This is flashback, we’re here to recall some of the most iconic and humblest moments in alternative rock history.This week, we’re looking at beloved Australian boy band 5 Seconds of Summer’s cheeky cover of a Katy Perry song ““Teenage Dreams” sang to screaming fans at the 2014 Summer Ball.
Let’s go back to the 2010s. In the music industry, we are experiencing a post-internet generation ripple effect across genres. The worlds of sound, media, content, accessibility, and style are both old and new—the cyclical nature of trends hitting pop music and its subgenres hard. The “boy band” is back. But the bands weren’t exactly echoes of Lou Perlman’s O-Town, these new bands were driven and aggressive, fueled less by dance performances and more by reality TV competitions and emerging social media platforms where their vocal performances were noticed and supported.
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By 2014, Australian band 5 Seconds of Summer shrugged off the term “boy band”, preferring to remain genre-free and label-free when it comes to the term, new to the field but already known to the world through their popular YouTube channel. While their predominantly female audience may readily accept the idea of them as a traditional “boy band,” the group’s tone and style have never been traditional—between original lyricism, emotiveness, and pop-punk inspirations such as Good Charlotte, My Chemical Romance, and Knock Down Boys, the band has long since distinguished itself from their more polished brethren.
However, that being said, they’re trying to say no to it all being a “boy band”. Their fanbase has always felt more like the Backstreet Boys than fans anchored in alternative spaces.After moving from the computer screens to the festival circuit, where they achieved incredible success, it was clear that there was something special about this band, especially their live performances and the response they evoked, which eventually led to the release of their live album Live South. A tongue-in-cheek cover of pop diva Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream,” the album pays tongue-in-cheek homage to the boy band and pop phenomenon they may or may not have become, as well as the large female fanbase they’ve won and those in skinny jeans and Ringer T-shirts. This is the crossover we never knew we needed, and it still works today. Check out their live performance of the song below.
