By Jinwoo Chong
The year 2000 was the last great age of the boy-band. Groups like *NSYNC and the Backstreet Boys ruled the charts with a level of success known by such artists like Adele and Beyonce today.
People fell in love with the moody group poses, the close harmonies, the riots that erupted over choosing Justin or Lance, Nick or Howie. And the new generation’s crop of wannabes, One Direction and the Wanted included, only prove that our fascination has not faded.
It’s not surprising to learn, then, that from within the midst of the boy-band craze of the early 2000s came Princeton High School’s own version of the boy-band, an a cappella group known as the Testostertones.
It started as a joke. The group of high school seniors that formed the very first lineup of the group had little experience with music.
They had watched PHS’s three other groups perform over the years and decided it was their turn to shine. They were the first of their kind at PHS; every bit of a comedy routine as they were an a cappella choir.
But over the course of 10 years, though the name and the uniforms consisting of colored ties over black shirts remained, the Testostertones slowly earned their place among the other groups as a constant in the changing years and rapidly growing student body.
It was in 2009, during the rotation of their ninth roster, that I joined them in my freshman year.
I considered myself neither a singer nor a performer. The few times I did sing out loud before then (the shower, when home alone on the weekends) were brief and almost shamefully done.
Looking back, I am still surprised by the events that led up to my joining the group, mostly because of the sheer improbability of its occurrence.
It was a story I will remember for the rest of my life, in which the group’s then-current leader decided to accompany his girlfriend to see her little sister in a middle school musical that I, by some incredible stroke of luck, also happened to be in.
A few turbulent, nerve-wracking months later, I was 13 years old, standing for the first time in the Black Box Theater of Princeton High School, and singing my audition song in front of 11 high school juniors and seniors.
The rest, I’m glad to say, has been the best four years of my life. I left that shy, soft-spoken 13-year-old behind in the Black Box and never looked back.
We’ve performed at school fundraisers, choir concerts, private parties, in front of anyone who would listen.
We’ve covered the Beatles, Miley Cyrus, R. Kelly, and yes, the Backstreet Boys. We’ve sold T-shirts, posed for yearbook photos, forgotten lyrics, and feverishly rehearsed well into the night before a big concert, but no matter the genre or venue, success or failure, we did it together, and we had the time of our lives.
It is now my fourth and final year with the Tones. After I graduate, the group I joined in 2009 will no longer exist in any capacity at PHS, and a new era will begin.
In the future, I will watch the group I used to know perform as just another member of the audience for the first time in four years.
I do not feel sad. Nostalgic, yes, and weary of the two-hour Sunday rehearsals, the hastened bathroom run-throughs of set lists before performances, but not sad, even if I feel as though I should be.
But sadness implies that there are things I regret about Tones. Sadness would imply a lack of fulfillment, when I feel exactly the opposite. There is nothing I would have done differently, nothing I regret about what I proudly call the greatest experience of my life.
I have neither the words nor the necessary space to recall every magnificent moment along the way. I have simply been through too much to describe with this group.
It has become as much a part of my life as math homework and waking up at 6 every morning, and to see it finally end is more of a new beginning than a fatalistic thank you and goodbye.
The Testostertones have taught me more than words will ever show: how to keep calm during a crisis, how to control the combined energy of 10 teenaged boys, how to laugh at our mistakes, how to be friends a group of people so different from me that were it not for our shared passion of music, we would pass each other in the halls without so much as a nod.
I owe everything to the seniors, juniors, and sophomores, tenors, baritones, and basses that I have shared these past four years with.
We have a tradition before every performance, one that was taught to me in my freshman year.
We find the nearest bathroom, huddle together, and, for 10 seconds or so, do whatever we want. Beatboxing, siren noises, free-style rapping, it all comes together in an ear-splitting ‘break-down.’
It’s hard to find a rhythm at first, but after a while, it all begins to work. Voices and movements become the same, and for a few shining moments, we are one. When the time is right, and we always seem to know when that is, we put our hands in the center, and count to three.
One. Two. Three. Tones.
No matter what happens, whether I will ever see my fellow Testostertones again after we graduate, whether any of us will even remember each other’s names in 20 years, I will always have that memory. I will always have the Tones.
In four years at PHS, I have never met a more different, overexcited, genuine, supportive, and dedicated group of people that I am proud to call my friends. We are future journalists, saxophone players, UN delegates, soccer players, C++ programmers, but for now, during my last year in the greatest boy-band I know, we are much less complex. Simply put, we are men, and we like to sing.
Jinwoo Chong is a senior at Princeton High School.

