YMMV / Take That (Band)

• Americans Hate Tingle:
  • The North American market was the only market the band failed to crack. They had one hit in the U.S., but then their breakup screwed everything and they vanished from the American consciousness. This was the first in a long line of apathetic reactions towards U.K. boy bands in America since New Kids on the Block codified the "modern" boy band concept. The only British boy band who successfully broke through has been One Direction.
  • A later story had Gary describing a meeting the band had with record executives from New York during their first run as a band. The execs had excitedly told them about doing a promotional tour throughout the US and went into great detail about what they would do. At the end of it, Howard simply said: "Can't be arsed" and that was the end of Take That entering the US market.
• Award Snub: "Rule the World" was submitted for Best Original Song at the Oscars due to being on the soundtrack for Stardust. It ultimately failed to secure a nomination but became one of the band's biggest-selling singles and a concert staple.
• Awesome Music: "The Flood" is probably their most awesome song. It has an awesome video to match, featuring all five members racing against another crew in sculling boats.
• Covered Up: They released a few covers in the nineties, which have an interesting relationship with this trope:
  • "It Only Takes a Minute" is perhaps the most curious example, in that everyone seems to know it was a cover, but no-one seems to know who it was a cover of. It was seventies soul group Tavares, for the record.
  • The Take That and original Barry Manilow versions of "Could It Be Magic" are roughly equally well-known. Notably, for Children in Need 2013 Gary, Robbie, and Barry Manilow all performed the song together.
  • "Relight My Fire" is probably the straightest example: the original was by Dan Hartman, but the Take That version is the one everyone knows (at least in the UK), and many don't realise it was a cover.
  • "How Deep Is Your Love?" is probably better known as a Take That song in the UK, but the original by The Bee Gees reigns supreme everywhere else.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Whilst popular in their native United Kingdom, they are also popular in Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Denmark.
• Growing the Beard: The group are generally considered better when they reformed in their thirties, after a decade's absence, than they ever were before their 1996 split. Lead singer/songwriter Gary Barlow's post-reformation Perma-Stubble is probably no coincidence.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • This quote from Gary in 1993, given everything he went through after the band's split:
    Gary: It must be horrible to get to that stage where, you know, you've gone down and you've lost your fans, and you still want to go out and tour. That must be the worst thing in the world. That's something I'm dreading. [laughs] I hope it never happens!
  • The Spitting Image take on their break-up emphasised the setting up of suicide hotlines for distraught fans, with the punchline being Gary^note then expected to be the Breakup Breakout, which itself might qualify for this trope walking off and giving the number to the rest of the band, who call in tears, wondering what they'll do now. In 2005, Howard Donald revealed that the band's split left him so depressed he did in fact contemplate suicide.
  • Robbie failing to turn up for the reunion at the end of For The Record, especially after it came to light that the documentary's producers never actually told him about the reunion in the first place.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: While For The Record ended with Robbie not rejoining the band it's comforting to know that only a few years later he and the rest of the band made their peace leading to the "Progress" album with all five of them.
• Ho Yay: A◊ whole◊ lot◊ of◊ it.◊ Even◊ more◊ of◊ it.◊ Yeah.◊ Add to that the somewhat Hi-NRG nature of a sizable part of their oeuvre, occasionally with some more sensitive but no less homoerotic music videos it's no wonder this band can be considered the gayest band that isn't actually gay. Let's also include Robbie Williams' and Gary Barlow's tribute to Brokeback Mountain.
  • Robbie has said on multiple occasions his extreme bitterness toward the rest of the band (but especially Gary) during the early years of his solo career was motivated by just how much he loved them, giving the whole thing a decidedly tense vibe. Occasionally popping into Gary's interviews to stick a tongue in his ear didn't help. And then there's this quote from an interview on Swedish television:
    Robbie: Gary in particular I was incredibly hard on... sounds sexual. See, that's the problem Gaz, I've always loved you in a gay way!
  • There's also the time an interviewer flat-out asked Mark whether he and Robbie were lovers, and Mark's... somewhat Exact Words-ish response:
    Mark: Not sexually, no! But we were very close, and if he walked into the room right now, I would throw my arms around him and kiss him.
  • Howard's status as "the body of the band" perhaps inevitably leads to this, but Gary in particular is prone to going on about it, frequently slipping into Stupid Sexy Flanders territory. From his second autobiography, A Better Me:
    I never felt sexy, not in the way that Howard can pull off with his six pack and all that. It's natural to him. He's an incredibly sexy guy.
  • The video for Hey Boy, while not as homoerotic as some of their nineties output (if only because few things in life are), still features long, lingering shots of the band getting dressed in some spectacularly camp disco seventies fashions, before heading out for a night on the town together, overlayed with the lyrics "hey boy, what you got, don't leave me on the floor" which easily read as a come on upon first listen.^note The song itself is actually more of a Pep-Talk Song than anything, but that's easily missed. As one fan on tumblr put it: "this round of boyband member or pimp/rentboy looks like a tricky one."
  • Not an actual example within the band, but their song "Love Love" was written specifically for the movie ''X-Men: First Class', and it adds a whole new layer of Ho Yay to an already Ho Yay filled flick.
• Idiosyncratic Ship Naming:
  • For reasons possibly lost to internet history, the most common ship name for Gary/Robbie is "Cream Cakes". Although the more traditional Barlliams also gets used.
  • There's also "Cream Keys" sometimes used for Gary/Howard, stemming from the nickname they gave to when they used to have a coffee together whenever the band went out for dinner, according to Gary's (first) autobiography. Funnily enough, this seems to be entirely unrelated to the "Cream Cakes" nickname.
• Moment of Awesome: The performance of "Love Ain't Here Anymore" on the Ultimate Tour DVD. Gary ends the song by himself, triumphantly hitting the final note as a sold out Manchester City Stadium cheers him on. Knowing that just a few months before, he couldn't go out in public without a disguise because he'd been ridiculed in the media and for so long (to the point where he wanted to be anyone but himself) makes you realize just how dramatically things had turned in Gary's favor.
• Portmanteau Couple Name: typically using the band members surnames, rather than their first names, since those are all fairly short and don't blend well. The four biggest pairings are Barlowen (Gary Barlow/Mark Owen), Donage (Howard Donald/Jason Orange^note which should technically be spelt Donange, but isn't, for whatever reason), Willowen (Robbie Williams/Mark Owen), and Barlliams (Gary Barlow/Robbie Williams^note also known as "Cream Cakes", but there are others.
  • The one exception to this is "Hobbie", the most commonly used name for Howard/Robbie, but that's probably the least popular pairing in the fandom anyway.
• Questionable Casting: The video for "Happy Now", where as part of the Fake That tribute band, they recruited comedian John Bishop, who bears a truly striking resemblance to Howard Donald... but then cast him as Robbie Williams instead.
• Refrain from Assuming: "Underground Machine", off Progress, is most commonly referred to by one of its more notable lines, "Oh What a Beast, Oh What a Man." It helps that the actual title is barely saved from being a Non-Appearing Title by being nigh-inaudibly whispered over the instrumental break near the end.

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