O-Town

It's finally come to this. The manufacturing of teen pop has reached its nadir with O-Town, a quintet of squeaky-clean boys pulled from a thousand hopefuls whose struggles were detailed, step by step, on Making the Band. Stuffing both reality TV and boy band marketing down the throats of viewers, the limited-run series weeded out a bunch of contenders, through sweat and tears (lots of the latter), to give listeners Ashley, Dan, Erik, Jacob, and Trevor: O-Town! And on their flaccid self-titled debut, the fivesome go through the motions directed to them by a squad of industry moneymakers. To say there isn't an ounce of sincerity to be found within the 12 songs here is pretty much taken for granted. That the entire project whiffs of cynicism is inexcusable.