Arching a bitchy eyebrow at Anglo K-pop TV experiment Made in Korea Back in 1994, the year of the metrosexual’s birth, and the height of boybandery, my agent sent the BBC (and, I think, ITV) my proposal for a series exploring whether a boyband could be manufactured from scratch, with the working… Read More »Puppetry Without Penis
America’s manly embrace of BTS & Korean metrosexuality ‘K-Pop’ boyband BTS, also known as the Bangtan Boys, have been getting a lot of love in the US this week with their week-long ‘virtual’ residency on The Tonight Show. Their new single ‘Dynamite’, their first song performed fully in English, also… Read More »Bulletproof Boys & Snuggle Huddles
by Mark Simpson 1991’s big, busty novelty hit ‘I’m Too Sexy’ was as zeitgeisty and bitchily funny as it was ear-wormingly annoying. I remember it playing everywhere in London that summer: builders’ vans, barber’s shops, caffs, pubs, nightclubs, funeral parlours. OK, I didn’t actually hear it in funeral parlours but… Read More »How ‘I’m Too Sexy’ Foretold The All-Too Sexy Future
Fame, fame, fatal fame. It can play hideous tricks on the brain. Last week C4 aired Crazy About One Direction a documentary about ‘Directioners’, febrile fans of the globally – some would say criminally – successful reality TV assembled UK boy band One Direction, or ‘1D’ if you’re typing with… Read More »Polymorphous Perversity & One Direction Fandom
I’m not much of a Robbie Williams fan. ‘Bromance’ leaves me cold. And I hated Brokeback Mountain. But perhaps I’m a big softy really because I rather like this video for Williams’ single ‘Shame’ which brings all these themes together, adds a hairy Gary Barlow, Robbie’s once-reviled Take That collaborator,… Read More »Shameless Slashiness