Note: This article mentions suicidal ideation and sexual assault.
We're three decades out from the glory days of *NSYNC, Backstreet Boys, and racing home to watch TRL, but there's a lot of lore about the boy band era that hasn't been told. And it isn't so glamorous; in fact, it's downright dark at times.
That's why Joey Fatone of *NSYNC fame, along with co-producer Joe Mulvihill (*NSYNC's former personal assistant), created the ID-limited documentary, Boy Band Confidential: A Hollywood Demons Event, to share the tough stories behind the rise to fame, the hefty prices paid, and the mental toll that still remains for some band members.
Boy Band Confidential features members of the most popular male singing groups from the '90s and early 2000s, including Wanyá Morris and Shawn Stockman of Boyz II Men, Lance Bass (and Joey, of course) from *NSYNC, AJ McLean (who goes by his full name Alexander in the docuseries) of Backstreet Boys, and Nick Lachey and Jeff Timmons of 98 Degrees, among others.
The docuseries also touches extensively on Lou Pearlman, the music mogul who launched the careers of Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC. He was never charged for any of the numerous sexual allegations against him, and denied them. He died in prison in 2016.
Here are the biggest moments from Boy Band Confidential:
1. The series makes no mistake: The modern-day concept of the boy band is based on Black singing groups.
Major kudos for Joey for starting the docuseries by saying this quiet part out loud. Boy Band Confidential starts with an homage to bands like Boyz II Men and New Edition getting their flowers from members of BSB, *NSYNC, and 98 Degrees for being the sound, look, feel, and all around blueprint for their pop success.
“That’s one of the groups we looked up to, that we strived to be like," AJ said of Boyz II Men.
“There was something about the way that sounded that was on a whole other level than anything I had ever heard, arranged, or performed in my entire life," Jeff Timmons said.
2. Boy bands were more palatable for teen girls in middle America than Black R&B groups. (Probably the most obvious truth bomb.)
Shawn of Boyz II Men made a "drop the mic" statement on the subject:
“It’s text book. Do Black music with white faces: Pat Boone, The Osmonds, Elvis. They were all doing Black music. That is the truth, and it’s a hard truth,” Shawn Stockman said. "It's no diss to 98 Degrees, *NSYNC, Backstreet, any of those guys. They were just kids trying to make it, too."
He continued: “To the average white girl fan, the Black groups, 'Oh, I’d f-ck him.' But the white groups, 'Oh, I’d marry him. Justin Timberlake on my wall is more acceptable opposed to a couple of Black guys. I can marry Justin. I can bring him to my house. He can have dinner with my family.' It’s a little harder to bring Black ass Shawn to rural Arkansas.”
3. Boyz II Men took a break after touring for one year. When they returned, their record label, Motown, had begun heavily promoting 98 Degrees.
The label even gave 98 Degrees the song, "Invisible Man," which was originally written for Boyz II Men. "People were done with us, and with our era of music, and it shifted to the boy bands,” Shawn said.
“And they look nothing like us," he continued. "Motown, our label in particular, made it painfully obvious that they were done. They were done with us, and the pendulum has shifted."
4. Nick Lachey said 98 Degrees was marketed as "the white Jodeci."
“The president of Motown, he wanted us to be the white Jodeci," Nick Lachey believed. "So he was trying to give us that in a crash course."
“I remember going on a train to Rochester, New York, to work with DeVanté [Swing] from Jodeci," he continued. "And we show up, and DeVanté is being fitted for a bulletproof vest, in the studio. And I’m looking around, I’m like, ‘Do we need a bulletproof vest? What did we just walk in to?’ It does make us question like, ‘Why did you sign us if you don’t want us to be who we are?’”
"It starts to really mess with you mentally,” Nick finished.
5. Jeff Timmons recalls having suicidal ideations when 98 Degrees was initially signed.
“And for me, it caused a severe depression," Jeff shared. "But I felt like I was the weakest link in the group. Just didn’t feel good about myself, didn’t feel good physically. I could not sleep, and my head wasn’t right. I felt so worthless, and just the fact that I could not handle all of this pressure, that I was like, just end it.”
