The peak boy band era of the late 1990s and early 2000s was a rush of teen hormones, screaming fans, massive first-week sales and sold-out arena tours. From *NSYNC to the Backstreet Boys, Boyz II Men, 98 Degrees, O-Town and LFO, the glittering bands from those golden years seemed to have it all: fame, fortune, adoring fans and all the perks you could imagine.
Except oftentimes, they didn’t.
“This is a scam,” 98 Degrees singer Nick Lachey says in the one-minute trailer for Investigation Discovery’s upcoming two-part exposé on the high cost of fame, Boy Band Confidential: A Hollywood Demons Event. “I mean, where the hell’s that f–king money?,” asks *NSYNC’s Joey Fatone — an executive producer on the show — in the trailer of the piles of cash the Justin Timberlake-led group generated that seemingly didn’t trickle down to him and his bandmates in their early years.
A release announcing the show — which will air four one-hour episodes on April 13 and 14 from 9-11 p.m. ET on ID — promises it will reveal “how the industry transformed young performers into marketable commodities while exposing untold stories of abuse, addiction, and financial manipulation. Through raw, unfiltered interviews with some of the biggest names in pop, Boy Band Confidential exposes the secret machinery of manufactured superstardom and the devastating human cost of the era’s glossy perfection.”
The trailer opens with O-Town singer Ashley Parker Angel describing sitting on the balcony of his 38th floor apartment in New York contemplating “jumping off” due to his despondency about his tumultuous ride in the “Liquid Dreams” group. “The industry can be wonderful and cruel at the same time,” says Fatone, who is joined in the special by bandmate Lance Bass, Backstreet Boys’ AJ McLean, Lachey, Wanya Morris and Shawn Stockman of Boyz II Men, O-Town’s Angel and LFO’s Brad Fischetti.
“Being in a boy band was one of the greatest experiences of my life but it also came with challenges we didn’t always understand at the time,” Fatone said in a statement. “This project gave all of us a chance to reflect, to be honest, and to share what really happened behind the spotlight.”
In the clip, Fatone encourages his fellow boy banders to open up about the rare opportunity the now grown men from those groups got to experience at a formative age, with a number talking about financial malfeasance, intense pressure and the danger of succumbing to the allure of drugs and alcohol.
“Boy Band Confidential goes beyond nostalgia. It’s an honest, unfiltered look at a cultural phenomenon that shaped an entire generation,” said ID president Jason Sarlanis in a statement. “With Joey Fatone bringing together a who’s who of artists from the era’s most iconic boy bands, we’re illuminating the pressures, vulnerabilities, and surprising realities of life at the height of pop stardom with a level of access rarely achieved in music documentaries.”
In addition to the band members themselves, the series features interviews with managers, insiders and the people close to the singers who witnessed the “pressure, the power struggles and the darker realities behind the scenes.”
Check out the trailer for Boy Band Confidential below.
