1991 Color Me Badd: I Wanna Sex You Up

Not the first boy band by any stretch, but in 'I Wanna Sex You Up' I can hear the origins of a certain breed of boy band that would pervade the nineties charts like knotweed. Like the recently deposed New Kids On The Block, Color Me Badd take their base sound from the street, but instead of stressing the macho posture in a radio friendly way, the sound is locked to a soulful loverman groove that would soon become ten-a-penny under cover of a newly defined R&B genre. And a groove is really all there is to this, a set of dodgy promises ("Just lay back, and enjoy the ride", "Let me light a candle so we can make it better, makin' love until we drown") that trundle along like bad foreplay waiting for a climax that never comes. 'I Wanna Sex You Up' is a one note pony of flat, would-be sensuality with a title whose constant repetition brings it close to harassment - guys, if it takes this much persuading then she's probably not interested. And even if she was, she's probably fallen asleep by now.