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75 Greatest Boy Band Songs of All Time

From the Jackson 5 to BTS: here are the most scream-worthy boy band songs

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Irresistibly catchy, unapologetically inauthentic, sexy and they know it — the boy band is the most fabulously pre-fab of all musical outfits. From the scripted TV shenanigans of the Monkees to the charming folkiness of One Direction, as long as there are junior high school notebooks to deface, there will be outfits providing pop spectacle in its purist, least filtered form.

As music has evolved, so have boy bands. Their existence is a pop constant but parameters have always been blurred: sometimes they dance and sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they are total strangers, sometimes they have known each other since birth. Sometimes they sing words they’ve written themselves, sometimes they sing other people’s. Sometimes they are literally boys, sometimes they’re twentysomethings with boyish charm. But like any other form art, you know a boy band when you see one. The main defining factor? The venues full of screaming fans — always young, mostly girls — who help turn a boy band into a cultural artifact worth admiring and singing along to even after their inevitable disbandment or “hiatus.”

In honor of their continuing impact and dominance, here are the boy band heartthrobs’ pop confections worth screaming for.

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‘N Sync, “Bye, Bye, Bye” (2000)

“There’s a little more edge to this album, a little more grit,” Justin Timberlake told Rolling Stone shortly before the release of 2000’s No Strings Attached, joking about the lawsuits that prevented its release. “We’re pissed off now — that’s what it is. We’re angry white boys who didn’t get our props.” ‘N Sync’s opening volley was “Bye, Bye, Bye,” a kiss-off from Sweden’s Cheiron Studios that had previously been turned down by Britishers Take That. It remains their defining track, a four-minute blast of big hooks, tight harmonies and intriguingly meta subtext.

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The Jackson 5, “I Want You Back” (1969)

Sure, the soaring strings on the Jackson 5’s first Motown single skip along like carefree first-graders, and the thumping bassline is one of pop’s closest appropriations of the heartbeat. But the real hero of “I Want You Back” is Michael Jackson, then still a preteen but blessed with a voice and interpretive skill that could turn a desperate attempt to rekindle romance (originally thought of as a Gladys Knight or Diana Ross vehicle) into something visceral and joyous. Jackson’s octave-leaping tour de force established him as a star almost as soon as the song’s first 45 was pressed.