Not a Boy Band?

Jack has obtained some Australian information from his friends, and last night he passed on the information to me.

There's a a boy band from Australia called 5 Seconds of Summer. One or more of his friends are fans of this group. I had never heard of them, but I told Jack I'd learn about them in the morning.

So...here I am.

Lord Wiki says the band consists of four boys—Luke Hemmings, Michael Clifford, Calum Hood, and Ashton Irwin.

Ah...maybe Ashton is a distant relative of Bindie.

The boys started off as YouTube stars; then they got even luckier when One Direction invited them on their tour.

I'm wondering how much time passed between them posting videos on YouTube and becoming YouTube celebrities. Does it happen to these people right away? Or does it take awhile?

Sometimes I see these really good singers on YouTube. And they have a really low view count. Let's say...120. Or even less. I have to wonder why it's not happening for them. Why aren't they being discovered? Why are their competitors finding fame?

Well, Five Seconds of Summer has found the fame. Though it seems they're not entirely happy with the fame they've received. Or at least they don't like how they've been labeled. Some of the members insist they're not a boy band. Apparently, there's a criteria for being a boy band, and they don't fit it.

I guess it's not enough to just have boys in your band. You have to not write your own music, not play your own instruments, and you have to dance.

This website has a slideshow of popular boy bands.

They have a picture of The Monkees, and the Monkees are all holding instruments.

Crap. That slideshow has way too many advertisements. I quit looking at it.

I think probably the best way to define a boy band is one who's biggest fan base is between the ages of 7-13.  And they're often very zealous fans.

One of my nieces is a big fan of One Direction. For her birthday or Chanukah, we bought her a One Direction puzzle.

But yeah. Five Seconds of Summer seems to be popular with the tween age group. Well, I'm basing this on the fact that they won a Nickelodeon award.

That being said, they might be popular with other age-groups as well.

They might be popular with me. I haven't listened to their songs yet. Maybe I'll listen and love.

Now I'm on their official website.

I like the blue and black coloring.

I'm kind of looking around...not finding anything that gets me wanting to say anything.

There was a game. I was curious about it, but you have to plug in your email address to play. I wasn't in the mood to do that.

Now I'm on their Twitter page. They have 3.83 million followers. That's very impressive.  They also follow a pretty large number of people—28 thousand. I think most celebrities follow much less than that.  I wonder if they follow some fans. Or maybe they followed a lot of people before becoming famous, and were nice enough not to drop people once fame found them.

They were on Jimmy Kimmel recently. I shall try to see if I can find that. Actually, I saw Jimmy Kimmel on their website. Maybe the video is actually there.

No. It's just a picture from their Instagram labeled Jimmy Kimmel. And Jimmy Kimmel isn't in the picture.

I'm going to hop on over to YouTube.

Here. They performed a song called "Amnesia" on Jimmy Kimmel.




Their audience looks like a boy band audience; though I'll admit the band's playing of instruments does make them look less the part.

I'm looking at the lyrics of the song.  It's about being dumped by someone and having a hard time getting over it. I think it expresses those feelings well.

Here's "She Looks Perfect".  It has 56 million views. That's very impressive.  They're quite popular.




I'm pretty sure I've actually heard this song before. I guess on the radio?

The video shows people of various ages, and of various sizes, wearing underwear—specifically American Apparel underwear.

It could almost be used as an advertisement.

Has it?

Well, it's at least free advertising.

I'm looking at the lyrics.

They're interesting!

If you don't swim, you'll drown.
But don't move honey.

That's very dark; though I kind of like it. What does it mean?

It sounds a bit homicidal...if you take it literally.

Maybe it's a suicide thing?

The rest of the lyrics aren't that interesting to me.

Oh! I'm thinking maybe it's not about drowning in water. It's about drowning in love. You can be so absorbed in another person that you forget about the rest of the world...and the other parts of your life. You'll drown. But the lover is saying he really wouldn't mind that happening.

Just for the record, I don't agree with the message behind the lyrics. I just like the darkness of it.  Kind of in the same way we like The Walking Dead and "Where the Wild Roses Grow".

Wait! I looked at the lyrics again. I think it IS about obsessive love.

The chorus: Your lipstick stain is a work of art. 
I got your name tattooed in an arrow heart. 
And I know now that I'm so down. 

Unless being down has a meaning I don't know about, I'd say the song is saying the person realizes he's lost the plot a bit. Strong love can make you very happy, but it can also make you feel pathetic, lost, and insecure.

I imagine many people will hate the songs of 5 Seconds of Summer's songs. The thing with Boy Bands (and those insisting they are not Boy Bands) is while you have a vocal league of enthusiastic fans, you also get yourself a vocal league of haters. Which probably explains why these guys don't want to be stuck with the boy band label.

As for me, I have very eclectic taste in music and I can see myself adding some of their songs to my huge list of songs I like.

I was recently in an email conversation with a friend and she asked me if I had strong music likes and dislikes. I told her I have strong likes but not dislikes.  I mean I do dislike some songs, but my feelings aren't often strong about it. And sometimes I'll dislike a song and later grow to love it.


P.S-I think this shall be the last time I use embedded videos in a post. It's a pain. It messes everything up.  When I went back to proofread, I found paragraphs I wrote towards the end way up top.  It's like everything got rearranged.  

And once I embed the videos, the scrolling on the post gets all messed up for me.

I like the looks of posts with embedded videos, but I'm not sure it's worth the trouble. Plus, it probably makes the page load slower.

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