Pop Culture Confessional is a weekly column where our writers can divulge and indulge in their most deeply embarrassing cultural passion — and then tell you why it actually rocks. Everyone has a few dirty little secrets. Only the truth shall set us free.
To any Glee lovers out there who’ve exhausted Hulu’s 45-second web exclusives — get ready for a new obsession. Last quarter, my roommate Internet-stalked Kevin McHale, who plays Artie on Fox’s hit show Glee. A result of her digital detective work was our collective obsession with the boy band, Not Like Them, of which Kevin McHale was a member from 2006 to 2009.
Contrary to popular belief, which dictates that the boy band craze died in the early 2000s, the age of the boy band officially ended in 2009, when the four members of NLT hung up their fedoras to go on to bigger and better things. Kevin McHale, as you might know, has made a name for himself as Glee’s Artie, an uber-geek who whirls around in a wheelchair and generally melts hearts. After watching NLT’s three music videos — “Karma,” “That Girl” and “He Said, She Said (Time We Let Go)” — I’ve discovered McHale in a whole new light. Gone are the glasses, replaced by a badass stud in his left ear. The furthest thing from a nerdy Gleek, he is suave, sings in a sexy, effortless falsetto and dances all the time.
Of the 85,858 hits of “That Girl,” my roommate and I make up about 80,000 of them. Predictably, our NLT craze has angered others, who insist that there is better music to enjoy.
How can I explain it? Maybe it’s the boy band lapse of almost a decade that has awakened the fangirl dormant for years inside me. Maybe it’s Travis’s alluring mole, or JJ’s flashing white smile that appears one minute and nineteen seconds into “That Girl.” Maybe it’s simply the revamping of the boy band that makes NLT so appealing. No longer hindered by the gaudy ’90s garb that defined groups of the previous decade, NLT pulls off a look that is monochrome and stylish to boot. Not to mention their collective gorgeousness.
Whatever the reason, I’ve found myself craving their music like I would a late-night scoop of Ben and Jerry’s. Not only are the songs catchy, but the NLT boys’ voices are of a pleasing and high caliber. The crooning, the falsetto and the frequent glottals are too sweet to resist.
And while the boys undoubtedly bring something new to the table, their appreciation of the past is duly noted. “What goes around comes around,” they belt out about two minutes into “Karma,” their own personal shout-out to Justin Timberlake, and then later to Cassie — “no more me and you, me and you.”
Male friends of mine maintain that the members of NLT are sissies. To me, they’re the very essence of masculinity. Assured of their talents and looks, they command attention with every move, yet they don’t come off as arrogant. This subtle self-confidence is cleverly punctuated in the plot of “That Girl,” in which a group of jealous jocks tries to sabotage the boys’ takeover of a lame school dance. When the jocks open the gymnasium floor to reveal the pool, à la It’s a Wonderful Life, the soaking wet and even sexier NLT boys keep singing and dancing, causing scores of girls to jump into the pool with them. They know how to contend with jealous alpha males, to be sure, and how can any girl resist that confidence?
“She Said, I Said (Time We Let Go)” is a slower, more emotional song, and it showcases the sensual side of the group’s repertoire. “Karma,” a more fast-paced track, takes place at a music video shoot. Near the end, several dozen fangirls raid the shoot, brandishing colorful signs proclaiming their love.
Other than a low-budget t-shirt you can order online, a smattering of tour videos and several clips of randomness on YouTube, the band’s short-lived glory has become sadly apparent to me. For the majority of its existence, NLT flew under the radar. Since the success of Glee, however, people are becoming more aware. Comments on their Vevo videos now read something like, “Hey, isn’t that Artie from Glee???” The implications of Kevin McHale’s Glee success have had me hoping he’ll get back together with his old NLT cohorts. In reality, he’s probably under contract for five more seasons. I guess I’ll have to hope for a miraculous recovery on Artie’s part so that maybe, just maybe, Kevin can relive the dancing of his boy band days. For now I’ll just have to settle for the shortest playlist ever.