98 Degrees turns up the heat in love tunes
JAKARTA (JP): Boybands will be boybands.
Before the show they always say they will play different beats but during the concerts they sing and act out love songs -- some original and others borrowed from great singers.
That was the case with New Kids On The Block, Boyzone, Code Red and Michael Learns To Rock, which have performed here.
And now teenyboppers will have the chance to enjoy the show of another boyband, 98 Degrees, which will perform on Wednesday evening at the Fashion Cafe.
Ohio boys Nick and Drew Lachy, Justin Jeffre and Jeff Timmons will sing songs from their latest album, 98 Degrees And Rising, including the soundtrack from Disney's Mulan, True To Your Heart, which features Stevie Wonder.
Jeff, 25, told reporters here on Monday that the band did not consider itself a boyband.
"We are not boys, you know," he said.
This may have been apparent in their singing, but not otherwise.
True, they did work odd jobs, from landscaping to delivering Chinese food to doing security work at night clubs, but almost all boybands have their own sad stories; something that does not necessarily convert naiveties into professional singers.
When asked about what they thought of the Indonesian market, Nick, 24, answered that the first time they came down here, they felt that the response was "enormous".
"You won't believe the amount of fans that jumped on us. We definitely have a great market in this country," Nick said.
They think the world of Stevie Wonder, whom they performed with on NBC's The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, and Boyz To Men, and they want to be professional singers like them, but have yet to hire a vocal coach for training.
Nevertheless, as Justin said, the band does have the presence of mind not to sing songs they do not understand.
"We cannot express ourselves if we don't understand them. When we write songs, we draw from experiences and for songs we didn't write, we choose those we can relate to," Justin told The Jakarta Post.
"When it comes to singing, you shouldn't try to sing about something that you don't understand and you haven't been through. That's how I feel."
This is the group's second promo-visit to Jakarta since their first in March.
Their first album 98 Degrees sold about 50,000 copies in Canada and the Philippines. In their home country, they received only a gold award from the recording company Motown Productions, which indicated that the album sold only some 20,000 copies.
Following the lukewarm response to their first album, they decided to come up with a second one which seems to carry richer sounds, despite banal lyrics. Drew and Justin's baritone voices add depth to and compliment the voices of lead vocalists Jeff and Nick.
Arrangement of their music for this album is said to be a mesh of works by topnotch music arrangers. Songs include the hit Invisible Man from their first album and the cover version of Michael Jackson's She's Out Of My Life. (ylt)