Groups like the Backstreet Boys, New Kids on the Block, and 98 Degrees may have been distinguishable from one another to a ten-year-old girl, but to the rest of us, those smiling faces with no discernible musical talent were as interchangeable, and disposable, as toothpicks.
Where the likes of Elvis and the Beatles made the teenage girls swoon with a level of talent and charisma that was ELECTRIC, what passes for today's "pop idol" is a zit-faced kid seemingly plucked out of their fast food uniform mere minutes before being shoved onstage to face a throng of hysteric sheeple.
Believe me, I take no joy in calling an entire stadiums of young girls losing their shit to the likes of One Republic or One Direction "sheeple", but there is no other way to describe the ease with which these embrionic humans are indoctrinated into the latest prefabbed musical cult, all funded by mom and dad's credit card.
Here's the thing: Harry Styles isn't a singer, or a musician, or even a pop star, really. He's a babysitter.
That's right, he's the one raising our kids because, quite frankly, most of us are too damn busy working some soul-sucking job just to make our monthly nut and "keep the lights on".
I mean, somebody's gotta pay for the iPhones, the wi-fi, the cable, put food on the table, and keep little Josh and Annabelle in 5 Seconds Of Summer concert tickets and all the requisite band-related merchandise so as not to run afoul of the "cool kids".
But because poor Harry can't babysit everybody's kids, the record labels are working overtime to pump out more and more babysitters to meet the ever-changing needs of today's kids. That's why we now have punk rock boy bands like the previously mentioned "5SOS", the Vamps, McFly, Lawson, and the Janoskians. See, record labels know that not every young girl wants to see five guys dancing in unison onstage. I mean, it has kind of been done to death.
Thing is, bands like the Vamps aren't the concoction of some record label svengali, they're actually kids who took it upon themselves to form for the sole purpose of not becoming rock stars, but to watch our children for us while we try to get some Christmas shopping done.
In that sense, God bless those most banal of boy bands for holding the attention of our Ritilin-riddled children while we attempt to reconnect with the spouses we no longer even recognize over five or six glasses of Yellow Tail and some stale Olive Garden breadsticks.
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boy bands or babysitters