Would you consider The Beatles to be a boyband?

Question

My friend tells me that The Beatles were a precursor to modern boybands. i tell him he's a moron because they can actually write music unlike the backstreet boys. Is he right or what? Wikipedia seems to partly agree with him! :(

Answer 1

If you're speaking in the most literal sense, then you can only have boybands and girlbands. Backstreet Boys, Beatles, Pantera, Sex Pistols, Alabama, Charlie Daniels Band are all boybands. However, the term boyband has come to mean a group of adolescent boys that are hand-picked by a producer/manager/label according to their looks, and are given voice lessons, dance lessons and hooked up with a producer who finds a collection of songs for them to record. The Beatles were an actual rock band that cut their teeth playing American rock-n-roll covers around Europe before being "discovered", at which point they began writing and recording their own songs (along with a few covers) and the rest is history. To compare the Beatles with the Backstreet Boys is like comparing apples to dog food. Who played drums for The Backstreet Boys? Who was the bassist for New Kids on the Block? Do you see? They are not a band. A group, perhaps, but not a band. At best they are a modern prefabricated doo-wop group, nothing more than a product of a label and a slick producer. They were given a lifespan of 4 or 5 years, just like NKOTB, or NSYNC, or Color Me Bad. As soon as they became adults, they were discarded for a new hand-picked lot of adolescents.

Answer 2

The Beatles are a boyband in the sense that they are a band of boys. Literally's the only way to go. There is a major, major difference between the Beatles and the Backstreet Boys. Have you pointed this out?

By the way, don't use Wikipedia for your only source if you're in college. The teachers don't like it because Wikipedia is a site where you post what you THINK is the right answer. So you're not sure if it's the right answer.

Answer 3

ur friend is right. they were a band made up of boys. the term boyband didn't really come around until the 90's but they were one. had the term been used back then, it would describe them perfectly. u have to consider tha mania that was involved with beatles fans and bsb fans. same kind of thing. but the thing is, the idiots who called bsb/nsync and such boybands are wrong because those were singing groups, not bands at all!! that's why beatles are a boyband. and back then i don't think the term would have seen such negativity, except they might not have been liked to be called boys.

Answer 4

That's exactly what they would have been in their first years, if there had been such a thing! They grinned and goofed around, and played pop music and silly love songs and had girls screaming and fainting in the audience. Of course, they became serious musicians later on, but in the beginning they were an extremely popular boy band.

I was 12 when they started out; "Meet the Beatles" was my first album. All my friends had one they were "in love" with. Their early similarity to boy bands is unmistakable!

Answer 5

Good question. I'd say during Beatlemania they mighta been. But very soon afterwards when the music got more serious & introspective, that's when the similarities ended.

Modern boybands do owe something to the Fab 4, but I think also to all those 50s/early 60s vocal/doo-wop groups.

Answer 6

I think the title of boy band is because of the fans reaction to them as men. They were the first band w/ four guys that all the girls were attracted to. They were musicians first and foremost. They wrote their own music and played their own instruments. To this day they are one of the best bands out there. Comparing them to Nsync and the Backstreet Boys is like comparing a fillet Minot to a hot dog.

Answer 7

no, not in modern sense

modern boy bands are an attempt to 'repackage' and resell the original beatles as a product (with record label owning a higher percentage)

the beatles happenned by accident, they were original and different at the time

u cant 'create' that but people keep trying

they were a boy band in sense that they were four boys (5 originally)

Answer 8

Your friend is a w***nker for sure......precursor to modern boybands?! Get real! When I think of boy bands I think of prissy boys who sing, can't play a musical instrument, or write any songs.....
The Beatles are the only original band in history ever to make several recordings of their own music.....which were highest sold in history too. They made history. Unique and original.
Boy bands...yuk! poo! prissy! and dumb!

Answer 9

Of course they were, your friend is sooooo right! Choosing Backstreet Boys as reference defeats your purpose about their own writing, Timberlake writes.

Answer 10

i always thought a boyband was a group of young boys or men.