The upcoming, 42-city joint tour of New Kids On The Block, Nelly, and TLC is not merely a chance to learn a valuable lesson from aging pop stars about how our time on Earth is limited, and how important it is to make every moment count and/or sing along to “Hot In Herre.” According to New Kids On The Block veteran Joey McIntyre, the tour will also teach these young whippersnapper boy bands a thing or two about how to harmonize and twirl in a manner befitting the dignity of the profession.
“As far as boy bands, you know, we dance, we perform,” said the 42-year-old McIntyre, long known to fans as The One With The Hat. This is what sets the New Kids apart from contemporary boy bands, who simply stand there and bellow the lyrics of their songs in angry, stentorian diatribes, like Khruschev at the UN.
“I mean, I hate to sound like an old fogey, but these kids don’t know what they’re missing nowadays, because we got to sing and dance for our supper, you know what I mean, and we love to do that,” McIntyre added. As he crinkled his battered, patched porkpie hat in his hands, he wistfully recalled when the New Kids would perform their own choreographed routines to “The Right Stuff” in the mean city streets, abandoned cafes, and cemeteries of Boston, all for a simple can of baked beans, or enough nickels to fix the busted jalopy they were forced to share.
Those were tough times, McIntyre thought, squinting into the distance. They required tough hanging.
“So maybe a few kids could come to the show and see how it’s done,” McIntyre concluded of all those young punks like One Direction, 5 Seconds Of Summer, and other boy bands who have never had to sing or dance for their supper, or who probably don’t even understand that sort of grizzled, early-’90s vernacular.
Indeed, perhaps it’s high time those kids learn to respect their elders by watching these fortysomethings prance around to songs they wrote for 11-year-old girls—to finally learn their trade. That is, if they have any hope to be here themselves 25 years later, talking seriously about what it means to be in a boy band.