79. New Kids On The Block, I'll Be Loving You Forever (1989)

Firstly, a disclaimer. I am 30 years old. I was born in 1978, and got to that strange stage of life that we call adolescence around 1988 to 1989. While those of you ten years older than me were wearing neon overalls and necking fistfulls of whatever-knows-what, I was sitting in my room, writing in my diary, the walls behind me absolutely bloody plastered with posters of Jordan, Joe, Jon, Donnie and Danny.

Last night, I went to see New Kids On The Block – or The Block, as they amusingly like to call themselves these days – in London's roomy O2. I am working on a big project about boy bands, and this was to be the first leg on my "journey".

I had a problem, however. My cynicism. Having endured some old songs by the band I used to love at a hen night last year, I knew their songs were largely terrible. Now, I was going to destroy my primary-coloured, Smash Hits-fuelled dreams by seeing them live, and then all my excitement for anything at all in the future, ever, would puff away forever.

So I don't know if it was the enthusiasm of my friend Lucy, who came to the gig with me, or whether it had something to do with succumbing the persuasive power of being in a stadium with 80,000 screaming women, but something strange happened. I loved every bloody moment. And when they played this song, the song I used to swoon over as a crimped-haired eleven-year-old, I blubbed. Like a girl.