Tim: Shall we have a multinational boy band?
Tim: You’ve complained in the past that I don’t do my research; I’ve just sat through a mind-numbingly dull introductory video to bring you this, so I hope you appreciate it. We have here Mike (UK, 22, with blond highlights), Step (Italy, 21, with the weird sideways fringe), Gabriel (Sweden, 21, the blond one with the earstud,) Manuel (Germany, 22, with the chest tattoo) and Teus (Netherlands, 19, with the Jedward hair).
Tom: Blimey, they are properly international. Hence “The United”, I assume. How’d they get assembled?
Tim: They’re mostly alumni of various Popstars/Idol shows, and “met” (i.e. were put together) in Oslo in October 2011 and have become great friends. What a heartwarming tale of the ages. They have, naturally, gathered an army of young female fans despite doing nothing other than a few YouTube covers, but now they’re hoping to hit the big time.
In a world were the Banna-band can get into the top 40, that’s probably not all that hard. Number 32, to be more precise. I can just picture Duncan struggling out of 40 different HMVs with every single copy they stocked.
Tom: Remember, it’s not a bad track; number 32 sounds about right for it.
Tim: ANYWAY, tedious mini-biographies aside, the music. I like it, partly because it’s a decent enough tune, but also because for some reason no other boybands right now are doing dance pop like this – it’s all guitars and drums, in the eternal and pathetic quest to be ‘authentic’. The management behind this lot have decided that there’s a hole in the market, and they’re quite right.
Tom: I’m not sure this is quite the right thing to fill it, though: it’s… well, it’s a bit generic, isn’t it? I’m not sure I could hum that chorus even after listening to it a dozen times.
Tim: You might be right, but we can at least say that these guys have potential. They don’t have much competition in the genre, so they might be able to get away with a duff debut, and you’re right, there are issues – for starters, it’s nothing that a male soloist couldn’t perform on his own, as outside the last twenty seconds they don’t even have any decent harmonies going on.
However a male soloist couldn’t attract a legion of fan Twitter accounts (I’ll never understand those). Let’s appreciate what we’ve got – a decent enough boyband who are doing something different, fairly competently. I’m happy.