Love Me For A Reason: An Auto-ethnographic Account of Boyzone Fandom

Abstract

Fan scholars such as Matt Hills have argued that fannish interests can become relevant and irrelevant at different times during a fan’s life. Combining insights from popular music and fan studies, in this article we use an auto-ethnographic approach to examine our changing levels of interest in Boyzone. Both of us encountered the Irish boy band at different times in our lives, and both of us experienced our fandom in different ways. In relation to the band’s fandom, Boyzone’s music can be considered a technology of “self” (DeNora 2000): a vehicle that people use to work through their biographies by recalling particular emotions and memories. We theorize this engagement with our fan object both by considering Cornel Sandvoss’ notion that media fandom is a partial extension of the teenage self, and Rebecca William’s concept of post-object fandom. Using our two experiences as a case study, we show how dormant music fandom can develop in different ways for fans in different circumstances. Keywords: music fandom, boy bands, Boyzone, post-object fandom, post-youth