Gordy, formerly an assembly line worker at Ford’s factory in Detroit, where his famed Hitsville U.S.A., home of Motown Records, was headquartered, took what he learned in the warehouse and applied it to the music business. They performed hits still beloved today-such as “I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch)” by the Four Tops and “My Girl” by the Temptations-and they did so by abiding by Motown creator Berry Gordy’s opaque factory system, the very same that boy band masterminds would imitate in the ’80s, ’90s, ’00s, and beyond. Instead, they’re viewed as artists with a swoon-worthy energy that registers more like straight-up romance than youthful crushing.

On paper, much of what these Motown groups did screamed “boy band” and, had the term existed at the time, they probably would’ve been branded that way by the press. Motown not only proved that white audiences would listen to, love, and collaborate with black artists, the label also brought forth black vocal groups like the Jackson 5, the Four Tops, and the Temptations, whose infusion of R&B, soul, gospel, jazz, rock and roll, and pop delighted audiences nationwide beyond groups of young women. And contrary to the contemporary image of these harmonizing hunks, they were people of color. In the midst of the ’60s and ’70s, the Beatles’ desire to hold some hands, the Bay City Rollers’ jeers for S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y night, and a celebration of African American music like R&B and soul in the mainstream by a white teenage generation more tolerant than their parents, a new era of boy bands was being built. From Motown to Menudo: Black and Brown People Invented the Modern Boy BandĪs previously alluded, the modern boy band - defined as a group of young men singing melodiously and dancing together - did not begin in the ’80s when Boston brats New Kids on the Block stormed onto boomboxes and Walkmen everywhere, hangin’ tough.

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