Ahh, Mercury4. I remember you. I was in year 3, fully into my “I hate boys” phase and I quite resented you because you were a bunch of pretty boys singing about getting my love whether I like it or not (their first single called “Get Me Some”).
My local commercial radio station still plays “Every Little Step” to keep their up their Australian music quota, but until the other day, I had forgotten that this song was actually sung by an Australian boy band.
They basically sounded like Blue and Five which explains my confusion for most of my life because for a large portion of it I though all tree boy bands were the same one band.
Mercury4′s singles weren’t very bad at all sound wise; the harmonies were catchy and for a bunch of guys from Melbourne they had “the sound” for the time (American).
They had one album, were all over the place briefly and simply just disintegrated and were never spoken of ever again.
BMG merged with Sony Music and therefor dropped the band, which would explain their demise, but I’d have to say that 2004 was the end of boy bands.
Sure, there were other boy bands that came along, but not even The Jonas Brothers (2005) got that much of a following. Sure, some success but not groundbreaking.
It wasn’t until One Direction spurted up that the boy band craze took off again. They got to be the new Backstreet Boys and Justin Bieber got to be this generations Aaron Carter, after bringing back the solo boy craze.
I don’t know how, or why the boy band thing ebbs and flows so much throughout history, but I’d say exhausting the craze could be a reason. Fo every successful boy band, there were a million duplicates popping up with their hands on their hearts and harmonies sung high.
According to wikipedia: Kevin Layton missed out on entry into Australian Idol’s Top 24 in 2009, and Rien Low missed out on being in the “Over 25’s” category on Australian X-Factor in 2011 and unfortunately didn’t make it when he auditioned for season 2 of The Voice Australia.
Cole Rintoul has been acting since 1989, and seems to be doing quite well for himself.
As for Jarvier Perez and Brad Johnston, their online presence is a little hard for me to find (maybe I’m just not trying hard enough). Who knows where they are these days.
I hope their happy, where ever they are.
Here’s an interview I found with Rien from 2014: https://www.auspop.com.au/2014/07/tbt-interview-rien-low-mercury4/
