18 January 1990
The first new Irish and UK number one of the ’90s ushers in the era of the boyband. New Kids On The Block beget Take That, who beget Boyzone, who beget Westlife, each also spawning their own local pretenders and chancers. Thanks Donnie, Danny, Dinny and the other two!
NKOTB’s hits were written and produced by their Svengali figure, Maurice Starr, and ‘Hangin’ Tough’ is what you could imagine Boyzone singles would have sounded like if they had similarly been written and produced by Louis Walsh were Louis not so ideologically wedded to ’70s schmaltz. Where previous single and breakout hit ‘You Got It (The Right Stuff)’—peaking at no. 2 in Ireland behind Linda Ronstadt and Aaron Neville’s dreary ‘Don’t Know Much’—at least had some puppyish charm and pop musicality, this is a stompy, stroppy trudge. Accompanied by the first-available percussion setting on a keyboard and the cliched squawk of a session rock guitarist, the lads communicate their New Kids’ brand messaging: being “rough” and “tough” in the manner of the cartoon punk motorcycle baby in the Fairy liquid ads. Clearly this isn’t targeting grown-ups or even precocious teens. The video—geo-blocked in my territory but still spun occasionally on MTV retro channels—has Donnie Wahlberg jumping around sweatily for what seems like an audience consisting largely of 12-year-olds: some sobbing in fan hysteria, others minding even younger siblings. This is the angle and demographic for ‘Hangin’ Tough’, New Kids On The Block, and quite a lot of the ’90s boybanditry to follow: sixth class and first years. Already I’m nostalgic for the mature sophistication of Stock Aitken and Waterman.
New Kids On The Block continue to have hits throughout 1990 but their cynically cheap and corny product won’t be gracing us with its presence at number one again. By 1999, with the help of judicious outsourcing to Sweden, the standard of commercial US teen pop eventually reaches the stellar heights of ‘…Baby One More Time’ and ‘I Want It That Way’. Unfortunately, before that there’s a whole decade of Irish and British boybands happy to use NKOTB as their benchmark, their moon to shoot for, their ‘if they can do it, so can I’. Welcome to the ’90s!
