I don't "get" the whole teenybopper movement

SortaSavageLike · #1 07-16-2006, 11:07 AM

Okay,
Can someone please explain to me the popularity of these flash-in-the-pan boy bands and pop princesses that pop up and fade away with alarming regularity? They all seem to come from rich families, make a couple albums which sell a zillion copies and stay in the Top 40 for three months, appear in a couple movies, and disappear with three years. None of them seem to write their own songs, and the songs themselves are over-produced to hide the singer's average voice. At some point they make a cover song that ****s all over the original, but their hysterical fans insist is "far superior!" After they disappear, they engage in increasingly idiotic publicity stunts for the rest of their lives.

Why are so many teenage girls so addicted that crap? I remember having to deal with my sister's Britney Spears addiction back when she was popular and never understand just what people saw in her. If you're going to latch onto a popular musician, make it one that people will remember in five years!

Für Elise · #2 07-16-2006, 11:20 AM

but people do remember Britney Spears more than five years down the track

David · #3 07-16-2006, 01:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SortaSavageLike

Why are so many teenage girls so addicted that crap?

I think it has a lot more to do with blossoming sexuality & hormones than it does with interest in the music.

Pop idols sell idealized sex & romance, not music.

JunkFoodGenius · #4 07-16-2006, 02:56 PM

I have no idea. The most boy-band fever I ever got was in the 90's listening to 80's Duran Duran. I had just graduated high school when Britney Spears came out with her first song and I thought, "You can't be serious." I never understood NSYNC or any of that. And it's weird, because I love crap music - I have "Disco Duck" on my iPod, after all!

Sory I can't do more than just sit here and say, "Yeah, man...wtf?"

tommer · #5 07-16-2006, 03:19 PM

it's all a matter of marketing, selling music and other entertainment products to the biggest market- the teen market. to help them identify themselves with the product, it is presented by stars they can relate to as their better-singing, better-dancing, better-looking lookalikes, once they did, and the money comes rolling in.
by 3 years the brand loses its novelty, and the audience simply grows up and starts listening to grown ups music. therefore, teeny boppers are an important part of the musical food chain.

irishgrl · #6 07-17-2006, 06:20 AM

I remember back to early teenyboppers Ricky Nelson, Bobby Sherman, David Cassidy, Donny Osmond, the Monkees.......I never got into Elvis, tho I must've been the only gal I knew that wasnt

Strange....now that I think about it, we didnt have any GIRL teen stars, wazzup with that?

DavidMn · #7 07-17-2006, 12:54 PM

I'm gonna sound like an old fart here, but I think it's like a plague upon music. How many of these people write their own music. I'm betting very few if any. It's a joke.

CelticGypsy · #8 07-17-2006, 12:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SortaSavageLike

Okay,
Can someone please explain to me the popularity of these flash-in-the-pan boy bands and pop princesses that pop up and fade away with alarming regularity? They all seem to come from rich families, make a couple albums which sell a zillion copies and stay in the Top 40 for three months, appear in a couple movies, and disappear with three years. None of them seem to write their own songs, and the songs themselves are over-produced to hide the singer's average voice. At some point they make a cover song that ****s all over the original, but their hysterical fans insist is "far superior!" After they disappear, they engage in increasingly idiotic publicity stunts for the rest of their lives.

Why are so many teenage girls so addicted that crap? I remember having to deal with my sister's Britney Spears addiction back when she was popular and never understand just what people saw in her. If you're going to latch onto a popular musician, make it one that people will remember in five years!

I was of the generation that loved David Cassidy and Donny Osmond. When I was in middle school I was not ready to have a "real" boyfriend yet. I could not date until I was 16. Idols are much safer and it is easier to like them if your friends also love their music and go to concerts with you. Real boys acted too much like the Three Stooges. Donny and David were more cuter, dressed better and they knew how to act towards girls. Real boys didn't. All they cared about was football, fishing and telling jokes. That isn't appealing to a girl who just discovered she liked boys. I still remember the boy in high school who moved to our small rural town from NYC and he wore those purple Peter Frampton pants and had longer hair. Most of boys teased him to death about how he dressed but the girls thought he looked great and always wanted to hang out with him.

