Has the TV talent competition finally fallen from grace? Reports last weekend suggested that Simon Cowell’s latest Netflix show, in which he searches for ‘the next boyband’, had been canned mid-production. While a spokesperson for Simon has now denied those rumours, there has been an undeniable shift when it comes to boybands in recent years.
One of these is: do we really need to find ‘the next big boyband’? In the current music landscape, are zeitgeisty boybands still relevant? Or even possible to create?
It's not controversial to say gone are the days when four or five average-to-handsome boys were willing to queue up to audition to be part of The Next Big Thing, given individual makeovers that made them look even more similar, and go on to spend years dominating the Top 40. And yet Cowell's show is still, apparently, very much still in production.
So what's going on? It was initially reported that only 40 people turned up to the first date of the show's auditions in Liverpool, and further dates were said to have been subsequently cancelled. A source told The Sun, ‘The amount of railings they put up suggested they were expecting hundreds or thousands of people to arrive and pack out the queues but they had a fraction of those kinds of numbers.’ Despite ‘Simon needs you!’ billboards being plastered around London, or the fact he already had a go with The X Factor: The Band in 2019, which was cancelled after one season.
After a disappointing start to filming, the Netflix show, originally rumoured to be called The Midas Touch, was said to be turning away from the idea of creating a new boyband and instead becoming a documentary about their dwindling influence in the music industry. The Mail’s source said, ‘Many of the singers turning up are cast-offs from bands that didn’t make it. But perhaps more crucially, Simon has been told to come to terms with the fact that maybe the era of the chart-topping boyband is over. It is devastating for him.’
The timing isn't ideal either, given that one of Netflix's current top shows is called 'Dirty Pop: The Boy Band Scam'. The three-part documentary uncovers the dark side of former talent manager Lou Pearlman, who was responsible for bands like 'NSync and Backstreet Boys, and reportedly formed the groups as a continuation of his own criminal Ponzi schemes and money laundering. So it's safe to say people's faith in music moguls looking to cash in on impressionable male artists is not at an all time high.
Simon’s spokesperson responded to the report, saying: ‘The claims made are false, and the quoted “source” appears to be completely invented. This project is primarily a search for a boyband, which is being documented; it is not a "show", nor is it titled The Midas Touch.’
He did not, however, clarify what it will be exactly or whether he’s managed to find any decent singers. Have we moved on from an era where talent competitions dominated Saturday night television and boybands were on our teenager's walls (or, our own!).
After all, it’s been 14 years since One Direction was formed on The X Factor, and eight years since the band broke up.
Aside from K-pop groups like BTS – who, it's important to note, are the biggest boyband in the world, have charted four number one albums faster than any group since the Beatles and have broken 25 Guinness World Records – the golden age of boybands feels firmly behind us.
This, of course, could be for several reasons.
Firstly, the music landscape has changed immeasurably. We have constant access to endless new music that makes it that bit harder for any single artist or group to dominate the space for a sustained period. With Spotify, Apple Music and TikTok curating what we listen to, and what we want to listen to, people no longer rely on mainstream pop, radio or TV shows to discover new music in the ways they once did. As a result, our tastes are less homogenous and artists are having to diversify their revenue streams. No albums released in 2023 went platinum in the UK.){href='https://www.musicweek.com/labels/read/2023-market-analysis-emi-on-top-as-it-becomes-uk-s-no-1-streaming-label/089051#:~
Evidently, it’s harder for musical juggernauts to hold the same power they once did, and that includes boybands too. The last big global boyband formed outside of Korea was probably One Direction, which might explain why Simon wants to be the one to find the next one.
There’s even a Reddit thread titled ‘Are boy bands still a thing?’ where someone watched Amazon Prime’s The Idea of You – a film about a woman who took her child to a festival and fell in love with the lead singer of a boyband, rumoured to be inspired by Harry Styles fan fiction – and wondered whether any English-speaking boybands had broken out in the past decade.
The consensus in the comments section is that largely, no, they haven’t. Especially when you consider the definition of a boyband, which the dictionary calls ‘a pop group of young men whose music and image are designed to appeal primarily to a young teenage audience’. Whether bands like The 1975 or Brockhampton fall into this category is up for debate, but there’s certainly a widely felt absence of nineties and noughties style boybands in mainstream music.
The next question, then, is why aren’t people interested anymore? Or, why aren’t aspiring male musicians banding together to fill the space? Well, there are plenty of other avenues for viral fame now; ones that don’t involve being trapped in a contract or having a team of people over-style your side fringe. People who want to release music have more opportunities than ever to do so, even if it still rarely amounts to material success or longevity. They certainly don’t need to queue up for hours and make small talk with Ant and Dec for 15 minutes on ITV.
It will be interesting to see what Simon’s mystery series amounts to, and whether he tackles any of these questions – their causes and effects – in any great detail. There might be a boyband-shaped hole in popular culture at the moment, but it’s not one people seem desperate to fill. Sorry, Simon.
Nikki Peach is a writer at Grazia UK, covering TV, celebrity interviews, news and features.