British Boy Band JLS Announce Split: It’s The End Of An Era

It’s a day of mourning on the other side of the pond: The often-great, occasionally-embarrassing, but generally-quite-likable boy band JLS (one of our best UK boy bands of the last quarter-century!) have split up after five years, four albums and a host of hit singles.

In an official statement on the band’s Facebook page, they wrote: “We wanted to make sure that you heard it from the four of us, that we have decided to bring our time as a band to an end… We will always remain brothers and friends and we will always be your boys.” 

As a final farewell, the band will be releasing a Greatest Hits album and a last tour, called — this is a little bleak — Goodbye: The Greatest Hits tour. (Something about calling a tour “Goodbye” just feels a little dark.)

Formed on the UK version of The X Factor in 2008 (just like a few other boy bands you might know), the group sold more than six million records and won two BRIT awards, as well as notching five #1 singles. They were — like so many other boy bands before them — tipped for a United States launch, but their debut LP (released in 2010 as a six-track EP) failed to chart here, and in their native UK, their luster started to fade as the singles began to feel a little same-y and didn’t perform as well on the charts. JLS were a faultlessly conventional boy band, goofy choreography and all, which made them both wonderful, but also resistant to evolving even as groups like One Direction and The Wanted came to overtake their throne.

Ah, well. As The Telegraph notes, without JLS there would be no One Direction, so at least there’s still that’s something to cling to in these dark, turbulent waters.

Take a trip down memory lane with the ingeniously amazing “Beat Again.”

JLS – Beat Again (NEW) by elpolemico

[via BBC]