Tag Archives: boyzone

Momentous Mondays: Most Influential Artists Of All Time – Honourable Mentions Pt. 2

Last week, I made the plunge and started writing about the artists who didn’t make the cut in our list of 100 names or artists who both Jon and I deem to be influential across all time. Sure, I could’ve not written about any honourable mentions, and kept it at ‘this is my 100, deal with it’. But with more than 100 other names missing out, I felt as if I would be doing a disservice to talented singers and performers and entertainers by not talking about them at all. I spoke about Kanye West and how he was a rapper that I could have talked about but didn’t because of personal convictions. I wrote about how Jesus Is King, Donda and Donda 2 took the world by storm, and I also briefly discussed how Kendrick Lamar has followed in Kanye’s footsteps. I wrote about Kirk Franklin- the ‘father’ of gospel music, as well as AC/DC: the Aussie rock band who really probably should have been included here (I mean- “Highway To Hell”, “Back In Black”, “You Shook Me All Night Long”… need I say more?) I lamented the fact that Larry Norman and Petra weren’t included, and I also spoke about their impact on Christian rock. And I glossed over a few artists that just didn’t fit for one reason or another- Huey Lewis & The News, Jeff Buckley, INXS, Duran Duran, Journey, Green Day and Panic! At The Disco. There were tons and tons of artists I wrote about last week, trying to make sense of why they are influential but why I didn’t write about them (or why Jon didn’t write about them); and I managed to do that, although to a lesser degree than probably was needed or required, for the genres of rap, rock, gospel, and R&B. As well as Steps- who are pop but are a disco/dance kind of pop like ABBA or Kylie Minogue. And so, this week… we’re not done. Not by a long shot. The pop artists, the boybands, the country artists and so much more; are all waiting for us in the next paragraph and beyond. So, as we now take the next part of the journey and discover which bands could have been present on this list on another day and in another time; let’s remember that music is subjective, and that if you disagree with my somewhat arbitrary and otherwise subjective choices- then that’s more than fine!

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MOMENTOUS MONDAYS: INFLUENTIAL ARTISTS OF ALL TIME – WEEK 14: RONAN KEATING

Can I be very candid and honest? I was never a big fan, if a fan at all, of boy bands. Sure I’d know about them from time to time, and more recently there was this wee little band called One Direction (and yes, I will discuss this influential band in length in another post dedicated to them!); but as a whole, boy bands weren’t at all that impacting to me when I was younger. Even now, they aren’t necessarily the most sought-out ‘genre’ of music that I’d listen to from the word ‘go’. Nevertheless, boy bands have shaped and moulded music and society as we know it- from Boyz II Men, Take That, Backstreet Boys, NSYNC and Westlife, to Jonas Brothers, Jackson 5, Boyzone and One Direction; boy bands have been sprouting up throughout music history aplenty, and thus, it is no wonder that one such artist from my list of 100 would be of the boy-band variety. And so for me to prepare for this blog post, I was a little unprepared throughout the week, and even now, I’m trying to find the words to say about this artist- words that will do them justice and respect the amount of success they’ve had since being a part of their former boy-band group. For me, this ‘genre’ of music is as much needed in society as it was back then- but when music for lack of a better term, is consumed at a faster rate as years go by; boy bands can sometimes fly under the radar to become the ‘forgotten’ ‘genre’ of music. This week’s discussion leads from the front with singer-songwriter Ronan Keating; an Irish singer who was one of the founding members of boy-band BoyZone, a popular Irish group in the 1990s. With around 10 albums under his belt, Ronan has solidified himself as one such artist, whom has successfully broken off from their former boy-band group, to have a relatively successful career as a solo artist- other artists to achieve such a feat include Robbie Williams (of Take That), Michael Jackson (of The Jackson 5), Ricky Martin (of Menudo) and Justin Timberlake (of NSYNC), to name a few.

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