backstreet's back, all right
You! Former teenage girls of the '90s! Did you listen to N'Sync or the Backstreet Boys in high school? Did you secretly want to do them? Well, according to an alarming amount of circumstantial evidence, so did their manager. No idea if it's true, and lots of media types are going to be hit with slander lawsuits if it isn't, but it seems to have left quite a mark on Nick Carter, frontman of BSB, who has been loathe to talk about it. Either way, it's clear that Mr. Pearlman left a nasty mark on the life of many an aspiring boyband star. Pearlman was recently indicted of conning $30 million out of aspiring talent, established stars, and well-meaning investors with a complicated web of fake companies and Ponzi schemes, something he was doing long after N'Sync and BSB's respective stars had faded. Thanks to him, very little of the millions of dollars his clients made at the height of their popularity ever actually reached their pockets.
My company's sysadmin claims he met Carter at a random bar in New York a while back. Poor sap was sitting by himself, sullen and unnoticed. Or trying to be unnoticed. I'm not sure what would be worse, for him, these days.
Imagine that...you're sixteen, you can sing, you can dance, you're famous and soon to be rich (or so you think), and every girl in every high school in the world wants to sleep with you--you've gotten more play as a ninth grader than most people do their entire lives--you are, despite the nasty things they may say about your music, the envy of every guy in your cohort. And you would trade places with any of those regular guys in an instant. Because underneath that veneer of superstardom you carry a dark secret, one you will drag across your back like a millstone until the end of your days. You can't tell anyone. Not Mom, not Dad, not your agent or your psychiatrist or your girlfriend(s). So many livelihoods, so many careers, depend on you--you open your mouth and they lose it all. Just smile for the camera, rehearse your interviews, let the audio engineers pitch-correct away the squeak in your maturing voice, and just turn and smile when a groupie screams "I love you! Have my babies!" because you know she doesn't really mean it. Don't let on that you cry yourself to sleep. Ten years later, twenty years later, your star has faded and the money never made it to you and even your fans pretend they only ever liked your music ironically, you're sitting in a some shitty bar in New York with a bottom-shelf gin and tonic, the few reporters who remember you mistake you for a basketball player with your name, and you still can't ever, ever tell. Not now, not ever--even when, at a time when all those boys who envied you and all those girls who lusted after you are reaching their prime, and you're already past your peak, and there's nothing left for you but you and your misery--never. Too many lives. Too many careers. Former teen sensation Nick Carter, now just some fucking washed out reality show actor, left alone with nothing but good memories and a stiff drink and a secret that would break the heart of America.
I am writing a song about this. Stay tuned.
My company's sysadmin claims he met Carter at a random bar in New York a while back. Poor sap was sitting by himself, sullen and unnoticed. Or trying to be unnoticed. I'm not sure what would be worse, for him, these days.
Imagine that...you're sixteen, you can sing, you can dance, you're famous and soon to be rich (or so you think), and every girl in every high school in the world wants to sleep with you--you've gotten more play as a ninth grader than most people do their entire lives--you are, despite the nasty things they may say about your music, the envy of every guy in your cohort. And you would trade places with any of those regular guys in an instant. Because underneath that veneer of superstardom you carry a dark secret, one you will drag across your back like a millstone until the end of your days. You can't tell anyone. Not Mom, not Dad, not your agent or your psychiatrist or your girlfriend(s). So many livelihoods, so many careers, depend on you--you open your mouth and they lose it all. Just smile for the camera, rehearse your interviews, let the audio engineers pitch-correct away the squeak in your maturing voice, and just turn and smile when a groupie screams "I love you! Have my babies!" because you know she doesn't really mean it. Don't let on that you cry yourself to sleep. Ten years later, twenty years later, your star has faded and the money never made it to you and even your fans pretend they only ever liked your music ironically, you're sitting in a some shitty bar in New York with a bottom-shelf gin and tonic, the few reporters who remember you mistake you for a basketball player with your name, and you still can't ever, ever tell. Not now, not ever--even when, at a time when all those boys who envied you and all those girls who lusted after you are reaching their prime, and you're already past your peak, and there's nothing left for you but you and your misery--never. Too many lives. Too many careers. Former teen sensation Nick Carter, now just some fucking washed out reality show actor, left alone with nothing but good memories and a stiff drink and a secret that would break the heart of America.
I am writing a song about this. Stay tuned.