The F4 boy band seems to specialize in a certain kind of nostalgia that never goes away. Even after four young actors from a Taiwanese soap opera turned into a pop group more than 20 years ago, thousands of fans continue to show up and mouth along to songs that were already regarded as outdated. It’s a peculiar kind of enduring power that record labels strive for but seldom manage to capture.
The drama Meteor Garden is where the story begins in 2001. It was not intended to serve as a band’s starting point. It was merely a popular television program based on the Japanese manga Hana Yori Dango, which told the story of four affluent, attractive troublemakers known as the “Flower Four.” However, the actors who portrayed them—Jerry Yan, Vic Chou, Ken Chu, and Vanness Wu—became so well-known that someone at Sony Music Taiwan reportedly considered turning the fictional group into a real one after looking at the ratings. That’s how F4 emerged outside of the program that created it.
Each of the four achieved fame in an odd, nearly coincidental way. Before he became an actor, Yan was a model. According to reports, Chou was a mechanical engineering student who only made it to the Meteor Garden audition by accompanying a friend. Before a producer noticed Chu, he was employed as a waiter. Raised in California, Wu was already well-known in Taiwan as a dancer. It doesn’t sound like a planned career at all. It reads more like timing and luck colliding, which is frequently how these things actually work.
Even in the industry, most people were surprised by what transpired. The year the drama aired coincided with the release of their debut album, Meteor Rain. A year later, they released a second album called Fantasy 4ever. Somehow, their Mandarin rendition of “Can’t Help Falling in Love” ended up on the Asian release of Disney’s Lilo & Stitch soundtrack. This strange little crossover shows how far their influence went. Over 600,000 people attended the 19 shows on their 2002 tour. That’s not the hype of a boy band. That is a real phenomenon.
There was also a complication, the kind that comes with being famous. The group was forced to change their name to JVKV in 2007 due to legal disputes over the rights to the Hana Yori Dango moniker. It’s a minor, almost bureaucratic detail, but it illustrates how ownership becomes messy when a fictional brand becomes a profitable real one.
Three of the four are currently touring once more in 2026 under the name F4EVER, and the Philippines was one of their first stops. The Philippine Arena was packed. Unresolved contract disputes with the tour’s organizers are reportedly the reason Ken Chu isn’t involved, serving as a subdued reminder that reunions are rarely as tidy as nostalgia would have us believe. Even so, it’s difficult to ignore how little the fans’ love seems to have faded as Yan, Chou, and Wu take the stage once more. It’s unclear if that will continue for another 20 years. However, it obviously didn’t matter for at least one night in Manila.
