AILSA CHANG, HOST:
OK, you all remember hot girl summer, right?
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HOT GIRL SUMMER")
MEGAN THEE STALLION: (Singing) I'm a hot girl, so you know ain't s*** stopping.
CHANG: Or brat summer?
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "360")
CHARLI XCX: (Singing) Yeah, 360. When you're in the mirror, do you like what you see?
CHANG: Well, what have I told you we're about to head into man band summer?
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BACKSTREET'S BACK")
BACKSTREET BOYS: (Singing) Backstreet's back, all right.
CHANG: That's right. Man band. If the Backstreet Boys started as a boy band, well, today they are men, as in they are in their 40s and 50s. And they're just one of several former boy bands on tour this summer. And you know what? Adult women are shelling out hundreds, even thousands of dollars to see them perform. This is giving me ideas. Freelance journalist Steve Knopper recently wrote about this for The Wall Street Journal and joins us now. Hi, Steve.
STEVE KNOPPER: Hi. Thanks for having me.
CHANG: Thanks for being with us. OK, wait, but correct me if I'm wrong. This isn't the first time the Backstreet Boys or some of these other bands have reunited, right?
KNOPPER: No, the Backstreet Boys have reunited several times, and some of the other bands that I write about in this - Take That in the U.K., New Edition, Boyz II Men. So the reunions and continuations of these bands since the time they were first popular is not uncommon.
CHANG: Yeah. But what is uncommon is the phenomenon of all these reunions sort of happening in a confluence this summer, right?
KNOPPER: Yeah. There are a lot of them out on the road. I mean, the ones I just mentioned. Jonas Brothers are on the road. You know, BTS is definitely more of a contemporary hit band, for sure.
CHANG: Right. K-pop band.
KNOPPER: But they're still, you know, they're a boy band, and most of those guys are in their 30s.
CHANG: OK, so are you finding that the people who are buying up the tickets for these shows tend to veer towards, you know, women of a certain age with disposable income who want to just revisit their youth? Is that the main market?
KNOPPER: That is the main market, for sure. If you talk to the bands and their managers and their record labels and so forth, that is definitely the demographic that they see, and that's the target that they're looking for for the market.
CHANG: Right. And I know that you spoke to many women who have tickets for these summer shows. What are they telling you about why they wanted to go to these concerts so badly?
KNOPPER: Yeah, it's interesting. You know, I talked to one particular person who said that she used to like boy bands, you know, in their heyday when she was a younger girl in the late '90s and the early 2000s. And then she kind of drifted away, and she went to the band Phish and went to a whole bunch of Phish concerts and became kind of a Phishhead. And then all of a sudden, the lure of the boy band kind of came back calling to her, and she...
CHANG: (Laughter).
KNOPPER: ...Got very nostalgic and thought about a simpler time and, you know, a time where love songs were on the radio more frequently, I guess. And she just plunged back in.
CHANG: Well, as the Backstreet Boys themselves asked, tell me why. Why are these tours happening? Why this timing, especially right now, apart from the obvious financial incentives?
KNOPPER: Well, a couple reasons. I mean, first of all, there's a cycle that happens when bands are popular in a certain decade, and then - especially pop bands. And then they kind of go away for a while. And if they stay together, then there's opportunity for the nostalgia circuit. And I think that's happening now because a lot of these bands were big in the '90s. You know, Backstreet Boys, NSYNC, Take That. New Kids on the Block were more '80s, but they had hits in the '90s as well.
CHANG: Yeah.
KNOPPER: But then I think another point is that, you know, there used to be this stigma that if you were in a boy band, you know, you'd have your big hit peak and then that would be it for you. You know, your fans would move on. They would go to college. They would get into indie rock or hip-hop or whatever it is and then they never come back. But that is proving not to be true these days. It seems like, thanks to the internet, these songs last forever, and they're really, really good songs.
CHANG: So have you personally attended any reunited boy band show lately?
KNOPPER: Oh, my God. No, I have not yet been to one (ph).
CHANG: Oh, come on.
KNOPPER: (Laughter).
CHANG: Maybe you and I...
KNOPPER: Yeah.
CHANG: ...Need to grab some tickets and go, see this...
KNOPPER: Let's do it.
CHANG: ...Phenomenon up close.
KNOPPER: Let's do it. I'm in.
CHANG: (Laughter) Deal. That is freelance journalist Steve Knopper. Thank you so much, Steve.
KNOPPER: Of course. Enjoyed it. Thanks.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I WANT IT THAT WAY")
BACKSTREET BOYS: (Singing) Tell me why.
(Singing) Ain't nothing but a heartache.
(Singing) Tell me why. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
