Turning Red Creator Explains Inspiration For 4*Town Boyband

One of Turning Red‘s creators explained how they came up with 4*Town for the movie. The Internet has been posting about the boyband non-stop since the Pixar project’s release. Domee She talked to Thrillest about Turning Red and says that she actually mashed two pop concepts together for the “hip-hoppers.” In all seriousness, one dash of O-Town and and a sprinkle of a Toronto boyband named b4-4 and you have 4*Town. Now, the topic of pop groups is very sacred to kids of the 2000s as the arguments about N*Sync and Backstreet Boys dominated playgrounds and sleepovers. It makes all the sense in the world to make sure that these little details didn’t go unnoticed. Fans have been all over social media posting about “Nobody Like U” and other hits from the movie’s soundtrack. So, that authenticity has struck a chord amongst viewers. Check out how She broke it all down right here.

“But I think the name 4*TOWN was probably a combination of O-Town, and then I don’t even know if most people know that there was this Toronto boy band called b4-4 I think only Toronto tweens knew about. I think it’s like O-Town and b4-4 merged together with *NSYNC to create 4*TOWN,” she revealed. “I looked up b4-4 recently because I haven’t heard their songs in forever. The lyrics are so raunchy, but it’s very teeny bopper-y and cute. One of their songs is called ‘Get Down’ and literally the chorus is, ‘If you get down on me, I’ll get down on you.’ I just remember belting that out and my mom being, ‘What are you saying?’”

Comicbook.com’s Jenna Anderson talked to the creative team about how the boyband’s big assist during the final battle came together. It seems that Shi pushed for this massive Kaiju showdown to be an action centerpiece of the finale.

“We always knew that we wanted a large-scale mother/teen daughter fight for the ages. We wanted that to be our act three,” Shi said. “We wanted the whole movie to culminate into these two characters finally having at it in a big, spectacular Kaiju battle-esque way. We just didn’t know where it would be, or how we would get there. Then eventually, it landed at the 4Town concert and the idea was, oh, how do we one-up Mei’s embarrassment from convenience store. How do we beat that? Oh, what if her mom humiliates her in front of her idols?”

Have you been able to get the songs from Turning Red out of your head? Let us know down in the comments!