Which great singers could be in a boyband?

1. John Doe

2. David Thomas, Dean Wareham.

David Gahan, definitely. Anyone with an idiosyncratic voice is not going to succeed at this type of thing.

heh, can just imagine Gahan rattling my spine with his rendition of 'Evergreen'

Would Dave Gahan really be seen as so bad as to be worthy of laughs? I think he might get turned down, but so would almost any alternative type singer. What I was looking for were examples of singers that would be seen, in the context of the programmes, as so bad it's funny. I'm thinking people who would be put in the same category as the YMCA girl on Pop Idol (in the UK).

Ian Brown, on an off night, might achieve this.

I was listing Gahan as a singer who would get picked!

Shane MacGowen (or whatever the guy from The Pogues is named) would be booed off immediately.

Not if he had Nick Cave singing next to him.

See, Nick Cave I could imagine getting through. Sometimes he sounds a bit flat, but on a good night he'd get through. Cos he can really sing, like holding notes and stuff. But he'd get knocked out in the next stage, cos his voice isn't Pop. I have a suspicion, though, that he could actually do well with Steps songs or whatever. I'm sure he's more versatile than he makes out.

Thom Yorke would make it past the first round, I think. That cockfarmer from Coldplay wouldn't.

haha great question. I'd love to see Mark E. Smith entering this. Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan, George Jones - most old male country singers. But who would be really great in boy bands? Well, there was Micky Dolenz, but he was in exactly that anyway. What about an ideal boy-band line-up? Ooh, I'm starting a thread...

After watching tonight's Popstars, I doubt any person mentioned would make it through the first round. They are clearly after a very specific style of singing. Lots of notes per second, etc.

The guy they had a big argument about was unique in that he didn't try to do this. I think this was the perceived problem. He was more of a rock 'n' roll singer, even though he wouldn't realise it himself. Very shouty, kind of ugly noises but appealing still.

I wonder why all these thousands of people go through with this lottery. Why does no-one have the bright idea of being in a band? I know that what most of them want is a very conservative pop career, but that's what, for instance, Coldplay are up to. Surely for these people, many of whom are decent if derivative singers, the Coldplay route to stardom offers better odds than the Popstars/Pop Idol one.

Also, Mark E Smith would be a funny one it's true, but he would be seen as having chosen to be bad. He's choosing not to sing, whereas Ian Curtis or whoever is singing as well as he can.

Bob Dylan is another one I have suspicions about actually deciding to sing 'badly'. On his first album he's a lot more straight and tuneful than he would later appear to be.

Morrissey'd be a good one. He began as someone who famously could not sing, but he was belting it out like an opera singer, totally fearless. There'd be real pathos in an audition with a 22 year old Morrissey. Nowadays he can sing pretty well, and is consequently boring as fuck. That's the trick with these daft fascist notions of what makes a good singer.