No. Didn't they have Marie? Anyway, I'm only going from the 80s, when the so-called Boyband phenomenon is agreed to have really begun. And we begin with these guys.
Part One: "Out of the mouths of babes and little children..."
And so I flag down a taxi and point out my destination on the map. It's a small city further north and inland, called Editiona Nueva, which my driver helpfully informs me is the local language for “New Edition”. Well, thanks for that Einstein! I could have figured that out myself! We travel for some time through deserted roads and past vast plains of sand before we come to a somewhat run-down town, with a village clock that seems for some reason permanently stuck at six-fifteen (whether this is morning or evening I don't know) and a lot of people roam the streets in unfashionable clothes. I'm right back where it started, and it looks like the inhabitants have remained there, in 1982. I check into the nearest hotel that doesn't look too rundown and seedy, and after eating and freshening up I head off to the local library, laptop under my arm, to make my first report.
And so it is, in the city named after the first ever real Boyband, I begin my tale. In 1982 New Edition came second in a talent contest and were “created” as a new version of the Jackson 5 by producer Maurice Starr, and included the now-famous Bobby Brown in their lineup. The original personnel were as follows:-
Bobby Brown
Michael Bivins
Ricky Bell
Ralph Tresvant
Ronnie DeVoe
Signed by Starr and taken to his recording studio to record their first album, 1983's
Candy Girl the boys must have been somewhat nonplussed to receive a cheque for the grand total of $1.87 each after completing their first major concert! This despite the fact that
Candy Girl had yielded them four hit singles, one of which went to number one!
Candy Girl --- New Edition --- 1983 (Streetwise)
Impressionable kids? Certainly sounds like it. Sounds like they were totally ripped off by an unscrupulous manager and record label boss - thank God that doesn't happen anymore!
But the average age of the band members, for want of a better description, in New Edition was fifteen, so I suppose the fame and glory must have gone to their heads, the money a secondary concern. You can be sure ol' Maurice Starr made sure he got his ninety-nine point nine nine percent of their earnings, though!
We'll return to the story of these guys later, and see how they got on, but for now the time has come that we all feared, me most especially: time to knuckle down and actually
listen to the music! Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death...
It starts off funky, with vocoder and slap bass, then the almost childlike voice of Ralph Tresvant singing the rather incongruous, given their tender age, “Gimme Your Love”. Perhaps "Gimme Your Lunch Money" might have been a more appropriate song title! Of course, in any given Boyband it's really impossible to say who's singing the lead vocals, as they all seem to take that role, but Wiki says that Tresvant was brought on board as their lead singer, so I guess it's him. There's a female voice in there too - I think: I mean, these guys are so young it could be their not-yet-broken voices I'm hearing, but a girl is credited on the album - said to be one Tina B, and there's a lot of beginner's guide to rapping. All very embarrassing, but it must have struck a chord (not literally) as it sold very well and started a lucrative career for the guys. Well, initially as mentioned it just lined the pockets of Maurice Starr, but he was soon to be jettisoned.
“She Gives Me a Bang” does not after all seem to be about the latest hairdressing styles, but has some nice bright keyboard work, with some pops and whistles from the synth which would become quite synonymous with this sort of music down the years. The melody in places almost reminds me of Robert Palmer's “Some Guys Have All the Luck”, and again the vocals are shared, seems like just between two of them. Maybe. Hard to tell. Seems Starr plays keys, synth, bass, drums, guitars, vocoder …. obviously maintaining a tight control over his protoges. He also produces, engineers and mixes the album, and writes or co-writes all the songs bar one. Control freak much? I suppose at least he could say he earned all but $9.52 from the album's takings.
The first of no doubt many ballads comes with “Is This the End” (which sadly it was not), an odd song to put on your debut album, I would have thought, one of their hit singles, and it's not too bad. The drums are nicely measured, the keys just the right amount of sugary sweet and the guitars add a sort of George Benson flavour to the song. Hey, give me a break! I know virtually zip about Boybands, and have less interest in them! I'm doing my best!
“Pass the Beat” is a real “street”-song, with elements of rap and breakdance, lively keyboards and the ever-present grumbling bass that seems to always accompany songs of this type. It's sung in a type of playground chant, making it just that little bit more annoying than it was at first. Seriously, I'm going to make a real effort to find something to praise or something nice to say about these albums, I just haven't come across anything yet! Well, “Is This the End” wasn't completely terrible, unlike the rest of the album so far...
(Sorry to do this to you, guys, but you knew the dangers when you followed me to Boybandland!)
There surely can't be anything to look forward to about a song called “Popcorn Love”, can there? No, there isn't, and it sounds distressingly like the next track up, their number one hit single “Candy Girl”, which is right up there at the top of my list of songs I would cheerfully erase from history, had I the means. Like, what is the
point of a song like that? You won't be surprised to hear that I skipped right over it, but as I say, “Popcorn Love” is virtually a carbon copy of the hit single. Originality, zero.
Perhaps the only potential bright spot is their cover of the Bo Diddley number “Ooh Baby”, but no, they've removed all the soul and blues from it and made it another vacuous pop song. Well, I guess Starr is to blame for that. Still, at least the germ of a good song remains: can't kill the classics! Got to wonder though: what the hell was he thinking here? If this is, as it obviously is, an album aimed at teeny-boppers, impressionable young girls and the kind of audience who wouldn't know the blues if it Facetimed them, why would he include a Bo Diddley song? Who's going to care? Anyone who would appreciate that kind of song is unlikely to have been listening to this album, and that's not the sort of listenership Starr was trying to attract. Was he trying to show that this “band”, to be generous, had more about them than just sugary-sweet ballads and dancy pop songs? Why? Who would care?
