Introduction: Making Things Whole Again—The Take That Reunion
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[PMH 7.2 (2012) 117-120] Popular Music History (print) ISSN 1740-7133 doi:10.1558/pomh.v7i2.117 Popular Music History (online) ISSN 1743-1646 Tim Wise Introduction: making things whole again—the Take That reunion Tim Wise is senior lecturer in musicology and School of Arts and Media popular music at the University of Salford. He University of Salford studied music, English literature and linguistics Adelphi Building in his native Texas and received his PhD in music Peru Street, Salford M3 6EQ from the University of Liverpool. He is writing a UK book on the semiotics of yodelling in American [email protected] popular music. When Take That disbanded in 1996, they were nothing more than another boy band, a new genre in popular music and one clearly and unashamedly targeted at young teenage girls. Take That had been the most successful of such acts in Europe, but, their young fans notwithstanding, they lacked credibility with older audiences, and the entire genre they represented was typically mocked if not simply ignored by the serious music press. Fast forward to 2011: now they feature as the cover story of Q magazine, with a lengthy, thoughtful article and a positive review of their record Progress. How did such a transformation occur? The reunited Take That, indeed, can be regarded as Britain’s most successful popular music act of 2011, judging by two objective criteria: as a kind of harbin- ger, their album Progress had in 2010 been both the biggest and the fastest selling album in the UK; and, more spectacularly, the tour they mounted in the summer of 2011 was not simply the fastest-selling series of concerts to date, it was the largest concert event staged in British history. Such success is remarkable in itself, but that it should have been Take That to triumph in this way is unlikely to have been predicted by anyone in 1996. The Take That story, moreover, has had an element of drama. After their spec- tacular success in the 1990s, for example having eight singles enter the UK charts at number one, they broke up in 1996 at the peak of their career, one year after Robbie Williams had left the band. Williams, always perceived as the errant member, went on to remarkable achievements as a solo singer, while the career of his erstwhile band mate, Gary Barlow, who as the band’s songwriter was predicted to have been the more successful, unexpectedly faltered. Mark Owen also pursued a solo career, but with only modest success. Generally, aside from Williams, the other members © Equinox Publishing Ltd 2013, Unit S3, Kelham House, 3 Lancaster Street, Sheffield, S3 8AF. 118 Popular Music History appeared to be gradually fading into obscurity. However, a reunion in 2005 of four members, without Williams, proved surprisingly successful, with three sell-out tours. Take That were back, and the term ‘man band’ began to vie with boy band: that a boy band might mature had been unthinkable. When rumours of a reunion with Robbie Williams emerged, the excitement was palpable. The anticipation of the Take That reunion tour in 2011 was thus both a signifi- cant popular music event and a golden opportunity for scholars interested in pop- ular phenomena to examine such a phenomenon as it unfolded. This special issue of Popular Music History addressing the theme of Take That’s reunion arose out of a desire to respond on a scholarly level to the extraordinary interest their reunion provoked, the very high level of news coverage it generated, and the intriguing transition the group had made from teeny-bop boy band to wider acceptance and credibility. This response involved two components. First, journalist and popular music scholar Anja Löbert developed an exhibition focusing on Take That’s original fans in the 1990s. Underpinned by a large-scale survey of female fans participating in a global network of teenage girls who exchanged letters, amateur photos of the boys, so-called friendship books, and other devotional objects, that exhibition pre- sented, in addition to the results of the survey, numerous home-made artefacts donated by the fans themselves. Because of its ethnographic approach and socio- logical analysis, it provided a unique glimpse into an otherwise invisible teenage- girl-bedroom microculture that developed around Take That fandom. Informative and thought-provoking, and highlighting the creativity and ingenuity of its sub- jects, that exhibition went a long way towards countering some of the stereotyped ideas about female teenage fans that are still prevalent today. As a complement to the exhibition, I organized a conference at the University of Salford which thematized the idea of reunion as a perspective through which aspects of Take That’s career could be examined.1 Both the conference and the opening of the exhibition were timed to coincide with the beginning of Take That’s Progress Tour 2011 performances in Manchester. The essays in this collection grew out of some of the presentations made at that conference. 