The music industry from the 90s and 00s was awful

[Boybandsnowmanbands]

I've been watching the boyband documentary on BBC iplayer and all these young aspirational naive lads were just chewed up and spat out by such a ruthless industry. Watching these grown men in their 40s and 50s almost without exception breaking down talking about what they went through is quite a disturbing watch. I wish I could say it is confined to the past but looking at current boy bands and what happened with Liam Payne it feels like no lessons have ever been learned.

i thought there was a very understated (but VERY present) argument asking us as the audience to consider how these were almost exclusively working class boys and working class managers, who were then exploited by massive companies
i LOVED the documentary, and i thought it did well to not create easy "goodies" and "baddies"

I was just about to say the same thing. He was meant to have physically and sexually abused the band members.

We all have our own preferences when it comes to defining things. Not worth getting on a high horse about, whatever Tom Fletcher himself prefers.

I thought Robbie came across really well in this as opposed to his NF documentary. As pp said he seems to finally be at peace with himself.

McFly aren't a rock band!!!

Yes that's the other difference between most of the boy bands and the boyband-adjacent Busted and McFly: they're solidly middle class and uncoincidentally seem to have come through the process much better.

One Direction were not "young men" when the band was formed on the X-Factor.

They were all aged 16-18. Louis was the oldest and was 19 just after the X-Factor finished. Harry Styles was 16. Those are children.

Sadly the exploitation of young working class men and women in pop music has been going on since the beginning of pop.

Look up Larry Parnes.

Joey McIntyre joined New Kids on the Block when he was 12!

Wouldn't the class thing be that the middle class parents would insist on lawyers and someone checking out contracts?

Robbie has clearly had a lot of therapy.

I could not believe Lee from
911 is 50! And saying "don't want to still be doing this in 10 years"

The ending was positive with lots still touring or just performing in festivals then beck to normal life. I actually watched the big reunion show at 02 10 years ago and would be happy to see another one of them all at 50.

But there is a difference between “being in a band”(whether Boy or any other type of band where you don’t write your own music and lyrics) and being a creative Artist/Artists (writing and performing your own material).
I never thought of Take That as “just” a Boyband, as it was clear that Gary Barlow’s songwriting skills shone through (see what I did there?).
Tom Fletcher shouldn’t be accused of being “On his high horse” about this: when you have written and arranged new songs yourself, that are very popular and loved by many, you become fully-rounded creative artists, and that is a slightly different achievement than turning up to rehearse works by other people and perform them under tuition from choreographers who have a “style” in mind.
If it were up to the Music Industry, every song would be the same: it’s the all-rounders, though, that have always excited, and innovated music, not the pop manufacturers… Without these kind of independent creative Artists, we’d never have got Radiohead, Arctic Monkeys, Placebo, Royal Blood Or McFly, and the Music Industry manufacturers would have nothing to copy!

There are differences and similarities between every band. There are also differences and similarities between producers and choreographers and between every opinion too, since all are opinions.

No one accused Tom Fletcher of being on a high horse.

Agree, and then add in the fact that once they were famous they could barely go out without someone taking a pic or hundreds of girls crowding round.
That schedule and level of attention, is not healthy, neither, I would argue, is spending months on end with only 4 other band mates who are also teens, and a load of people who are mainly trying to make as much money as they can from you.
(Probably worse for this generation of popstars now everyone has phones and social media) I remember at school some girls saying they had Mark, from Take that's address (unsure if it was true - we lived nowhere near) but no idea how this was found out or shared without mobiles or social media and yet they still had hundreds of girls surrounding their house.

Daniella westbrook certainly didn't come out well from having fame at an early age. It was really sad to watch. Both her and Brian Harvey have definitely paid a high price for that level of fame.

Look at k-pop! Suicidal and suicide

East 17 manager Tom Watkins also managed Pet Shop Boys and Bros. Luke Goss wrote a damning account in his autobiography of how the limos, first class everything, was paid out of the band’s share of profits but they were not aware till it was too late.
Why is there no legal protection: 5 days off a year, two hours sleep between flights, no employers duty of care re: mental health… Do the Working Time regulations not apply? Genuine question for any industry insiders.
Simon Cowell’s ‘be an accountant instead’ comment feels poor, in light of Liam Payne. Assuming this was filmed some time before.
Robbie wrote a fairly balanced open letter to Nigel on his insta addressing the issues. Easy to forget he was a child when the band took off…

I have just watched the last episode.

Daniella westbrook certainly didn't come out well from having fame at an early age. It was really sad to watch. Both her and Brian Harvey have definitely paid a high price for that level of fame. - @Fizbosshoes

^ this is exactly what dp and I were saying.

The guy from News of the World and Simon Cowell don't exactly come across covered in glory, do they? They were just chewed up and spat out until the next big thing came along. Pretty awful when you consider how young they were. Robbie Williams came across very well, I thought.

I was young in 90s and early 00s and thought all of those bands were fake and manufactured. IME you were either into the boy bands or into bands that wrote and performed their own music and had real talent. I think the bands my friends and I liked still felt pressure as they were known for getting smashed.

@Goldenbear me too, I was in my 20s in the 90s, I was not the target demographic! It's a pretty damning indictment of the industry, though. I think the more "organically" formed bands often suffered from being ripped off too.

Tony Mortimer made a lot of money writing most of the songs. Stay Another Day makes him almost £100k a year. He has struggled with his mental health though.