So why wasn't the awesome Face The Music more successful? Where do we begin! The New Kids were one of the biggest names in the biz, and Face The Music was a quality album. The two together should have been enough to make a winning combination. But it wasn't as simple as that...
If You Go Away...
But perhaps one of the reasons why the album didn't do as well as it should have done had a lot to do with the band's long absence. New Kids On The Block were the pioneers for boy bands as we know them today, and part of the problem was that when they left, a whole plethora of boy bands suddenly emerged ready to take the boy band crown, and many Blockheads switched allegiance to other groups, which in the UK were Take That, East 17 and Boyzone.
Not 'real' music
Even when the New Kids were at the height of their fame, there were haters who saw them as 'uncool' and a group for thirteen year old teenyboppers. Despite the fact that the New Kids sang, danced, played instruments and were getting into writing and producing, they were still not considered 'serious' musicians, and many people who were once fans caught on to this way of thinking and started taking their New Kids posters off the wall.
The music scene had changed a lot since the New Kids were on their break, and most Blockheads grew up and moved on to other musical genres. Grunge was pretty huge and all the cool kids were looking up to Kurt, Courtney, Layne et al. In Britain, Britpop was fast emerging, and most people would rather live like Common People than Hang Tough.
No one likes change
Even though NKOTB still had a pretty large fan base, much was said about the band's change in direction in terms of music and image. Even before fans had the chance to listen to the album, and judge for themselves, there was a lot of talk about how the New Kids had ditched their teeny-bopper sound, becoming more hip-hop - 'hardcore rap' even! One magazine stated that the band had traded in 'cheesy grins for gold-toothed sneers!' Er, not exactly true although admittedly the boys did smile a lot less. Let's face it - most people don't like change, and the perception of NKOTB at the time was that they had morphed into a completely different band; a band that the fans didn't recognize and couldn't relate to.
True, Face The Music showed a harder more mature sound than their other albums. And the change of image from the 'bubblegum pop' days was purely because they'd grown up from teenagers to young men so that was bound to happen. For the Blockheads who were already fans of urban music, the change in musical genre wasn't too much of a pressing concern - in fact it was welcomed. As Joe McIntyre said during the Clive Warren interview:
"We haven't strayed too far from our old stuff... it's just better."
But it seemed that too many fans listened way too much to what was being said about the band and didn't give them a chance.
The media weren't their bezzie mate!
There's no denying that although some of the media were rooting for the New Kids, there was probably an even greater part that wanted to see them fail. It's true - the media can build you up when they want to, and knock you down if they see fit. And that's exactly what happened with the New Kids. Much of the hysteria that surrounded them was gone, and it seemed as though they were faced with a barrage of criticism. And when Dirty Dawg was released, the press really went to town, with cries of 'misogynistic,' 'anti-women,' 'hating on women,'... quite funny really considering the large, overwhelming proportion of their fan base are... women! And maybe because of this, accusations of misogyny may well have hurt the boys' chances of success a second time around.
Sadly there was just too much against the album and NKOTB, and not enough support which is why Face The Music didn't do as well as it could have. But there were a couple of surprises. At the time of its release, many urban music stations started playing tracks from Face The Music when previously many of them wouldn't touch New Kids' stuff with a barge pole. Not just because it wasn't the right genre, but because the New Kids just weren't cool enough! But it was great to see NKOTB get some much-needed support albeit from an unlikely source. The second big surprise is that Face The Music started shifting more copies around the time of the boys' 2008 comeback!
There's no denying that Face The Music was very different to their earlier offerings, but still equally as amazing (It's New Kids - come on!) Sure they'd had an image overhaul; their sound was a little bit rougher, their lyrics a tad bit nastier, their videos a touch freakier, but their sound was very much real. A very grown up album, with harder beats and not-so-sugary lyrics (well not always) die-hard Blockheads were naturally going to love this because it was the boys. Those who loved RnB were going to give this a listen. Those who just liked good music regardless of genre or who it was by, was going to give this a chance.
Despite not being a smash hit back in 1994, Face The Music has somehow endured with Blockheads - past and present - appreciating the awesomeness of this album. And twenty five years later, it still sounds just as good.
Photos and word cloud by Angel Noire
GIF: Wix