Part three: “The future just ain't what it used to be...”
After many months at sea, watching the seasons change and surviving more than one pirate attack --- hey! I got to use a GUN! I'm HARD now! COME on! Let's 'AVE ya! --- it seems the end of my journey is at hand. Ahead, I can make out a vague coastline which can only be the final destination on my travels through the lands of the Boyband, but this one is a lot different to any of the others I've visited. Not that surprising really, as this is
Terra Permusica Futura, New or Future Boybandland, and here I'll find the new young guns, the next generation of boybands, those who are determined to carry on the legacy of bands like Nsync, Boyzone and Take That. Have they the talent (what am I saying?) that's required to take on the mantle? Or are they just weak pretenders to the throne, playing at being a band while just milking the fame for all the glory and money they can? Again, what the
hell am I saying? I'm tired, forgive me. It's been a very long journey and I'm starting to get confused.
In fairness though, I have seen through my previous visits to the other two lands in this region that many of the boybands I looked down on (and still, to an extent, do) did have some talent, and there can be no denying that they wrote, in some cases, some pretty good songs. I still would never take them seriously as “proper” bands, but albums like Take That's “Beautiful world”, Boyzone's “Brother” and Backstreet Boys' “Unbreakable” did at least give me pause, and I had to somewhat grudgingly admit that these were in most cases better than I had expected, or experienced up to that point, from those bands.
Although this final section is intended to concentrate primarily on “today's” boybands, which is to say, those formed in the last two or three years and who are currently considered to be at the top of their game, I would be remiss were I to omit speaking about one of the biggest boybands on the planet, in many ways the yardstick by which all the “new” boybands are, and will be, judged, and to whose legacy they aspire. I'm not sure whether the fact that they are Irish makes me proud or ashamed, but I would not be doing my country justice were I to leave them out, even if they did have their heyday in the 90s and early part of the twenty-first century, and even if they are no longer together, two of the basic criteria needed for inclusion in the closing part of my series.
Certainly having made enough money to have bought their own island, this is exactly what Westlife have done it seems, and our ship takes a small detour towards the place they call West Landing, where I will research and learn more about the biggest boyband in Irish --- perhaps world --- history than I perhaps would ever want to.