They’re not the originals, not even the greatest, and by now they’re no longer news to anyone, but since the boys of New Edition entered my life, they’ve quickly run up my list of favorite acts.
I don’t know what it is about those five boys that stuck with me in the mid-1980s, but their food-themed love songs and bouncy bass lines have been jumping around in my head since I first became acquainted with “Cool It Now.”
It all started this spring, which, I know is shamefully late in life to fall so deeply in love with a group that dropped its original lineup before I was born.
My thoughts were already on music as I was about to attend the Coachella Music Festival, and suddenly floating softly from laptop speakers, I heard it: Ralph Tresvant’s high, almost feminine voice over synthesizers, thick enough to be stolen from Zapp and Roger. And the harmonies! Later I would find out that this was New Edition, which meant that one of those voices in the background belonged to Bobby Brown, and I would become shocked. At that moment, it was just some of the funkiest pop music I’d heard in a long time. I wanted more.
My love for New Edition is still relatively new, and as such I haven’t gotten into all of the material from their numerous reunions and reformations, but I’ve explored enough to find some of the best, most absurdly sweet pop music ever created.
There’s just something about its slightly antiquated lyrics, Tresvant’s occasionally straining voice and its generally lacking rapping abilities that make the boys in New Edition irresistible. Even the postured naiveté of “Mr. Telephone Man” is too charming to turn down. Even as I write this I can hear the striking similarities between “My Secret” and “Cool It Now” and even the Jackson Five’s “I Want You Back,” but you know what? It doesn’t matter. They may as well simply clone songs like these, because I will never tire of them.
The boys are not the Jacksons, and Ralph Tresvant surely isn’t a Michael Jackson, anymore than Bobby Brown is a Jermaine, or even a Tito, but New Edition worked it out when they were on. They made their mark as the arguable beginning of a wave of boy bands that carried through the end of the 20th century, practicing a style of pop that is re-emerging as popular music as we speak.
And now, just as the world is more ready to receive them than ever before, rumor has it they’re working on new material and touring next year. We, the fans, can only hope that they don’t attempt “Mr. Cell Phone Man” and instead stick to the boyish glee that sold the world on the faces of New Edition when they first hit the shops.
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