We had girl singers back then but they were older. I think Marie Osmond was probably the youngest singer back then that I related to. In high school Stevie Nicks was popular and Linda Ronstadt.

chiliD · #9 07-17-2006, 01:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by irishgrl

....now that I think about it, we didnt have any GIRL teen stars, wazzup with that?

You're just not remembering thoroughly:

Shelly Fabares
Tuesday Weld
Connie Francis
Connie Stevens
Brenda Lee
Sandra Dee
Dee Dee Sharp
Mary Wells

And, those just off the top of my head...there were no doubt MANY more.

DavidMn · #10 07-17-2006, 01:27 PM

I stand corrected on the writing music part. I shouldve been a bit more informed there.

irishgrl · #11 07-17-2006, 01:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by chiliD

You're just not remembering thoroughly:

Shelly Fabares
Tuesday Weld
Connie Francis
Connie Stevens
Brenda Lee
Sandra Dee
Dee Dee Sharp
Mary Wells

And, those just off the top of my head...there were no doubt MANY more.

They werent teenyboppers/teen IDOLS!
about the only one on your list that could even come marginally close I think would be Sandra Dee and only because of the Gidget movies. no, what I am talking about is that there were no comparable female teen idols in the way that Bobby Sherman, Davy Jones, David Cassidy, Donny Osmond etc were.
I remember those Teen Beat Magazines, all covered with pictures of guys, not a gal among them............and now that I think about it, I think I know why. Teenybopper girls dont want to see pix of other Girls, they want to see the GUYS! silly me! and the guys werent reading teenybopper mags, they were sneaking peaks at PLAYBOY!!!!!! they graduated into the big time

Sahara · #12 07-17-2006, 01:56 PM

Tell me about it. Sixteen years old and every day at school they're blasting this crap in my ears. I can't stand it, I just shove my earphones in my ears and float off into the world of Stevie, Duran, Tears for Fears -- all of whom in their day were probably viewed by the generation before them in the same way as the "teenybopper" thing is viewed today.
But the difference is that these people have stood the test of time.
The people in the charts these days will have been forgotten by next Tuesday, never mind twenty or thirty years from now.

*sigh* Fortunately not everyone is caught up in it.

SortaSavageLike · #13 07-17-2006, 02:00 PM

What prompted me to start this thread were a bunch of gay German teenagers (what a combo!) on YouTube who made a video bashing Stevie's Edge Of Seventeen and praising Lindsay Lohan's. Apparently, all they know about Stevie is from a bad, poorly-dubbed, unreleased video from 1981. They say she "sings creepy." Heaven forbid a female singer doesn't sound boring and homogonized!

I think the real acid test will be whether or not people are covering Lindsay Lohan's songs 25 years down the road.

Yeah, sure!

Sahara · #14 07-17-2006, 02:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SortaSavageLike

What prompted me to start this thread were a bunch of gay German teenagers (what a combo!) on YouTube who made a video bashing Stevie's Edge Of Seventeen and praising Lindsay Lohan's. Apparently, all they know about Stevie is from a bad, poorly-dubbed, unreleased video from 1981. They say she "sings creepy." Heaven forbid a female singer doesn't sound boring and homogonized!

I think the real acid test will be whether or not people are covering Lindsay Lohan's songs 25 years down the road.

Ugh. That hurts my everything.

goldustsongbird · #15 07-17-2006, 05:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by chiliD

You're just not remembering thoroughly:

Shelly Fabares
Tuesday Weld
Connie Francis
Connie Stevens
Brenda Lee
Sandra Dee
Dee Dee Sharp
Mary Wells

And, those just off the top of my head...there were no doubt MANY more.

And the thing about the majority of those women was that they weren't all *that* young, and had decent (and beyond) voices. Sandra Dee was a bit saccharine, but it's better than what girls today are like.