Menudo was a Puerto Rican boy band consists of five members formed by Puerto Rican producer Edgardo Diaz in 1977.
Menudo was a different boy band. What sets them apart from other boy bands was that all the members were perpetually young. How can this be? A member is replaced when he reached his 16th birthday, or his voice changed, or he became too tall. Majority of Menudo members joined the group at an early age of twelve or thirteen.
The group's name came from Diaz's sister who upon seeing them practicing at their garage exclaimed, "Cuanto menudo hay aqui!" (What a lot of young folk we have here!). From then on, the group was named Menudo.
Menudo's original members were Diaz's cousins Carlos Melendez, Oscar Melendez, Ricky Melendez and brothers Nefty and Fernando Sallabery. Menudo achieved tremendous success during the early 80's when they started to recruit members who can speak English and record English songs.
If today we have Bieber fever, the early 80's had Menudomania. This word swept across Latin America particularly in Brazil where Menudo had the biggest following. Menudomania also reached Asia's Philippines and Japan. In the Philippines, they had more than two successful concerts and had even made an English-Tagalog album "In Action" which contains the song "I'm Going Back To The Philippines", a special song which is a tribute to their Filipino fans. They also had sold out concerts in Japan.
One of the disadvantages of their formula of replacing members was that when a member leaves the group, that member's fans lose their interest in the group. That's why the group's popularity waned in the late 80's. Eventually, Menudo ended in 1997.
All in all, Menudo had more than thirty five members, and more than thirty albums in Puerto Rican, English and Portuguese languages. Menudo's most famous alumni were Ricky Martin who joined the group when he was only twelve years old; and Draco Rosa who was one of the writers of Ricky Martin's big hits such as "The Cup of Life" (the official song for the 1998 FIFA World Cup) and "Livin La Vida Loca", just to name a few. Draco Rosa was also one of the producers of Ricky Martin's Grammy award-winning album"Vuelve".
Boy bands come and go, but certainly, Menudo was and is one of the best boy bands in the world.