“I went to our manager, and I said, 'I need some help. If I don’t get some sort of help, I will not be here. Like, this is over,'" Jeff said. "So he found me a psychiatrist to go to … within three months, I felt better than ever. And it didn’t make this any easier, but at least I felt better. That I didn’t want to die.”
6. The sixth member of *NSYNC speaks for the first time.
Jason Galasso was one of the original members of *NSYNC. When the group received their contract from Lou Pearlman's Trans Continental Records, he decided not to sign and abruptly left the group. Lance Bass ended up replacing him, and then *NSYNC as we know it was born.
"I had no idea what was going to happen, and also I was a stupid kid," Jason recalled. "I’ve never seen a music contract before. So I was smart enough back then to take the contracts to lawyers to review them. And it’s like, woah woah woah, Lou’s a member of the band now?"
"At that juncture with *NSYNC, it didn't feel right. So I didn't do it." Jason continued. "JC was pissed... And I don't blame him, I kind of left them high and dry. So I get it, I'd be pissed with me, too." Jason ended up going to college and has been successful in the mortgage business ever since.
7. *NSYNC's personal assistant at the time (Joe Mulvihill), thought the group should have gotten rid of Justin.
"The first time I ever saw them perform, I said, ‘Get rid of that kid.’ He was a good dancer. But he was very nasally, and it was Justin," Joe said. "I really said that. Boy, I was wrong.”
8. Joey was the first member of *NSYNC that Lance came out to.
“I was at my computer, and my boyfriend at the time, my very, very first boyfriend, was sitting on my lap,” Lance remembered. “And I was like, ‘Surprise.’”
“And he’s like, ‘Oh, please. I don’t care.’ And I knew he wouldn’t care, but it was just so nice to hear those words, and finally one of the members of your group know and be like, I don’t care,” Lance continued.
Joey remembers: "He goes, ‘Just don’t tell anybody. I don’t want to tell anybody.’ I go, ‘Lance, I love you.’ I said, ‘You’re my brother. You let me know when it’s right for you to tell. I’m not saying nothing to the guys.' Because I found out by accident.”
9. Boy band members would warn each other to "watch the touching" from Lou Pearlman.
Steven Mooney, who was an O-Town hopeful, said that he experienced uncomfortable behavior around Lou. “So he would come in. He’s walking in in his underwear," Steven recalled. "He would call you into his room, or call you when he’s taking a shower. And he’s trying to read off your day to you, and it’s like, ‘You’re in the shower, can we do this later?’ And he’s like, ‘No no no, it’s super important. I don’t want to forget it.’”
Steven claimed that someone in another band asked him, "Have you let Lou bl-w you yet?" But Steven just thought they were joking.
Steven said he was warned by Rich Cronin of LFO to “watch the touching because that will progress.”
Lou apparently said that Steven would be in O-Town, but he "had to keep it a secret.” But then, Lou ended up belittling him onscreen during Making the Band because Steven couldn't pick up the choreography.
Off camera, Steven asked Lou what he had to do to make the band. He then said that Lou made him extremely uncomfortable: "And he sits back, he opens his robe, and there he is, and he's like, 'You’re a smart boy, figure it out.'"
"The line was attempted to be crossed. But I could never look myself in the mirror and be that," Steven said. "He cut me from the show the day after I said no." After that, Steven decided to leave Orlando.
10. Ashley Parker Angel details uncomfortable experiences with Lou Pearlman.
“I do feel like Lou took a liking to me, because Lou told me specifically, 'Hey, when the cameras end the production and Making the Band is over and you're just O-Town, I want you to come live in my house with me,'” Ashley said. "And then he'd say stuff like, 'Take off your shirt, we've got to keep you in shape for these teen magazines. Let me see your abs, take off your shirt.'" Ashley went on to explain that, “You kind of get conditioned to take off your shirt for Lou.”
Ashley explained that people would tell him, “Don’t be alone with Lou.” He recalls an incident when Lou invited him into his hotel room. "He was like, 'Take off your shirt,' and he was telling me things like, 'I can give your muscles a pump...just by massaging you. So lay down on the couch, let me massage your muscles, you'll see what I mean.'" Ashley continued: “Something about this feels abusive and predatory.”
