RoadTripTV (RoadTrip) began in 2015 with just two members, Andy Fowler and Ryan Beaumont. Throughout the next two years they searched for more members to create a perfect five-piece band. By the end of 2017 they achieved that by adding Mikey Cobban, Brooklyn Wyatt and Jack Duff. The band remained a strong five and was consistently gaining followers until they hit a bump in the road on May 7, 2019 when Cobban announced that he was leaving the band. 

A lot of fans were upset, especially when Sonny Robertson was added to “replace” Cobban. Just under a year later, Duff left the band to be “replaced” by Harper Dark. Fans were upset that the band “wasn’t the same anymore,” and they began to lose fans. However, loyal fans continued to support the band either way. 

After January 2020, things started to smooth out for the band, and they even played at Shepherds Bush Empire in London in March, which was their biggest show yet. They even did a documentary after the show, and in the documentary Andy Fowler said “I don’t think this is the beginning of the end. This is the line-up RoadTrip will end as.” And he was only right about one of those things.

 On May 12, 2020, it was officially announced that the band had disbanded after Brook and Harper made a public post on Instagram that Rye was stealing all of their money a few days prior. Rye and Sonny were in a public fight with Harper and Brook, both with completely different sides to the story and Andy remained uninvolved. 

At the end of 2020, however, the real story was revealed by Mikey, Brook, Sonny and Rye in a YouTube video titled “The Real Reason RoadTrip Ended.”

According to the video, Blair Dreelan, the manager of the boy band, is the real reason the band split up. He forced the boys to overwork themselves, would not pay them, would constantly yell and even forced them into eating disorders to have the “boyband body.” That was the real reason Cobban and Duff left; however the other boys weren’t fortunate enough to leave. Wyatt revealed that he had to post the fake story about Rye because Dreelan threatened to sue him and his family if not.

“He said to me on the phone I’m going to sue you if you don’t write this, so you need to write this, so I wrote it,” said Wyatt.  At only 19 years old, he was put in a position where he had to choose between his career, his friends and his family.

RoadTrip faced a lot of similar experiences to other boy bands such as One Direction and Why Don’t We from management, proving it’s a problem in the music industry, especially amongst young boys. When Brook joined the band, he was only 16 years old. Of course he would do anything if he was promised his dream of being a famous singer come true. 

Today, two years later, all of the boys seem to be a lot happier. However, Harper and Andy are still under Dreelan’s management, and are the only two who have not produced their own music since the breakup, with the exception of Cobban, who stepped away from music completely when he left the band. A major issue that remains unspoken is the abuse of young males in the music industry by toxic management because this isn’t the first instance of it, and it’s time we shed light on it.