When boy-banders go solo: from Michael Jackson to Harry Styles to BTS’s J-Hope

nypost.com:

the “Butter” boy band. And just to prove that he’s gone from bubblegum to badass, he even drops the F-bomb on on the album-closing “Arson,” of which the fiery video also arrived Friday.“I burned it all/And I wanted it all,” J-Hope raps over an eerie, almost sinister undercurrent.Clearly, with the harder hitting hip-hop of “Jack in the Box” — which finds J-Hope switching between English and Korean — he wants to torch his old BTS image.But the track that perhaps has the biggest hit potential, “= (Equal Sign),” returns J-Hope to poppier territory, delivering a “come together” message with echoes of the Black Eyed Peas and Justin Timberlake hit “Where Is the Love?” Although J-Hope will be making history as the first South Korean artist to headline a major US festival when he rocks Lollapalooza on July 31, the jury is still out on whether he will be able to pull a Timberlake and become a solo superstar.Here, we look back on the hits (Harry Styles) and misses (Nick Carter) when boy-banders have gone solo.MJ set the template for going from a boy band to a solo idol when he left behind his brothers in the Jackson 5 and ascended to the King of Pop throne with the back-to-back blockbusters of 1979’s “Off the Wall,” 1982’s “Thriller” and 1987’s “Bad.” And even though child-molestation allegations before and after his 2009 death have tarnished his legacy, nobody has ever ruled the music world like he once did.The former One Direction heartthrob still sings the group’s biggest hit, “What Makes You Beautiful,” in his concerts.

But after winning a Grammy for his first No. 1 single, 2020’s “Watermelon Sugar,” and now topping the charts — for the ninth week and counting — with “As It Was,” he’s a one-man phenom headlining 15(!) shows at.