to get out of the way. :)
-- sartep, Jul 15 2004


Hey, what's with the "last modified" dealie next to [UB]'s first comment?
-- yabba do yabba dabba, Jul 15 2004


It used to be that edited comments were so marked. Now they're not and everything is much nicer looking.
-- calum, Jul 15 2004



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