Alli Harvey
Donnie Wahlberg is taking things step by step.
If Justin Bieber were to stop recording music in a couple of years, and then 20 years after that mount a comeback, he would be wise to listen to the words of Donnie Wahlberg.
Wahlberg is one-fifth of New Kids on the Block, the group that was two decades ago the Most Important Band in the World, if that title were determined solely by teen and pre-teen girls. Their albums topped the charts, they sold out arenas, and they sold lunch boxes and pencil cases by the millions. They would, like Bieber, be a daily trending topic on Twitter if such a thing existed in 1989.
But, when the group reformed in 2008, it had been ages since they graced the cover of Teen Beat. Would anyone come see them sing?
Wahlberg is one-fifth of New Kids on the Block, the group that was two decades ago the Most Important Band in the World, if that title were determined solely by teen and pre-teen girls. Their albums topped the charts, they sold out arenas, and they sold lunch boxes and pencil cases by the millions. They would, like Bieber, be a daily trending topic on Twitter if such a thing existed in 1989.
But, when the group reformed in 2008, it had been ages since they graced the cover of Teen Beat. Would anyone come see them sing?
“We were financing the reunion ourselves. We were taking all the gambles,” Wahlberg says over the phone from his home in Boston during a break from a tour that brings the group to Southern Ontario this weekend. “Our gambles were based on the hope that our fans who were now age 30 to 40 would come back. But we kind of forgot that when we were really successful the first time around we had a lot of five-, six- and seven-, eight-year-old fans. Those fans are now 23, 24, 25. And suddenly we realized we underestimated the scope of our audience.”Plus, he says, the audience seems to finally have crossed gender lines.
“Guys who hated us in high school are now married to the women who loved us in high school, and they can’t refuse going to see our concert anymore.”Wahlberg says the reunion, which included a lengthy tour in 2008 to support a new album, and a much smaller tour this spring, has been a revelation.
“We meet fans all the time who say, ‘I was too young to see your concert, and then you went away, and now I can come to the show.’ You see these gorgeous young women walk into the show, and you think they must be there with their mom and they are, like, ‘No, I’m a huge fan.’ It’s pretty cool.”Though the other New Kids -- Jordan and Jonathan Knight, Joey McIntyre and Danny Wood -- pursued various projects during the time the group “went away,” Wahlberg carved out the busiest career, with acting credits including The Sixth Sense, the Saw films and Band of Brothers. He acknowledges that boy bands became far more accepted in the post New Kids-era, but says he doesn’t regret clearing the way for the likes of *NSYNC et al.
“Was it a surprise to me to see Backstreet Boys on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine? It was, because Rolling Stone was the rock ’n’ roll Bible, and we were voted worst band, worst tour, worst singers, worst everything during our career,” he says. “So it was ironic to see Backstreet Boys on there, but that’s how things change. MTV used to boycott our videos and now it’s all teenagers screaming and yelling and carrying on the way they used to ridicule our fans for doing. Was I bitter about it? No. Not at all. I think one day MTV woke up and said, ‘We’re turning all these young girls away, we better start playing what they like.’ ”He seems sanguine about never getting the critical acceptance that others have received since.
“There’s always going to be somebody who paves the way, and who gets sort of beat up for what they are doing, and years later it becomes the norm,” he says.
“Look at MC Hammer. He was a ‘pop rapper,’ and he caught a huge backlash. And pretty much everyone now is a pop rapper. Puff Daddy is a street-smart MC Hammer, if you’re going to be honest about it.”The tour includes their old hits, he says, but also the new songs they wrote since reforming, and Wahlberg says the audience likes it that way.
“They can listen to Hangin’ Tough only so many times, as 30-year-old women, before they get sick of it.”- New Kids on the Block play Casino Rama on June 10 and 11, and Caesars Windsor on June 12.
Read more: http://www.nationalpost.com/arts/Donnie+Wahlberg+says+NKOTB+hangin+tough+grown+fans/3128034/story.html#ixzz0qNXDMc5D
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