At first, Boyz II Men rode the new jack swing wave that lifted up fellow vocal groups like Color Me Badd and Hi-Five. They filled the vacuum that opened when New Edition broke up, and they had a former New Edition member as their manager and mentor. But Boyz II Men did present a new version of that archetype. Boyz II Men were not exactly mold-breakers all-male R&B vocal groups had been chart mainstays even before the dawn of the rock ‘n’ roll era. The existence of one hugely popular artist tends to open up the market for someone to present a more sex-drunk version of that artist’s sound.Įven before Boyz II Men landed their first #1 hit, it must’ve been obvious to a whole lot of music-business types that there was now an open lane for a hornier Boyz II Men. None of these are one-to-one comparisons, and maybe this is all a great oversimplification, but it’s just something that I’ve noticed. Before Britney Spears became the horny version of herself, Christina Aguilera was the horny Britney. In the post- Thriller era, Prince stood out for a lot of reasons, but one of those reasons was that he presented a freakier take on Jackson’s larger-than-life post-genre mega-pop. Prince and Michael Jackson were peers for a few years before both of them went supernova. When the Rolling Stones first emerged, they existed in the public consciousness as a hornier and surlier Beatles.
But in just about every case, the hornier version couldn’t exist if the less-horny one hadn’t arrived first.Ĭonsider: Elvis Presley was already plenty horny, but you could make the argument that Jerry Lee Lewis was a hornier and more generally unhinged version of that Elvis persona. Plenty of those hornier-version artists become massively popular themselves. Sometimes, when a major new mold-breaking artist emerges, a hornier equivalent of that same artist will come along within the next year or so. There’s a pattern that I’ve noticed repeating itself throughout pop history. In The Number Ones, I’m reviewing every single #1 single in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, starting with the chart’s beginning, in 1958, and working my way up into the present.
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