We all love dancing to the S Club Beat – but what’s behind our obsession with ‘90s bands?
When Take That reunited in 2005, the sight of the handsome boyband brought back memories of early crushes, teenage friendship and obsessive fandom to thousands of 30-year-olds across Britain. Nostalgia helped drive sales and, as the hit singles (and financial rewards) steadily grew, several other long-disbanded pop groups realised that a Take That-style reunion may be the way to top up their emptying pockets.
McBusted (a mixture of Busted and McFly) have released their debut album, S Club Seven and Steps have both performed reunion gigs and widespread rumours that Westlife were to regroup swept the Twittersphere (only to be firmly denied) this week.
Clearly, the former fans of such ‘90s hits hear the tunes of their youth and are transported back to a time when hair straighteners were ubiquitous and swatch watches were seriously cool.
“There’s always a tendency to look backwards at what happened ten, twenty years ago with a sense of nostalgia and rose-tinted spectacles,” says popular music journalist Thomas H Green. “It represents a golden time of life and a bond with other fans. Returning to that is warm, comforting and enjoyable – it’s a celebration of a part of their lives.”
The pop bands currently enjoying resurgence in popularity were part of the most effective marketing machine in music history and two decades later, as their riches start to fade, it’s the perfect time to target those former-teenage-girls now grown up into young mothers.
Read the full articl here at The Telegraph
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