And yeah, as an older, straight guy, he’s the only boyband guy I know of, and it’s not because of his music.
Freddie Mercury: A god, and we knew it all along, even after he married a woman. I mean, look at the name of the band! Michael Stipe: Real cool. Elton John: Uncool, but he’s been uncool since long before he came out. Rob Halford: Don’t care who he screws, just don’t like the band these days (“too commercial,” which means “appeals to girls”). Justin Timberlake: He’s funny. I think he sings.
I certainly do. I hate heavy metal and punk. Hated them in the 70s. Hated them in the 80s. Hate them now. I’d probably rather listen to boy bands.
But I don’t listen to them either.
What everybody else is saying here goes for me as well. I’ve never once thought of a boy band as gay. If I think of them at all it’s about music I don’t much care for. Nothing more or less. I don’t flame them, though. I don’t flame heavy metal either. Why? Because I don’t listen to them (beyond the first few minutes) and I don’t flame things I haven’t listened to. Can you give examples of people who do?
And to join the chorus: who or what is Strapping Young Lad?
I’m a generally liberal, open-minded man, I think. I don’t care at all for boy bands - they’re good for what they’re for, though. Bland, inoffensive music aimed at young girls.
I have every Erasure album ever made, though. Make of it what you will.
I believe the Op has confused the pejorative “gay” with the description “gay.” Despite Lance Bass, most members of boybands are probably straight and take advantage of the demographic they attract, though I assume they card. But by the standards of a 15-yr-old metal fan, they are “gay (pejorative).”
OTOH, the members of “Strapping Young Lad” would have to work hard to find a name more “gay (descriptive).”
It has less to do with hating gay musicians as it does with hating guys who make “sissy music”.
The term “gay” used to refer to guys that acted too much like pansies or sissies. But that offended gay people and so most people stopped saying it. The ones that didn’t care about offending homosexuals still used “gay” to refer to men who made music that could be played on the Oxygen Network. This led to a lot of confusion about what the term meant. When people describe a musician as “gay” it could just mean that the guy is playing very feminine music, and not that the guy is having sex with other men.
I think the term “douche bag” more accurately describes what all the hate is about. The word can be used to describe guys who get too close to their feminine side while still trying to look macho. So the bias against “gay” musicians is really a bias against douche bags.
The combination of macho looking but touchy feeling is alluring to females, but guys are naturally hostile to the concept.
There are lots of openly gay musicians who have no trouble getting respect from guys – Freddie Mercury, Elton John, Rob Halford, Michael Stipe, Lou Reed (bi). Gay has nothing to do with it. One reason boy bands aren’t respected is because their target audience is children – specifically girls. Grown men don’t listen to the Jonas Brothers for the same reason they don’t buy My Little Pony lunch boxes – because they’re not little girls. Another reason is because boy bands are not real musicians. They do not produce genuine artistic efforts. Their “music” is just packaging for the real product, which is non-threatening boys for little girls to swoon at. They are as interchangable and replaceable as Lego blocks.
The comparison to metal and punk is ridiculous, by the way. Those are real genres, with musicians who can actually play instruments, write their own material and at least try to have something to say. The Jonas Brothers aren’t a hair on Lemmy’s ass.
You’re one of the few people who understood what I was saying.
The issue here is not whether any particular musician is gay. This has nothing to do with homosexuality. This has to do with the vernacular perceptions of what is ‘gay’: namely, what is effeminate.
Groups like The Backstreet Boys and 'n Sync are viewed as effeminate. The manners in which they dress are considered gaudy and non-masculine.
My contention - and one that has been misunderstood or ignored by so many who have responded to my OP - is that these bands receive more hatred than heavy metal, rock, or punk groups because they are viewed as being “gay” or “faggoty” in a way that their rock counterparts aren’t. There simply isn’t anything more musical about The Ramones or Metallica than there is about The Backstreet Boys - but when was the last time you heard somebody express just how much they hate The Ramones?
“Men”, especially liberal open-minded men, are not 12 year old school kids who sit around complaining about how everything is gay.
Now that we’ve cleared that up.
Why you would give a shit about NSYNC and The Backstreet Boys (or think men have an opinion of them) in 2009 is beyond me. Both bands were dissolved years ago and neither has been in the public eye in years.
