Boyband Mania: New songs by One Direction and The Fooo

The whole concept of a boyband has changed a lot these past couple of years. I went through high school during the age of Backstreet Boys and Nsync, so that kind of fluffy, melodic (and frankly, kinda awesome) music was inescapable. This generation's equivalents have a lot more edge, though, and thankfully are also willing to dabble in different genres. This brings me to the new singles by One Direction and The Fooo. In my mind, they're the two most important and interesting boybands of this new era (forgetting of course all the amazing groups coming out of Korea). However, these songs couldn't be more different. On one hand, we've got the melodic, gentle folk-pop of the new One Direction single (which I think is going to be huge for them, by the way) and on the other end of the spectrum we have Freestyler, The Fooo's jarring, rap-heavy cover of the 90's song by The Bomfunk MC's. Both are fantastic in their own way and cater to each group's identity. Both groups could have easily released anything and floated by on their looks and charisma, but it's comforting to know that the music is actually good. A couple of years ago, I wouldn't have counted myself a fan of "boybands" at all, but groups like these have consistently surprised me with the quality of their output. Forget labels. If you like polished, BIG pop music, these are your guys.



(Music posted for evaluation purposes only. Follow me on twitter and facebook.