/Comebacks: Marketing Ploy, or Genuine Musical Rebirth?

Comebacks: Marketing Ploy, or Genuine Musical Rebirth?

 These past few years have seen some pretty amazing events. The United States of America have elected their first black president. We have all started to take initiative in terms of becoming a greener planet. We have seen terrible wars, but we’ve also seen amazing triumphs over adversity. But does any of this compare when the Spice Girls got back together for an epic tour? Or Britney got her act back together? Madonna overcame the hurdle of age and the New Kids on the Block released a new single!

These past two years or so, have become the years of the comebacks. So many artists are seeing the value in the revival of a once popular act, and are using their once famous name to procure together a fantastic new tour, with a album and terribly expensive seats towards every show. Is this just a brilliant marketing plan, or is there geniuine want to tour again with a band?

From this terribly cynical point of view: it’s all a marketing plan. Am incredibly smart one at that.

Everyone knows the usual storyline of the pop group. They start out with a huge success on a single and hopefully then gain forward moving momentum within the music industry. An album a year, a huge group of screaming fan girls and ridiculous requests are then made upon their touring requirements. After awhile, all the shiny and glossy after effects wear off and the band begins to fight, and ultimately break up. After this event of course, about 90% of the band members blur away into obscurity, unless of course you’re either Justin Timberlake or Robbie Williams (the latter of which seems to be slowly fading away regardless)

For awhile there, the music industry had next to pop groups. The world was overrun with the pop-punk craze that had taken over for awhile, and there was a sudden influx of hip-hop and r’n’b singers. There was an interesting diversity beginning to permeate through the mainstream, with Slipknot suddenly gaining a huge fan base over night and the usual affair of the music industry seemed to not be controlled whatsoever.

Then some genius (probably Simon Fuller, the man runs the world), came up with the idea for a reunion tour. The Spice Girls announced that they would undertake a tour and the whole world exploded with the news. The Spice Girls ran the shop for several years, selling millions upon millions of albums, becoming icons for girl power and general female leadership. With the news that they would return to the stage in an all out affair, including good old Ginger Spice, tickets were snapped up in the millions through a very clever balloting system that not only gave fair ticket choice to fans – but gave the music industry the important demographic information that they required to see if this plan was really going to work.

And like hell it did. These tickets were the Golden Ticket to Willy Wonka’s Factory, and every boy and girl across the world became Charlie Bucket.

From this point on, defunct pop bands from the 80s and 90s started reforming and producing singles all over the place. The world was hit with a sudden wave of nostalgia and found themselves sitting amongst a bevy of old popstars pushing their way back into the industry.

This is quite easy to see as a marketing standpoint. With the buzz created by the spice girls reunion; the press, the tickets, the transcending of generations, it all seemed to work together in a perfect meld that put the Spice Girls back onto people’s lips, and pop music back into the market.

Since these amazing advances into gaining pop back into the industry, people such as Girls Aloud, The Saturdays, Sugababes and many others have made advances on their career, and brought back that sugary pop flavour that we were all missing as part of our daily diet.