*NSYNC's Chris Kirkpatrick Says Former Manager Lou Pearlman 'Always' Asked Him to Keep Band a Secret 'in the Beginning'

Before *NSYNC became a massive global juggernaut in the ‘90s, the boy band had a hard time keeping themselves a secret.

It’s hard to fathom why the iconic group — comprised of Justin Timberlake, JC Chasez, Lance Bass, Chris Kirkpatrick and Joey Fatone — that eventually sold over 70 million records worldwide needed to be kept under wraps at one point in time. However, forming under the same manager who was behind the Backstreet Boys during their rise to fame, too, had a lot to do with it, according to Netflix’s new docuseries, Dirty Pop: The Boy Band Scam.

“In the beginning, Lou Pearlman would always ask me to keep it on the down-low,” Kirkpatrick, 52, says of his former manager (who died in 2016) in the documentary — which chronicles the rise and fall of Pearlman, who was convicted in 2008 for running “one of the longest-running Ponzi schemes in American history,” according to Netflix. “It was always, ‘Don’t forget. I don’t want you telling, you know, people about this.’”

Backstreet Boys member Kevin Richardson also appears in the docuseries to shed more light on how *NSYNC was seemingly formed behind his band’s back while they were promoting their debut single, 1995’s “We’ve Got It Goin’ On,” in Germany.

“*NSYNC was kind of brought on the scene under the table,” he shares, adding that his boy band was finally introduced to the rival group after they sang at Pearlman’s birthday party in Europe. “Everyone just went, ‘What?’”

The secrecy of *NSYNC’s launch was also known among Pearlman’s staff. According to his former artist rep, Melissa Moylan, “NSYNC was a very hush-hush project.” “Nobody was supposed to talk about this band that was being put together while Backstreet Boys was in Germany,” she says in the doc, adding, “I kept my mouth shut. I was very loyal.”

Recalling the era where both boy bands exploded simultaneously, Kirkpatrick noted -

20th Television Hires Jillian Longnecker,...

that Backstreet Boys’ popularity “really started to hurt” *NSYNC “because we were busting our ass, and every fan that would come out would tell us, ‘We’re here to see you guys because the Backstreet Boys aren’t here.’”

“But that also sparked something in us, too, where it was like, ‘We have to work harder,’” he added. “Nobody’s going to want to see Backstreet Boys part two. We’re going to make them see us.”

For years, the media fueled a “fabricated” feud between *NSYNC and Backstreet Boys by pitting the two acts against each other during their peak years in the late ‘90s and early 2000s. The bands tried to lay the rumors about the music rivalry to rest once and for all in June 2021 when *NSYNC’s Bass and Fatone teamed up with Backstreet Boys' Nick Carter and AJ McLean for a joint Pride performance in Los Angeles.

"Back in the day, before there was social media, press and media and had to pit us against each other. Just to be able to do something like this together hopefully squashes all that crap that was never true in the first place,” McLean, 46, told PEOPLE at the event. “This is about coming together." 

"It was fabricated, but it was something that became real at a certain time," Carter, 44, added of the feud. "I mean, when you're that young and competitive as a teenager … it was, I like to say, healthy competition. But it started from the managers and all of that."

He added: "What's happening now is that we are realizing that we're the only ones that have gone through what we have together, and we relate to one another. It was a place in time, and our lives were very parallel. So, all this unity and coming together and all this love, it's really cool."

Related Articles

Follow Us

Carlos Marqués-Marcet Orchestrates a Del,...