30 Day Music Challenge: Day 12

‘A song from a band you hate’

I hate boybands. There. I’ve said it. Whether it’s McFly or Westlife or Boyzone, the Backstreet Boys, the Jonas Brothers or Justin Bieber, and yes I know that last one is a boy not a boyband... I hate them all. I hated Take That when they were boys, though tolerate them a bit better now that they are men. Just: on good days. In small doses.

But boybands? No. No thank you. No: please no. Please.

So the songs from bands I hate, because yes, of course I’m going for plural, just as you knew I would, are all from boybands. People like those four ridiculous little teenagers from last year’s ‘X Factor’ who now seem to be making a living from talking absolute nonsense about Nintendo games. People who are really famous only for their looks: let’s face it, no-one’s ever going to remember them for their music, are they?

And open the curtain. Spotlight. Background: screams. Foreground: shiny suits and black and chrome stools. Sit. Sway. Wield your mikes.

Westlife. Just where - where, God help us?? - do I start? The black and white outfit changes? The cheesy fake emotion? The stools they sit on and the way they all stand up to execute a key change between verse and chorus? They’re just bloody terrible, and I hate them; they make me cringe the way that I cringe and shudder when someone makes me coffee and puts sugar in it. My teeth are on edge and feel coated in saccharine sweetness. Love music as I do, I think I’d prefer not to listen to anything ever again if it came down to a direct choice between only ever listening to Westlife or listening to nothing - for ever afterwards. I could mention almost any of their songs here, really, but I’m going to pick ‘Flying Without Wings’ because it just sums this talentless crowd of shop-window dummies up. Musically the thing is just utterly one-dimensional and unimaginative; lyrically it’s like a game of the most impossible cliche bingo of all time. The lyrics don’t even seem to mean very much: you might not find happiness where you expect to find it. It might be somewhere else. Well my goodness, Westlife, I’m like, so grateful that you pointed that out, and stuff because like, I just couldn’t have figured that out without you and like - OMG I’m so like going to have to stand up now to emphasise that and change from a black outfit to a white one!

And key change. Stand.

Then there’s McFly. Again I’m choosing one atrocity of mediocrity from among many, but - really. ‘It’s All About You’. How’s that for a one-track way to make teenage girls even more self-centred than they already were? I mean: seriously. ‘It’s all about you... it’s all about you ba-by...’ Give me a break. It’s not all about you - no matter who you are. Even if you’re the most famous girl in the world, it’s about at least a few other people too, and the whole point to life is that it’s about everyone and how we all get on with one another. And indoctrinating screaming teenage girls that they’re the only important people in the world, by abusing your status as pop idol: I’m sorry, but that’s just immoral. Because one of the things most wrong with our world at the moment is that far, far too many people thing it really is all about them: that they’re the be all and the end all of life, and that no-one else really matters. And that’s just plain wrong, and a song which tells you any different is a dangerous thing which should really be approached only with a massive dose of irony. And irony isn’t something that boybands really do. And their typical fans definitely don’t.

And key change once again. Three steps forward towards the screaming audience.

Finally: because I can’t even face listening to and thinking about songs by the Jonas Brothers and the Backstreet Boys or, dear God, Justin Bieber... finally: Boyzone. I think these are nice enough guys, actually - or maybe I’m just being swayed here by Ronan Keating’s charity work and the sadness of Stephen Gately’s youthful death. But their music? Bland, bland, bland. Watching paint dry would be a lot less fragrant but marginally more entertaining. They claim that ‘Life is a Rollercoaster’ but I don’t experience any ups and downs when listening to their song of truism after truism: perhaps a few of the sick lurches in my stomach I might expect on a fairground ride in reaction to the rehashed metaphors and unoriginality of thought. I didn’t mind that film ‘Notting Hill’. It was ok. A bit bland, your typical anodyne BritCom fare... quite funny but a bit too nice. But that song. Oh God: that bloody song. That song was like a fizzy drink gone flat... watery weak coffee... the kind of herbal tea which promised much on the packet but doesn’t actually taste of anything. But it did have a function. It summed up so much of what I think about boybands - so much of what they seem to do.

The song? It was ‘You Say It Best When You Say Nothing At All.’

And boybands, with their cute image and their consultant-styled outfit and their clean-cut lifestyles to suit their young, adoring fans?

They Say It Best When They Sing Nothing At All.