Warning: This article contains minor Turning Red spoilers for the new Pixar movie.
Don’t let anyone tell you that Turning Red, the new Pixar movie now streaming on Disney+, is not relatable. Because never have I ever felt so deeply seen—and so brutally roasted—as I did when 13-year-old protagonist Mei and her friends absolutely lose their cool over a deeply mediocre boy band.
Voiced by newcomer Rosalie Chian, Mei is your typical 13-year-old girl going through puberty in the early 2000s. She’s a model student and a model daughter, expected to obey her Chinese-Canadian parents’ every instruction. And she does. But, secretly, Mei is developing interests outside of her family—namely, her and her three best friends’ obsession with the fictional boy band sweeping the nation called 4*Town.
The 4*Town boys are a priceless parody of NSYNC, O-Town, Backstreet Boys, and other popular boy bands of the ’90s and 2000 that fill millennials with nostalgia. Mei introduces the audience to the dreamy 4*Town boys (of which there are five, despite their name) in a hilarious speech that made me both laugh and cringe at my former pop star infatuations: “Jesse went to art school. Tae Young fosters injured doves. Robaire speaks French. …And Aaron T. and Aaron Z. are, like, really talented too!”
Slight spoiler alert, but Mei and her friends eventually get a chance to go to a 4*Town concert, and we as the audience are treated to some original boy band bops. So who is singing behind those animated glossed lips?
Who voices the 4 Town boy band Turning Red?
The 4*Town boy band voices are as follows: Jordan Fisher as Robaire, Josh Levi as Aaron Z., Topher Ngo as Aaron T., Finneas O’Connell as Jesse, and Grayson Villanueva as Tae Young. Fisher, of course, is already something of a Disney pop star, a Broadway actor (Hamilton, Dear Evan Hansen), as well as starring as John Ambrose McClaren in Netflix’s To All the Boys 2. But we can totally see him as the leader of a boyband in another life.
Billie Eilish fans will be familiar with Finneas O’Connell, aka the songwriter, musician, producer, and Eilish’s brother, with whom she collaborates closely. Both Eilish and O’Connell were songwriters for the film, and, in an interview with Entertainment Access, Eilish called writing the 4*Town songs, “the most fun we ever had.” Once you hear these bangers—especially their big hit, “Nobody Like U,” you’ll be convinced that Eilish and O’Connell know NSYNC’s sound better than Justin Timberlake.
Then there’s Josh Levi, a singer from the 2013 season of The X Factor who you may also recognize as Darius from Friday Night Lights; Topher Ngo, a bass vocalist whose music you can find on YouTube; and Grayson Villanueva, a vocal arranger and music producer whose website you can check out.
Director Domee Shi, who also co-wrote Turning Red with Julia Cho, clearly had a blast with the 4*Town boys, as is evidenced by all the 4*Town bonus content you can find online. In fact, the fictional boy band has its very own website where you can watch the band’s videos, read the bio of each member, and find out how you can be converted into a 4townie. It’s all very early 2000s internet, and I absolutely love it. 4*Town 4ever!