Seems to me like he was trying to put something in maybe for the daddys of the teenage girls who were going to be subjecting them to this pap, and maybe give them a chance to say “Oh I know that song” most likely to be followed by a scowled “They're ruining it.” Again, makes no sense whatsover. If you're marketing a band like this, sure, maybe three albums down the line, when your money (ahem sorry, their money, of course: their money!) is made, then you can diversify a little and say “look! We're not just pop stars! We appreciate the classic blues!” But not on your debut, when nobody knows who you are, and those who do, or will, are going to give less than a pair of fetid dingo's kidneys for Bo Diddley, much less know who he is. The song will, and I'm sure did, vanish and get absorbed into the saccharine hodge-podge of pop ditties, drowned without a chance to save itself, dragged down, never to be seen again. I'm sure Bo was spinning in his grave.
More tinny keyboard and whistling synth, as well as the never-far-from-the-melody bass on “Should Have Never Told Me”, then we're into (thank the stars!) the penultimate track, “Gotta Have Your Lovin'”, and you wonder where bands like this would be without a vocoder? It's used so often it's almost overused, and it becomes a real pain listening to every bloody line routed through its circuits. Oh well.
The album closes on “Jealous Girl”, which rather surprisingly is only the second ballad on it. Nice piano and some decent guitar work with a sort of waltzy beat which would be revisited by the likes of still-to-be-discovered Boys II Men on their big hit “The End of the Road”. There are definite elements of the Jacksons here too, not a surprise as this band were conceived as a replacement for them.
Well, I still hate Boybands, but this is just the first of three albums from each band I'm going to try to struggle through. Perhaps my opinion will change over the course of these articles, but I wouldn't bet any big money on it!
TRACK LISTING
1. Gimme Your Love
2. She Gives Me a Bang
3. Is This the End
4. Pass the Beat
5. Popcorn Love
6. Candy Girl
7. Ooh Baby
8. Should Never Have Told Me
9. Gotta Have Your Lovin'
10. Jealous Girl
After the debacle of their first concert, New Edition successfully sued Starr and his company and were released from their contract, signing to record giant MCA and releasing their second album, which they simply entitled
New Edition, no doubt as a sign they were being reborn, leaving behind the highs and mostly lows of the Starr era, and starting over again.
New Edition --- New Edition --- 1984 (MCA)
With a label giant behind their second album, New Edition were promoted as more of a clean-cut, boy-next-door image which would in fact characterise most Boybands for the next quarter of a century, with bands like Boyzone and later Westlife, Nsync, Backstreet Boys and Take That all projecting a wholesome, “safe” image that would appeal as much to teenage girls as to their parents. Boys like this couldn't possibly be a bad influence, could they?
MCA also gave the boys top writers and producers to work on the album, among them Ray Parker Jr., later known for his megahit “Ghostbusters” (who ya gonna call?) and as a result the album was more cohesive, mature and gained a much larger and more diverse following than New Edition had enjoyed up to now. Also, without Starr, the boys finally made some decent money, no doubt welcome after being ripped off for two years by their producer-c
um-taskmaster!
“Cool it Now” opens the album, with a beat and melody that would later surface on Whitney Houston's “I Wanna Dance with Somebody”, and became an instant hit single when released, as did the second track, the Ray Parker Jr-penned “Mr. Telephone Man”, recalling the motown hits of the sixties and seventies, with nice vocal harmonies and a lush keyboard sound. Definitely a more mature sound, less of the kids snickering about girls that more or less permeated the first album, and music aimed at an older, and (slightly) more demanding audience.
Another ballad follows, this standing out as being the first New Edition song written by members of the band. “I'm Leaving You Again” also has a motown feel to it, and was written by Ricky Bell and Ralph Tresvant. To be completely fair, for a first attempt at songwriting it's not half bad, with that squidgy bass and paced out drums while in the background the synth lays down a pretty sumptuous backing track. Digital piano features heavily on this album, in line with the thinking about eighties ballads, which always seemed to have to have a digital piano melody running through them. “Delicious” is a mid-paced ballad, inoffensive but with plenty of synth and piano. Also features some pretty good acapella vocal harmonies at the end.
In comparison, “My Secret (Didja Get it Yet?)” is just intensely annoying - I really couldn't care what their secret is. Was a single though. No accounting for taste. “Hide and Seek” makes me want to hide and never be found, blatantly ripping off the Eagles' lyric
“Sneakin' up behind ya/ Swear I'm gonna find ya” from “One of These Nights”. The saving grace of this album, and I would venture to predict, most if not all Boyband albums, are the ballads, which at least are bearable. Even though the digital piano is in overdrive again, “Lost in Love” is a nice little song with good harmonies, though it is pretty devoid of ideas and just more or less repeats the same phrasing over and over. Not the big Air Supply hit then.
The first songwriting credited to the whole band is nevertheless nothing to write home about, and “Kinda Girls We Like” fulfils its exceptionally limited potential, with an annoying rap before “Maryann” closes the album with another eminently forgettable track which does at least have a decent line in sax.
TRACK LISTING
1. Cool it Now
2. Mr. Telephone Man
3. I'm Leaving You Again
4. Baby Love
5. Delicious
6. My Secret (Didja Get it Yet?)
7. Hide and Seek
8. Lost in Love
9. Kinda Girls We Like
10. Maryann
So that's the second album from New Edition. A little more mature yes, but ultimately I don't see a massive difference between it and the debut. The army of songwriters and producers seem to have failed to have come up with any noteworthy songs really, and after the second track it all kind of descended into more mediocrity for me. At least with Starr gone there was no more butchering of blues classics, so that's something to be thankful for, I guess.