The music industry is no stranger to odd or unusual groups, with the history of recorded music being full of surprising novelty acts that suddenly find themselves topping the charts. And right now, a totally fictional band is topping the viral music charts, showing that you don’t need to exist to be a smash hit.
According to Spotify’s Viral 50 chart: “Nobody Like You,” by 4*TOWN is the second most viral hit in America, sitting just behind “Tom’s Diner,” by AnnenMayKantereit and Giant Rooks. However, what sets 4*TOWN apart from other bands is that they don’t exist.
Most listeners will know 4*TOWN as the band from the smash-hit movie Turning Red. In the film, 13-year-old protagonist Mei Lee and her friends Miriam, Priya, and Abby are massive fans of the fictional group. And attending a concert held by the band is a critical plot point. The band, which comprises members Robaire, Jesse, Aaron Z., Aaron T., and Tae Young, is obviously inspired by late-90s and early-2000s pop bands like NSYNC, and boasts three main hits; “Nobody Like You,” “1 True Love,” and “U Know What’s Up.”
Disney has gone all-in on the band, even giving them their own in-universe website, which presents visitors with some fun facts about the boys, including the fact that Jesse was pursuing a degree in ceramics before he reached musical stardom.
In our world, 4*TOWN is voiced by Jordan Fisher, Finneas O’Connell, Josh Levi, Topher Ngo, and Grayson Villanueva. Their three songs were written by Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell, which explains why this fictional band has produced a hit that is supremely catchy in its own right.
In an interview with Slate, Domee Shi, Turning Red’s director and co-writer, talked more about the fictional band and how she believed it was critical to respect the concept of teenage girls’ boy-band fandom. She said:
“Boy bands are often kind of ridiculed in media—as a lot of things that teen girls like are—but when you’re that age, boy bands are our gateway into the opposite sex. Into boys, into relationships, into the concepts of love and dating and heartbreak. And it’s all done in this safe, pretty, well-dressed package. It’s a coming of age for a lot of girls to obsess over their first boy band.”
Who knows what is next for the fictional band. Disney is no stranger to managing boy bands, or the idea of cinematic universes. In fact, Disney has previously had fictional bands perform in their theme parks, even making a sci-fi rock band specifically for the park in the early 1980s. So it isn’t out of the question that 4*TOWN may jump from the screen to the real world.
Turning Red is available now via Disney Plus.