On that note.
C. Strapping Young Lad is a shitty Canadian metal band that disbanded several years ago. More: Strapping Young Lad - Wikipedia
IV. Categorizing Hanson or The Jonas Brothers as boy bands is incorrect. Both write and play their own music and both existed long before greedy record labels latched onto them.
In the case of Hanson, they just teamed up with the lead singer of Fountains of Wayne to form the band Tinted Windows and their CD is apparently great.
Finally…
E. I have never heard anyone proclaim hatred for the boy band movement because the members seemed “faggoty”. Everyone I know that hates the boy bands does so because they make crappy music. No more, no less. Personally, I think 9/10 of the output from rap and metal acts is equally as crappy. But that’s neither here nor there.
Not effeminate – emasculated, castrated. Not sexually female, sexually neutered. Also juvenile, immature and, above all else, fake.
What does “more musical” mean?
I can tell you that both of the rock bands you mention are light years ahead of Backstreet Boys artistically, and are two of the most important and influential bands musically of the last 30 years. The Backstreet Boys weren’t even a band. They played no instruments, they wrote nothing, they had nothing to say musically or artistically at all. They were just a group of teenaged boy models who sang (or lip synched) safe, prefabricated, studio engineered, formula pablum for a target market of musically indifferent little girls.
Really, the fact that you would even make a comparison like that shows a total lack of musical knowledge.
Well, here’s the thing: I suspect the main reason Strapping Young Lad gets less snark is that only a fraction as many people know who the hell they are.
Comparing the snark doled out to the Backstreet Boys, a world-famous superband, to some obscure, long-since-forgotten band like Strapping Young Lad is about as deliberately loaded a comparison as I’ve heard in a long time. How many hits did Strapping Young Lad have in the Top 40? Zero. You can’t hate what you’ve never heard of, so come on, get serious.
For a good comparison, and one that pretty much sinks your theory, compare the Backstreet Boys to a “masculine” rock band of equality popularity and vapidity - Nickleback. NO band right now gets as much snark for their shitty, prefabbed music as Nickleback. They are the absolute premier example used by ten zillion music fans for “shitty manufactured music.” They’ve gotten just as much, and probably more, criticism of their crap music as the Backstreet Boys ever did.
I’ll also point out that the Backstreet Boys et al never struck me as “gay” As DtC points out, they were aimed at children, specifically teenaged girls, but that’s the OPPOSITE of gay. It’s no more “gay” than Dora the Explorer.
I’ll also point out that it’s not impossible for a boy band performer to earn respect from grownups if he can demonstrate some kind of genuine talent, or at least a sense of humor. I point to Justin Timberlake as the best example (I guess really the only example, but still valid as proof of concept) of a boy band performer who I think is now generally liked, and somewhat appreciated by people who were dismissing him out of hand ten years ago, largely on the strength of his SNL appearances and movie roles.
The Ramones certainly aren’t “light years ahead of the Backstreet Boys artistically”. The Ramones were a collective fashion statement with extremely limited musical skills. That they were influential in founding Punk Rock hardly matters, since Punk Rock is merely an entire genre of music that idolizes musical inability. Suppose I were to sing poorly and play nothing but 5th chords at an open mic. I wouldn’t get an applause. Suppose instead that I did the same thing as part of a group called “The Ramones”. What would people call me? Diogenes the Cynic would say that I was a member of an extremely important band.
A better case can be made for Metallica, since some members (or at least Kirk Hammett) appear to have technical musical skills. But we’re still not talking about a band that is “light years” ahead of the Backstreet Boys.
As an aside, I’ll concede that the main thrust of my OP was wrong. I ignored other aspects of image (that terrible influence) that affect musical reception. Boy bands generate the impression of being a group of no-talent good-looking corporate-sponsored pop musicians that appeal to pre-teens. That’s probably a lot more important than any ideals music listeners have regarding sexual expression and sexual image.
I am genuinely stunned that you would use the word “gay” in your subject line and then later say this has nothing to do with homosexuality. Congratulations on completely failing to communicate. I’m even more stunned that you would talk about people being seen as “faggoty.”
At least now I’ve figured out what perspective you’re coming from in this conversation. This not being the pit, I won’t say anything more about what I think of that perspective.
