One of the best parts of working in the music business is watching an act break out from the pack, bypassing hundreds, or even thousands, of wanna-bes–some just as talented, others not so much, and emerge as STARS!
And likely as not, the target is the fickle “youth market.”
Just as New Kids On The Block embodied the explosive life force of their generation in 1988’s “You Got It (The Right Stuff)” (vocals by Jordan Knight and Donnie Wahlberg), today’s younger generation is embracing “Youngblood” by Australian top 40 band 5 Seconds of Summer. It’s a bona fide top 40 top 10 hit.
Grittier than New Kids, “Youngblood” has the beat, the emotion and the energy of youth.
What the song is about is secondary to the whole immersion, but, for the record, the story-line is they are breaking up, he’s miserable and probably drunk, so it’s a rant about her and them and ….
Nearly three years ago Boomer Music Update highlighted 5 Seconds of Summer’s “Hey Everybody” and in April their most recent track “Want You Back.” Neither of those songs reached anywhere near the popularity of “Youngblood.”
A word about the video: arbiters of pop culture frequently point to the Japanese hipster as the ne plus ultra of modern cool, and this video can confirm that that is true: It makes you want to be young, or go to Japan, or both.