A decade-old pop group has won HELLO!’s boy band poll. Boston-based New Kids On The Block, who hit the heady heights of fame in 1989, garnered almost a third of the 27,715 votes cast on our website. Their closest rival, the Backstreet Boys, were over 2,500 votes behind them, with British band Take That coming in third.
Formed in 1984 by impresario Maurice Starr, NKOTB fused rap with pop, securing them instant popularity with white teenagers. It wasn’t until 1988, however, that they hit the big time, reaching the Number One spot in the US. A year later they broke into the UK market with a reissue of Hangin’ Tough. Following a wane in their popularity, the outfit split in 1994 to follow solo careers.
Backstreet Boys are the new kids’ New Kids – at least, they were five years ago. Like NKOTB, the Orlando-based band is a five-piece made up of all-singin’, all-dancin’, all-American boys with a hunger for fame. It is probably safe to say that the group, which has sold over 55 million albums worldwide, is the biggest boy band on the planet.
Bronze medal goes to Take That, who made boybands fashionable again. The five boys – Howard Donald, Gary Barlow, Jason Orange, Mark Owen and, of course, Robbie Williams – became the most popular guys in the world and, when they split in 1996, having earned a reported £80 million for their record label, a phone line was set up to help their millions of adolescent fans cope, although two teenagers succeeded in killing themselves, so distraught were they by the band’s demise.
Current chart favourites Westlife could only manage 6th place, behind The Beatles and ’NSync, although they beat The Jackson Five, their compatriots Boyzone, Five and The Monkees, who only picked up 97 votes.
Photo: © Alphapress.com
Photo: © Alphapress.com
Photo: © Alphapress.com
