RBD

There may be little that is musically authentic about RBD, a prefabricated pop/rock act that was initiated on television, yet the group of Mexican teens achieved astounding commercial success, quickly becoming a multilingual pop culture juggernaut whose market impact stretched from Brazil to the United States. The group is comprised of six youths, three of them boys, three girls -- Alfonso Herrera, Christian Chávez, Dulce María, Maite Perroni, Christopher Uckermann, and Anahí Portilla -- all of them telegenic, able actors, and physically fit to perfection, each with a uniquely fashionable look. They're like a supergroup comprised of both Spice Girls and Backstreet Boys -- manufactured for optimal appeal, no doubt, and forcefully marketed across a range of entertainment mediums, television above all. In fact, music came second for the group, who began as the cast of a prime-time telenovela, Rebelde. The show proved so popular throughout Latin America that the extension of the brand into pop music seemed natural (if not prearranged), for this is a common practice in Hispanic media, as numerous Latin pop stars -- from Thalía and Shakira to Carlos Vives and Chayanne -- got their starts in telenovelas. RBD doesn't write their own songs or play any of the music; they sing, act, dance, and give the music a marketable face. Moreover, there's little that's "Latin" about the group in terms of music. They may be Mexican and sing primarily in Spanish, but their music is tried-and-true pop/rock, modeled primarily after arena rock and power ballads of the '80s. Critics, of course, loathed RBD, often mocking the notion that there was anything "rebellious" about the act. Still, that didn't stop RBD from garnering legions of young fans across the world and selling tons of CDs and DVDs in the process.