Menudo: Forever Young (2022)

Menudo was one of the boy bands that I only mention briefly in my (short) history of boy bands episode (Episode 36). The reason I glossed over of Menudo was mostly because that episode was the story of boy bands in the United States and Menudo were only a small blip on the radar here. They had no hit songs in America and made almost no impression on American culture. If mainstream America knows the name Menudo today, it’s only as a piece of trivia from Ricky Martin’s past.

The other reason I ended up glossing over Menudo was that there simply wasn’t a lot of good material available in English--which is itself a sign of how little impact Menudo left. 

The capsule version (if you haven’t listened to Episode 36) is that Menudo were formed in 1977 in Puerto Rico by Edgardo Diaz. Diaz had been managing a successful Spanish mixed-sex kids group called La Pandilla who had gotten to old to be a kids group. Essentially he seems to have wanted to duplicate their success but using only boys and building in a rotating member concept to make sure the group would be “forever young”. 

Menudo caused a sensation all over Latin America and then attempted to ride the early 1980s Latin wave into crossover success in the United States. It did not work. Diaz returns the group to focusing on markets in countries like Venezuela and they rode out a couple more peaks, as well as some very low, lows. Scandal after scandal follows Diaz and the group and the name “Menudo” eventually becomes too toxic to continue on.

When I was  writing the script for my history episode, the context I was working with came from articles like this one from Time magazine in 1983 in which the author lays out a pretty dispassionate assessment of their appeal: 

Menudo, the objects of all that adolescent yearning, are well-behaved puertorriqueños who sing in their native Spanish and play no instruments. The hundreds of thousands of U.S. fans typically are Hispanic junior high schoolers, like the heartthrobs themselves: five Puerto Rican boys, ages 13 to 15. And menudo, which means "small change" in Spanish, is not really a band or even, to use the '60s phrase, a combo. It is a clever marketing idea: the boys are mere employees of a promoter who replaces each one before he turns 16. "Menudo is a formula, and we must take care not to break it," says Edgardo Díaz, 31, Menudo's inventor and honcho, who manages to seem both cynical and ingenuous. "If we play it cool, I know, I feel, that Menudo will be successful around the world."

Diaz tried to hitch his group to the same wave that crossed over respected and still much loved acts like Los Lobos and Gloria Estefan even landing his boys a spot in the 1984 Grammy Awards broadcast, presenting a Grammy to the King of Pop Michael Jackson himself (foreshadowing another foreign boy band’s appearance on the broadcast in 2019).

But despite a strong push from the record company and a media excited to have a new teen idol craze to cover (the group appeared on popular mainstream shows like The Love Boat, Silver Spoons, and even Sesame Street), Menudo simply wasn’t able to establish themselves in the American market. 

I suspect the reason for the failure to launch was partially down to timing. I was a little kid in this era and the perfect audience for the kind of sugary pop music Menudo was making. Looking at back at videos like Menudo performing “Gimme Rock” at the 1984 Thanksgiving Day Parade there’s no reason for me not to have been spinning this ‘45 on my Strawberry Shortcake record player except that the pop charts were filled with better songs that filled that same need for sugary kids pop music. I was listening to songs like the Culture Club’s “Karma Chameleon”, Prince and the Revolution “Let’s Go Crazy”, and my true jam: Ray Parker Jr.’s “Ghostbusters.” (I ain’t afraid of no ghost!)

But even if the charts had been a wasteland for pop music, Menudo were received primarily as teen idols, not pop artists, and when the teen hysteria moved onto the next thing Menudo was left without an audience.

They weren’t even a one hit wonder. They’d been a wonder without a hit.

Anyway, having been frustrated about the relative lack of information on Menudo in English during my research meant that when I was tipped off to the fact that there was a four part mini-series about the group on HBOMax titled Menudo: Forever Young (thank you to Inkoo Kang) I made it my top priority to watch it. I was not disappointed. Quite the opposite, actually. I was deeply moved.

The documentary from Angel Manuel Soto and Kristofer Ríos is incredible.

The first two parts give the context for the group’s formation in Puerto Rico and rise to popularity throughout Latin America and then the second two parts delve into the tragedy and abuse that was happening. I really liked that it was framed this way because the first two parts really give you a chance to get to know the members as people and to experience something of the excitement and hysteria surrounding the group. Then when the shit hits the fan and it all starts to fall apart, because we know these men as people, we’re not just gawking at a decontexualized catalog of scandal. It’s less voyeurism than bearing witness to the abuse that these men went through. You can feel the pain that some of the former members still carry through the screen and it’s absolutely heartbreaking.

I highly recommend the documentary for anybody with even a passing interest in boy bands. Much of the documentary is narrated by the former members themselves and I was absolutely captivated by their stories. Because so much of the narrative of boy bands is dominated by the fans (far more than today than ever before) that candid documentaries like this (and like Lance Bass’s The Boy Band Con) are a welcome and much needed counterweight.

One of the moments that really stood out to me was Johnny Lozada taking us through what it was like to perform at the stadium in Mexico City. Watch my eyes in the footage, he says, I’m mapping out where the exits were. The documentary doesn’t explicitly go into it but three people died at the Mexico City concert in 1983 and many more were injured from crowd crush.

Imagine being a young teen boy at the center of that barely controlled hysteria.

Another anecdote that struck me was the concert in El Salvador in 1982 that brought the civil war in the county to a temporary cease fire. The members remember goofing off with their security detail of young men just a few years older than they were and then being shocked to hear that those same young men would be returning to the front lines as soon as Menudo had left the country. They were so isolated in their Menudo bubble that they hadn’t realized the situation they were flying into.

There were so many stories I hadn’t heard before, some of which, sadly, echo the stories of other young men from other boy bands. Sexual abuse, drugs, stolen money, stolen youth… as fans, we tend to only want to remember the shiny happy boys in sparkly outfits but I think that especially as fans we need to understand what these boys went through to bring us that joy. 

One of the other things I really appreciated from Angel Manuel Soto and Kristofer Ríos was the inclusion of people like the record executive who worked to try to crossover Menudo in America, the journalist who tried to blow the whistle on Edgaro Diaz in the 1990s, and the Latino academics who were all able to give some real context and background information to the stories the former members were narrating. (Although the dud of a boy band “expert” contributed nothing and should really have been cut.)

Menudo: Forever Young is really a wonderful documentary and I hope many, many boy band fans out there watch it and then go back and re-discover Menudo. Maybe we can even get a few Menudo Reunion tour dates here in America. Menudo for the next NKOTB Mix Tape Tour? I’m ready!