EINTKILF Boy Bands

I have a hard time calling soulful R&B groups “boy bands” so follow my line of thinking. When I hear “boy band“, I picture super young white boys with crazy bleach in their hair, crooning to women they have never even met because they are only like… 14 years old. Don’t get me wrong – I think the children are our future and they can understand heartbreak very well. Just making sure we’re all in this together.

1. Spanish.

For no apparent reason, 98 Degrees was (were?) extremely popular when I was in middle school. If my historical boy band timeline is correct, they came around shortly after the world realized that BSB and *NSync were more important to us young ladies than homework. Don’t get me wrong, I totally had a 98 Degrees poster up in my room, even if I could only ever name the Lachey brothers. And to this day, the only song I know from that sweet little foursome is ‘Una Noche‘, which I know translates to ‘One Night’, since it is also in the title of the song. Let’s be real: do the Lachey brothers even speak Spanish? They say other things in Spanish throughout the song as well, which really helped me pass class in high school when we had to come up with sentences on the fly. Miss Groves, “Ay, que rico! Me pone loca!”

A+, thank you very much.

And that is why I decided to major in English.

2. How to break up.

No one is quite as straightforward as the members of a boy band. I haven’t done it yet, but I hope to one day break up with someone by busting out in the sweet choreographed dance moves of Chris, Justin, Joey, JC and Lance. Okay, I’m just trying to impress you with the quick list of their names. I even know their middle names still…and maybe their birthdays. But, seriously–don’t you think you could get your point across really easily if you waved your hand in ‘Bye, Bye, Bye‘ fashion instead of saying “it’s not you, it’s me”?

Someone try it and get back to me.

3. How to talk about my feelings.

There are so many beautiful love songs that came out of the boy band era. I think those guys all really helped me with my emotional development. As a young lady, I was a little bit stunted in my openness concerning feelings. Now that I’m old, I find myself accidentally saying things like, “I want it all or nothing at all” or “how could it be that right here with me, there’s an angel?” I mean, if you DON’T talk about your feelings, you’ll end up listening to ‘I Thought She Knew’ and spilling tears over your regrets for the rest of your life! (Or you are spilling tears over the fact that this song is like…Chris “is that a pineapple or my hair” Kirkpatrick’s only solo.)

4. Even criminals deserve love.

Can we talk about the song ‘As Long As You Love Me‘? When I was a kid, I was totally grooving to the smooth beats of this song until I really sat down and dissected the lyrics. No, literally. I used to tape songs off of the radio and write down the lyrics before I had constant internet access and a chip in my brain where I am automatically implanted with the words to every song ever written. So, dissecting the song, I decided that I think it’s not a great idea to love someone no matter what. Backstreet is making a great point – like you shouldn’t stop loving someone if they move to another city, or if they get into a horrible accident or if you are Team Jen and they are team Angelina–but “I don’t care what you did” kind of disturbs me. Are you sure, guys? You don’t care what I did? What if I ran over your kitten on purpose, or stole your credit card to buy stuff off of modcloth.com? Or worse?! You should totally care what people do before you love them forever.

5. Justin Timberlake rules.

I mean, obviously, but I think he came out on top of all the members of all the boy bands in all of the land. Raise your hand if you own Nick Carter’s Now or Never, or JC Chasez’s Schizophrenia? (I feel a murderous glance coming at me from a dear old friend in Florida. I will admit JC’s album rules, though you guys have definitely never heard it.) Okay, now raise your hand if you own Justified AND FutureSex/LoveSounds. Everyone is raising two hands now, am I right? Gosh, I hope everyone is raising two hands, even if I didn’t say “Simon Says”.

You guys didn’t know life is one huge game of Simon Says? Okay, Simon Says listen to some Justified as you read the rest of this.

6. Liquid dreams.

Funnily enough, O-Town did not last very long, but they made quite a lasting impression on me, for darn sure. I had absolutely no idea what a liquid dream was and my best friend and I had to ask a boy I had a crush on about it. He, blushing, told us and I never listened to the song again. I can barely bring myself to read the lyrics right now. I will say, however, that O-Town did a good job picking women to have liquid dreams about, since they are all still around today. I wonder if they still have liquid dreams about Cindy Crawford? That’s a little outdated.

And for the record, I still don’t know what a “morpharotic” is, and I refuse to Google it.

7. The definition of the word “faded”.

If you are like me, and I bet you are, you probably don’t remember who soulDecision is, and you probably think you have never heard this song. You have, and you probably still dance to it at ’90s Nights on Thursdays. (Now I could be alone–dancing by myse-elf.) Apparently, “faded” means very drunk.

Who knew?! Everyone but me, likely.

8. Chinese food makes me sick.

I will not say that I let LFO influence all of my decisions, but I liked this song because I always felt so alone in my dislike of Chinese food until BAM! LFO came to us one glorious summer and even if I could never afford or fit into Abercrombie and Fitch clothing, I felt kindred to the lyrics in this song because Chinese food does make me sick. Still to this day. It was also a good song because they taught us that Michael J. Fox played Alex P. Keaton on Family Ties, in case you were unaware.

9. Hugs are overrated.

The Jonas Brothers are too young for me to listen to, which means I listen to them. They came out with a song called ‘S.O.S.’ that I tried for awhile to adopt into my daily conversation, but it didn’t work as well as I’d hoped. (I quote the Biebs’ on the daily, though, and he’s the other “JB,” so.) There is a line in this song, however, that remains as awesome as the day is long. “Next time I see you/I’m giving you a high five/cause hugs are overrated/just FYI.” And the Bros talk a lot about IMing and texting in this song as well, so in my dreamworld, one of the Joe Bros is mad at his ex-girlfriend so he texts her and warns her that he’s high fiving her next time they have an encounter. I’m just asking; can I do that? Is it a little too immature? Like, “just a warning, but I’m high fiving you next time because I don’t want your arms near me.” Maybe I can tweet it at my exes instead?

10. NOTHING.

I learned nothing from Hanson, but I feel incredibly awkward not mentioning their shiny hair. All I learned is that sometimes there is pain and strife in relationships and then they are gone so fast and it causes you to break into some kind of a catchy mumble jumble of words that will never leave your head, ever. Thank you, pretty brothers. You have imprinted my soul.