Boy/Girl Bands and the Billion Songs gravity always lay. Mind you, Kelly Rowland was no slouch either: her 2002 duet with Nelly, Dilemma, easily cleared the billion stream mark. She, too, graduated from the Destiny s Child academy with a heavy hitting degree. The Paradox of the '90s In the previous chapter, we left a question hanging: can an arti cial construction produce something genuine? The '90s answer with an unequivocal yes. The Backstreet Boys were engineered by a manager with a corporate business blueprint. The Spice Girls were born out of a classi ed ad in a newspaper. *NSYNC was manufactured to mimic the success of a rival group. Destiny s Child was steered by a manager father with a direct nancial stake in his daughter's output. And yet, I Want It That Way, Wannabe, Bye Bye Bye, No Scrubs, and Say My Name all sit proudly in the Billions Club. Billions of human beings have listened to them, listen to them right now, and will look them up tomorrow. Not because they were "authentic" in some romantic, organic sense, but because they achieved the only authenticity that matters in pop music: immediate emotionalconnection. The melody that pierces through. The chorus that refuses to leave. Industrial manufacturing isn t the enemy of emotion; it is, in its 26