Advice for the modern teen idol: there's more to it than just cashing royalty checks and autographing training bras. There are difficult issues that must be faced. For instance, some toy company may want to measure your face so that it can manufacture dolls with your likeness. You could make a lot of money selling them to your youngest fans, but then your older fans--the 12- and 13-year-olds--would think you're babyish and move on to Hanson. And then there's all the choreography you have to remember while you're trying to look as yummy as possible. And the whole goatee-or-non-goatee dilemma. And the fact that your manager keeps insisting you enter your hotels through the front door to keep the fans at the police barricades happy. It's a hard row to hoe for the turn-of-the-century dreamboat.
Still, these are fat times for bubble gum and its makers. Backstreet Boys, a quintet of clean--but not too clean--cut guys with great dimples and abs, was nominated for a Grammy as Best New Artist this year and has so far grossed more than $900 million in record, video and merchandise sales. Last year the group's eponymous debut album was the nation's third best-selling record, followed closely by its chief rival 'N Sync, another quintet of clean--but not too clean--cut guys with great dimples and abs whose eponymous debut was the year's fifth best seller. Both records, with their similar mixes of pop dance music spiked with just a touch of hip-hop edge, are still holding strong in the Top 40, as is 'N Sync's Christmas album.
In January.
"Everybody is copying now," grumbles Maurice Starr, who put together the pre-eminent '80s boy groups, New Edition and New Kids on the Block. He is preparing to launch two new groups later this year. Quintets and quartets of young European hotties are also circling the American market. The Backstreet and 'N Sync numbers are like prepubescent chum.
"I don't think this thing has peaked yet," says Tom Calderone, senior vice president of music at MTV. The network was originally loath to air Backstreet Boys and 'N Sync videos, until viewer demand overcame the reflexive hipster's prejudice against groups whose faces appear on school binders with little hearts drawn around them by hand. Backstreet Boys and 'N Sync are currently MTV's most requested artists. "Whether it's cool or not," concedes Calderone, "it's what the viewers want."
If, to untrained eyes and ears, the two groups are virtually indistinguishable, there are a pair of good reasons for this. First, the time-tested formulas for making music for young girls to swoon to still work. They date all the way back through New Kids, the Jackson Five and the Monkees to the Beatles, who in their earliest, cuddliest incarnation were the progenitors of this sort of thing--if you don't count Frank Sinatra or Franz Liszt or probably some medieval troubadour no one remembers.