Boy bands. They’re cute, cuddly and all-around dancing machines. But, as of last week, they may just be the villains of the year. Yes, those adorable floppy-haired crooners are apparently on the same level as super villain Bane from “The Dark Knight Rises.”

At last week’s New Musical Express Awards in Britain, One Direction’s resident-Taylor-Swift-ex-boyfriend, Harry Styles, won Villain of the Year. He beat out British Prime Minister David Cameron, Skrillex and Psy for the top sarcastic honor. Poor One Direction even won Worst Band, against the likes of Mumford and Sons and Justin Bieber.

This discrimination has gone on for too long – we need to stop hating on boy bands. They’re not here to change lives with their music and deep messages. Instead, as N’Sync says in their song “Pop,” “All that matters is that you get hyped and [they’ll] give it to you every time.”

More than 10 years later, N’Sync’s promise still rings true. The girls who grew up listening to N’Sync or The Backstreet Boys still watch classic videos on YouTube more often than they would like to admit. I’ve seen college women who still know all of the lyrics and choreography. The musical high promised in “Pop” is still working a decade later.

The girls growing up today with boy bands like One Direction or The Wanted deserve to experience the same feeling in 2023.

Since boy bands started busting their sweet moves and singing about girls that made their little hearts go pitter-patter, they’ve received equal measures of adoration and hostility. For every overly excited crying preteen, there’s a jaded 20-something rolling his or her eyes at the cotton-candy pop these boys are peddling.

With the radio overplay that boy bands’ ever-changing singles receive, it’s easy to become sick of them. It seems like their music was made in a lab to get stuck in your head for weeks. The knack for getting “What Makes You Beautiful” playing in an endless mind loop is what producers get paid the big bucks for.

The same could be said about whatever Rihanna’s newest song is. But once the clock strikes 1 a.m. at whatever bar or party those uber culture-haters are at, I bet they, too, will be compelled to belt out One Direction’s “Live While We’re Young” with everyone else.

It may seem more hip to hate whatever is popular, but accepting the kitschy and ridiculous parts of low culture is all part of the fun. That’s the reason off-the-wall rollercoaster “American Horror Story” is on the same network as the serious Cold War drama “The Americans.”

We’re a nation experimenting with the dichotomy of mind-numbingly silly and sharp intellectuality. People tune in to watch the Oscars and the MTV Movie Awards because both extremes have an important job in our society.

If we didn’t appreciate the low culture that spawns boy bands as much as we did, Justin Timberlake would never have become the falsetto superstar he is. And that’s just not a world I’m ready to live in.

Ariana Romero is a junior magazine journalism and political science major. Her column appears every week. She can be reached at akromero@syr.edu or followed on Twitter at @ArianaRomero17. 

Published on March 7, 2013 at 1:07 am