“As soon as ‘Boyz II Men’ hit, we started emulating everything they did.”
Those are the words of 98 Degrees member Nick Lachey in Netflix’s 2021 docuseries, “This is Pop.” Lachey’s remark, in an episode examining the impact of the “Motownphilly” crooners, was a clear-eyed acknowledgement from a white boy-bander who understood that his success was on the back of Black talent.
That’s the kind of self-awareness desperately missing from the streamer’s new docuseries, “Dirty Pop: Boy Band Scam,” which begins with footage from the ’90s of the Backstreet Boys serenading a crowd of swooning fans with a cover of Shai’s “Baby I’m Yours.” No one featured in this particular series dares to say the quiet part out loud as Lachey did.
To be fair, the story examined in “Dirty Pop” doesn’t really make room for any such challenging reflections on its predominantly white boy band subjects. The series, to its detriment, often leapfrogs over prickly truths about them in order to focus on a tidier narrative about how their manager exploited them.
Dropping Wednesday on Netflix, the three-episode series traces the rise and catastrophic fall of Lou Pearlman, the creator behind some of the most successful young and largely white boy bands of the late ’90s and ’00s, including Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC.
But those details have been well-documented in countless articles over the last nearly two decades: how Pearlman became a millionaire while *NSYNC members lived off $35 a day; how he masterminded a $300 million ponzi scheme through the guise of the fraudulent TransCon corporation; how he allegedly sexually assaulted some of the boys he managed. (Pearlman has denied the sexual assault allegations.) How members of both the Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC were among others that later sued Pearlman over their earnings (*NSYNC members depicted setting themselves free of an evil puppet master in their hit 2000 song and music video, “Bye Bye Bye”). And how Pearlman died in federal prison in 2016, nine years after authorities finally caught up with him.
The series, directed by David Terry Fine, aims to captivate audiences in today’s ’90s-obsessed culture, in a moment when stans are inclined to become activated over any perceived affront against their chosen star (see: the wild success of 2021’s “Framing Britney Spears”). But it doesn’t actually earn that level of response. None of the details in it are even new.
“Dirty Pop” features interviews with Backstreet Boys members AJ McLean and Howie Dorough and *NSYNC member Chris Kirkpatrick, as well as Pearlman’s business colleagues and old friends. The series also includes exhaustive testimony from Natural band member Michael Johnson, who alleges Pearlman involved him in additional sham dealings.
All the while, Fine bafflingly weaves in Pearlman’s half-baked thoughts on succeeding in business. The pop manager’s real image is used throughout the series, though the footage is “digitally altered to generate his voice and synchronize his lips,” as per text that appears on the screen.
Why do audiences need to see an AI-altered Pearlman seated behind a desk, spouting jargon, in the midst of a story about his spectacular downfall? None of that is explained.
Instead, viewers are subjected to Pearlman’s shallow assertions, like why he decided to create a rival group like *NSYNC after the Backstreet Boys blew up: “If Backstreet ends up being a dominant brand like Coke, someone is going to come along and create a Pepsi. We might as well beat them to it.”
The thing about the way today’s culture works is that audiences have a whole lot more information at their fingertips than ever before, whether or not they choose to engage with it ― especially when it comes to celebrities.
So, while some might brush off Pearlman’s comments, others ― particularly nonwhite viewers ― will know that actually, boy bands existed before BSB, and will want to push back.
For instance, the New Kids on the Block were hugely successful long before the Backstreet Boys. And, like the BSB, they imitated the moves and style of Black groups like Boyz II Men, Jodeci and The Jackson 5 — and gradually appropriated a similar fanbase. What the BSB and *NSYNC were doing, or even Pearlman’s self-proclaimed business savvy, wasn’t especially groundbreaking.
“We murdered that shit in the ’90s,” Bell Biv DeVoe member Michael Bivins, who managed Boyz II Men, says in “This is Pop.” Right on cue, songwriter Babyface says, “That was until the other guys came,” before the episode immediately cuts to clips of *NSYNC and 98 Degrees.
But that’s not the kind of commentary “Dirty Pop” includes or is curious about. The story it does tell is just not interesting or unusual enough to prevent audiences’ minds from wandering toward all the other details Fine meticulously chooses not to acknowledge.
Like the fact that the series is releasing just two months after an Investigation Discovery docuseries examined sexual assault allegations against Backstreet Boys member Nick Carter, who is featured in “Dirty Pop” footage documenting his group’s eventual troubles with Pearlman.
Or that Spears’ fans have stayed on *NSYNC member Justin Timberlake’s neck after new details came out about the stars’ decades-ago relationship. Or Timberlake’s 2004 Super Bowl performance with Janet Jackson, where he mistakenly exposed her breast. (Timberlake later apologized for his past actions.)
And yet, in “Dirty Pop,” Fine introduces a narrative of how *NSYNC was exploited by Pearlman with a clip of a very young Timberlake ogling a poster of Jackson hanging on his wall. Timberlake says to the camera, “that’s my favorite one.”
It’s hard to tell whether Fine is ignorant of certain information about his subjects, assumes the audience won’t care, or what.
But several things are true: Timberlake is a flawed celebrity. Carter is, at the very least, an imperfect boy bander. Both their groups appropriated Black musical styles, with nary a mention of that in this docuseries. They and their peers were also all taken advantage of by their manager.
Only the truths that unequivocally garner empathy for these stars appear in “Dirty Pop,” though. Like when Kirkpatrick laments how Eminem rapped that the singer “could get [his] ass kicked” in the 2002 song “Without Me,” as he reflects on how boy bands and pop music were ridiculed by some in the early ’00s.
That flattened narrative is what makes the series such an awkward watch. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
Better docuseries, like “Menudo: Forever Young,” actively grapple with the troubling truths surrounding the figures they explore, as well as the context that surrounds their stories, while also still pointing to the main villain as someone else.
“Dirty Pop,” however, takes the easier route and attempts to engage audiences with a one-dimensional, familiar narrative. It serves no one.