Boyz II Men

Boyz II Men came out of Philadelphia singing the old way, four voices locked in tight doo-wop harmony, and made it sound brand new. Their debut, Cooleyhighharmony, landed in 1991 and put both "Motownphilly" and "It's So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday" into the top five of the Billboard Hot 100. The lineup that did it had Nathan Morris on baritone, Wanya Morris and Shawn Stockman on tenor, and Michael McCary way down at the bottom on bass.

Then came a run nobody had seen before. "End of the Road" sat at number one for thirteen weeks in 1992, a record at the time, and they kept breaking it themselves: first with "I'll Make Love to You" in 1994, then with "One Sweet Day", their duet with Mariah Carey, in 1995. When "On Bended Knee" knocked "I'll Make Love to You" out of the top spot, they became only the second act after the Beatles in 1964 to replace themselves at number one. Four Grammys came their way during the decade, and later a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

McCary left in 2003 because of health problems, and the three who remained kept singing, all the way to Under the Streetlight in 2017. Their silky, churchy harmonies left a deep mark on R&B, and Billboard would later crown them the biggest boy band of them all.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.