1. I did not anticipate the attention that this conference theme would provoke from the national press, which started as soon as the call for papers was published (e.g. The Sun, 1 Decem- ber 2011). Attracting such notice at least confirmed the extraordinary topicality of Take That, who fascinated many people throughout 2010–11. While delighted with the interest, I was struck by the irony of The Sun, which deals virtually only in popular and celebrity culture, disdainfully reporting the call for papers: pop figures such as Take That are their lifeblood, yet they suggested the investigation of popular phenomena by academics was a waste of time. Their dismissal of scholarly inquiry into that domain speaks volumes about their attitudes towards the values of their own readers. © Equinox Publishing Ltd 2013. Introduction 119 The idea of reunion itself is of specific historical interest. Reunion is a relatively recent concept in popular music discourse and appears to be an idea specific to it—the concept of reunion does not really exist in the same way in other forms of music. It certainly is not invested with the same kinds of meanings in connection with classical organizations, for example. If a symphony orchestra or string quartet disbands, audiences may be disappointed, but it appears those audiences neither despair nor yearn for a reformation in the way many popular music fans do, partly because pop music fandom involves much more personal affinity and identifica- tion with the musicians as individuals with whom imagined relationships may form: pop music fandom is often about much more than just an attraction to the sounds. No one cares much, I think, if the Julliard Quartet or the Hallé Orches- tra carry on with an entirely different set of members. But were The Beatles, for example, to reform with different personnel, it is doubtful whether they would mean much to fans of the original.2 Moreover, the idea of reunion makes sense only in relation to the concept of the band. And while that idea is very old in music, I think it is with the emergence of the band as a specific creative force, which arguably began with The Beatles, that the idea of reunion has gained greatest currency. Indeed, the breakup of that band in 1970 started a popular discourse about whether they would reunite, per- haps marking the emergence of this idea in modern popular music. The papers in this collection approach the subject from a variety of perspec- tives. Focusing specifically on the peculiarities of a number of recent boy/girl band breakups and reunions, Anja Löbert’s essay problematizes the idea of a formula for a successful reunion. Her comparative summary of other reunions in this genre illuminates a range of particular and probably unrepeatable contingencies that allowed Take That to succeed where others failed. Maryn Edwards offers an analysis of the reception of the Take That reunion from the perspective of media relations. Employing the concept of media framing, she argues that effective framing of information released to the mass media by an act’s media relations team can significantly control and delimit discussions played out in the press and other media outlets. Her points are illustrated in a media con- tent analysis of the two Take That reunions (2005 and 2010–11). Michaela Hilbert’s essay presents the results of a corpus-linguistic analysis of Take That’s song lyrics before and after their breakup and reunions. Her quali- tative and quantitative analysis of recurring terms in their lyrics, such as ‘love’, 2. Pre-rock band The Lettermen has reformed with entirely different members, and bands such as The Drifters carry on in various manifestations with regularly changing personnel; more- over, ex-members of illustrious groups have been known to reform as off-shoots, such as The Grandmothers. © Equinox Publishing Ltd 2013. 120 Popular Music History ‘you’ and ‘I’, reveals noteworthy trends in their use of prototypical popular music themes and unexpected possibilities for audience positioning and reception. In examining audience responses to Take That and other boy bands, Mark Duf- fett shifts the focus away from the stereotypical adoring fans to consider anti- fandom. Exploring the phenomenon of extreme antipathy towards certain pop music acts, his analysis of the content found in Facebook forums and in critical commentary of professional critics such as Paul Morley reveals four interlocking discourses which shape much of the critical, and especially the negative, reaction to boy bands such as Take That. A very different perspective comes from Tobias Nolte, who approaches our subject in psychoanalytical terms in his analysis of the psychological underpin- nings of fan reaction to the loss of an idealized object.