Revenge of the New Kids

When the New Kids on the Block emerged from the pop scene of the mid ’80s, I did what any self-respecting, early teen male did: revile them. Clearly, the five boys put together to create the first of the modern boy band sensations were a media construct designed to make teenage girls scream and swoon, pieced together out of psychological profiles to match the largest possible range of archetypal young males that would appeal to the largest range of young females. They were a formula, a Pavlovian reaction, a late Twentieth-century example of social Darwinism—and as such they were truly dangerous, subversive and Satanic. Filling young heads with vacuous lyrics on love and “the right stuff”—this was a recipe for world takeover by the megalomaniacs behind their construction, by the media moguls who used them as pawns to brainwash half the population.

Okay, so when I was 14 I didn’t say this in so many words—I mainly used adolescent slurs and questioned their sexuality. But I saw through the ruse that they represented—I did.

The alternative in the mid-80s, of course, was hair bands: Motley Crue, Poison, Bon Jovi, and Guns ‘n’ Roses, just to name a few, bands that wore make up and wigs and cut a path of decadence that coincided nicely with Reaganomics and the arms race. Not much of an alternative.

Fortunately for me, also in the 80s, my sister Heidi, a bit too old and too smart to be touched by the New Kids craze, came upon an Irish band called U2. Heidi and I made our home in U2 and the Australian INXS, thus staving off the total depravity of the late 80s. Then came an actual alternative: the grunge bands that emerged from Seattle to save the world: Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Sound Garden, among others.

In high school I consumed a steady diet of these alternative bands and became an alternative snob: clearly, the integrity of these bands as they questioned capitalist excess and captured the teenage angst a la The Catcher in the Rye made them transcendent beacons for civilization. Of course, I hadn’t actually read The Catcher in the Rye or really knew what Reaganomics or capitalist excess really was, but no matter. I knew authenticity when I saw it: alternative bands were the model of it; the New Kids were the antithesis of it.

And so it is with great irony that I married a huge New Kids fan. And not just a New Kids fan, a Back Street Boys fan, an NSYNC fan, an all-around pop music fan. In fact, my wife is such a big NKOTB—that’s a current nickname for the group—fan that she not only went to their concert as a teenager, she went as an adult to their reunion tour! Yes, there on the fridge is the picture of my wife with the New Kids, standing next to the one she always liked, Jonathan Knight, the one she says I remind her of.

Lucky me.

But it doesn’t end there. Currently, my children’s—my boys’—favorite CD to listen to is, you guessed it, en-kot-buh’s (that’s the best I can do to phonetically pronounce the acronym NKOTB in an attempt at mockery) greatest hits album. My four year old break dances to it. Woe is me. I am undone.

If this feels like a cry for help, gentle reader, it’s not. It’s more of a confession.

No, I’m not starting to like their music. If anything, the dated simplicity of it shows how thin it really was. Musically, it really does rank right up there with the Toddler Tunes CD my kids used to listen to.

Rather, I’m confessing to a sort of amelioration. I’m confessing to being a snob, an elitist and trying to change that. Marrying a self-proclaimed pop queen has been the best thing for me. I depend on my wife to keep me current on these things as a matter of principle. I confess to letting her open up my world a bit, to stepping down from my high and mighty throne of superiority where I ruled with my scepter of authenticity. I even confess to being a Whitney Houston fan. Honestly, I am clearly aware that “The Greatest Love of All” is sheer narcissism but it can still bring me to tears.

I confess to not being bothered that my sons sing “The Right Stuff,” but now I’m wondering why it doesn’t bother me. And I’m not sure what to say. I don’t want to say that it’s because the music is meaningless and pointless because I don’t think it is, and I don’t want to say that it doesn’t matter that they really were a media construct because I think it does. I don’t want to say anti-intellectual acceptance has taken over because I don’t think that’s it either.

Perhaps I’m just tired of big-bad-wolfing it—of finding the big bad wolf in everything. Perhaps I’m not bothered because I want to accept the no-brain part of human existence. I want to accept the odd mystery that is female adolescent sexual development—words I very well may eat as my daughter hits the “tween” years.

On the other hand, I know that I admire my wife’s ability to maturely and determinedly remain a kid at heart. I also know I’ve learned how arrogant I was—okay, "can be" or "am" would be better verbs there. Perhaps, too, I believe in the larger structures of society a bit more than I did in the past, that family and community and education and faith lasts while the New Kids just age.

Who can explain human culture? Who can explain the phases we go through? The things we cling to get us through the turmoil of adolescence? The kind of culture we’re drawn to? I can’t. Rather, I’ll have a world where the fluffiness of pop rubs the edges off the angst of grunge. Isn’t this, among other things, why we marry--to get outside ourselves? And have kids—even kids that dance to the NKOTB?