“Definitely feel like on some level what Lou did with me was clearly inappropriate," Ashley said. "There was a lot of very inappropriate sexual circumstances that we found ourselves in with Lou. Kind of just chipping away at you to kind of lower your guard."
11. According to Angel, Lou apparently took O-Town to a German brothel.
"We were in Germany and not realizing we were in a brothel," Ashley said. "And then they're like, 'We're going to pair you with this one and that one and go back to the room with you.' We're literally at a brothel with Lou."
12. “Bye Bye Bye” could have been the last song we heard from *NSYNC.
“When the label was going to take the name [of *NSYNC] away, Lou tried to get the song taken away from those five guys,” Johnny Wright, *NSYNC's manager at the time, said. “So I didn’t want that to happen.”
He continued: “So we were asked to play the Radio Music Awards, and I said, ‘The only way that they’ll come on stage and perform is they have to perform this new song called ‘Bye Bye Bye.’ And it kind of was like an ode to well, hey, ‘Bye Bye Bye,’ could be the last song you’ll ever hear from us. And if they were going to get stripped of the name, if someone else tried to put it out, it was in the minds of those fans that these guys did it first.”
13. The awkward way *NSYNC members say they were pushed to the side of Justin's solo career.
The moment that really rubbed Joey the wrong way was when *NSYNC was asked to introduce Justin's first solo performance at the VMAs in 2002.
"You are basically just pushing us aside a little bit to do this," Joey said of *NSYNC's management team at the time. "But yet, you still want us around to introduce him.”
"It is totally fine. But talk to us,” Joey continued. “Have a conversation. Say, ‘Hey, we’re promoting Justin. He has an album out. We’re not here for *NSYNC right now.’ If you would have had that conversation, it would have been a lot easier for me personally.”
14. Joey's lights were shut off one Christmas because he couldn't pay the electricity bill as *NSYNC's rise started to fall.
"I almost was gonna go bankrupt, and I have a family," Joey said. "These are certain things that happen in normal people's lives as well, but then you have to figure out, for me, how do I do this without the public even watching?"
"I was asking people for money," Joey continued. "And funny enough, the people that I asked were the people that mostly had the most money in life. They were like, 'Can't help you.'"
"So I had to do some interesting things," he said. "I put my tail between my legs as a man to try to figure this out. Had to sell my house, and legitimately, I moved my ex-wife and my kids in with my parents for a year. I lived in Vegas for almost a year, busted my ass to slowly build back up kind of a career in a sense. And thank goodness, Lord, things were able to roll. And started doing things, and things came out better, thank goodness."
15. Ashley Parker Angel dealt with substance abuse issues after O-Town's initial fame subsided.
“I was around 26, and very aware that the '27 Club' exists and that so many young performers have died for whatever reason around 27," Ashley remembered. "And I was so identified at that point in time with my ‘success.’ And when the plug got pulled, so to speak…I was so deathly afraid of being called washed up. I was so terrified of not being able to keep up with people’s expectations.”
“I was sitting on the 38th floor, a balcony at my New York apartment, and I literally for several hours, I just thought about jumping off that balcony,” he said.
After that experience, Ashley leaned on family and friends, and started to focus on health and wellness.
16. Brad Fischetti opens up about the devastating losses of his LFO band members, Rich Cronin and Brian Gillis.
"At that point I went into the darkness," Brad said. "If you look from the outside, people say, 'Oh, LFO is cursed.' I don't really believe in that kind of stuff."
17. AJ says his youngest daughter saved his life.
After coming home from a bender, his daughter wouldn't hug him. "You don't smell like my daddy," she said. "That one struck a nerve enough to wake me the f--k up to where, I don't want to feel that way anymore," AJ said. "This is the first time in 25 years, I've done what had been suggested of me to do."
18. And finally, after Lance came out, his family was run out of churches because he was gay.
"And even to this day, a lot of churches use me to preach hate," Lance said. "And my parents just kept moving from church to church. It was not pretty for them. But the positives that came out of it just far, far outpaced the negative, so I was happy."
"I don't know what would have happened if I didn't have *NSYNC to keep me just safe," Lance shared.
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