Who is boys to men

All told, the record reached nine million copies sold, making it certified platinum nine times over. The songs dominated proms and weddings everywhere — the slow dances, the dancey dances, all of it. Its energy is high, but its budget is low. Crooked hats and oversize sweatshirts abound. The song is somehow utterly of its time and oddly out of step with it. Rap-star tweens Another Bad Creation show up a little later, their hair still bleached blond from their part in the Robert Townsend superhero comedy The Meteor Man.

And on and on. Boyz II Men get the most screen time, leading the video to its jubilant final chorus. Best-laid plans. When Cooleyhighharmony dropped, Michael Bivins, aspiring mogul, was Morris was After the speech, it was hugs all around. Till then, only Elvis and the Beatles had achieved back-to-back number ones on the Billboard Hot in the rock era.

Total record sales can be difficult to confirm, but II has sold something like 12 million copies in the U. For a lot of young, world-conquering acts, this part of the story is where you find the wild years, full of youthful indiscretions, incidents and controversies.

But Boyz II Men were a little too tightly managed and well-behaved for that sort of thing. Nobody tore up a hotel room. Nobody had a meltdown on an airplane. I mean, we were just taught different, man. Besides, that sort of stuff would clash with their image and their work ethic. The Boyz II Men kids always kept it classy. We always wanted to impress our parents. We were on Motown, so we knew the classic songs and the artists, where they come from and what they did.

We just tried to emulate who they were. We had done all we had done by the age of 25, It was a good thing and a bad thing. We just wanted to be the best we could at what we did. Its video was all flashy moves and outdoor party scenes. The song enjoyed a brief if unspectacular life on the radio, then faded. Considine wrote in the Baltimore Sun. After this, the group took a more hands-on approach to their creative output. Several of these groups even cited Boyz II Men as an inspiration.

Select personalised ads. Apply market research to generate audience insights. Measure content performance. Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. Table of Contents Expand. Early Career. Commercial Breakthrough. Popular Songs. Popular Albums. Mark Edward Nero. Mark Edward Nero is an expert on the soul, gospel, and rhythm and blues music genres who interviewed dozens of artists and appeared in documentaries. Updated March 08, Featured Video.

The Top 10 Pop Songs of the Year Mariah Carey's 18 Number-One Hits. Your Privacy Rights. To change or withdraw your consent choices for LiveAbout. In fact, their four-part harmonies blended so smoothly that most of the general public would be hard-pressed to name any of the group's individual members. Founding members Nathan Morris and Marc Nelson had been singing together for several years, but had trouble keeping a group together simply due to members graduating.

Calling themselves Unique Attraction , the quintet performed a well-received Valentine's Day show for their school and developed a repertoire that leaned heavily on New Edition songs one of which, "Boys to Men," gave them their name.

Their big break came in , when they snuck backstage at a Bell Biv DeVoe concert and wowed group member Michael Bivins also formerly of New Edition , and a budding music entrepreneur with an a cappella version of New Edition 's "Can You Stand the Rain. The tragedy notwithstanding, Boyz II Men had had an extremely auspicious beginning to their career.

Still, nothing could have foreshadowed the group's Midas touch over the next few years. The first single, "I'll Make Love to You" also penned by Babyface , raced up the charts and wound up tying Houston 's short-lived record, with 14 weeks of its own at number one -- a staggering feat in itself, made all the more amazing by the fact that the group had already set the record once.

Moreover, the follow-up single, "On Bended Knee," actually replaced "I'll Make Love to You" at number one for a six-week run of its own; only Elvis and the Beatles had ever replaced themselves at number one. Boyz II Men spent much of touring the U. Over the group's objections, Motown released a piece of cash-in product titled The Remix Collection in late ; in retaliation, Boyz signed a distribution deal with Sony, not Motown, for their new vanity label, Stonecreek. It was the beginning of a souring relationship that only worsened upon the release of Boyz II Men 's next album, Evolution , in The record started out strong, debuting at number one and sending "4 Seasons of Loneliness" to the same position on the singles charts; its Top Ten follow-up, "A Song for Mama," gave Boyz II Men their record-setting seventh platinum single.

However, Motown was unable to throw its full promotional muscle behind the record perhaps because of their transition to a new label president , meaning that Evolution didn't have the shelf life of II , selling only two million copies.

The group was also forced to postpone parts of their supporting tour when Wanya Morris developed a benign polyp on his vocal cords. He recovered fully, though, and in early , amid major record company mergers, the group had their contract transferred from Motown to Universal.