It’s been 40 years, but there’s still a phenomenon that happens anytime Joey McIntyre comes within a short radius of ‘80s babies: Puppy eyes start to flutter, repressed love admissions are divulged and at least one person brings out their New Kids on the Block pillowcase.
It’s happened during the still-baby-faced singer’s latest promotional run as consummate professionals like “The Daily Show” correspondent Desi Lydic, talk show host Sherri Shepherd and even this Sun-Times writer suddenly become verklempt.
But for McIntyre, it never gets old.
“I love it. I’ll take it!” he said during a recent phone conversation.
JOEY MCINTYRE
When: 8 p.m., April 8
Where: Joe’s Live, 5441 Park Place, Rosemont
Tickets: $35
Info: joesliverosemont.com
At just 12-years-old in 1984, McIntyre joined forces with fellow Boston-area heartthrobs Donnie Wahlberg, Danny Wood and brothers Jordan and Jonathan Knight to became one of the biggest — and definitely most enduring — boy bands of all time.
New Kids on the Block have sold 80 million records, overcome scandals (including fighting against lip-syncing allegations), and continue to sell out arenas to this day. New ideas continue to keep fans engaged, including their popular annual cruise and the first-ever BLOCKCON fan convention that was held in Rosemont in 2023. Starting in June, the group will host their first-ever Las Vegas residency. And, while McIntyre can’t say much, he does declare that it “might be the perfect New Kids show.”
In the months before the residency kicks off, however, McIntyre has found time to focus on himself, reinvigorating his solo career with his first album in nearly 15 years and a tour that stops at Joe’s Live on April 8. Released in January, the wide-ranging pop palette of “Freedom” features McIntyre’s preserved vocals that once catapulted the blue-eyed falsetto to fame early on with comparisons to Michael Jackson on songs like NKOTB’s 1988 hit “Please Don’t Go Girl.”
The new album’s music videos likewise feature McIntyre’s well-exercised sense of theatricality, seen with the self-deprecating pop-star cliches he unfurls in the visual package for the title track. That, too, is a talent he’s honed since growing up in the community theater scene in inner-city Boston, parlaying it into a long-running Broadway career during a lengthy New Kids break in the mid-‘90s before the band reunited in 2008. (He began with the role of Jon in “Tick, Tick … BOOM!” in 2000 ; his latest was the role of Tom Hutchinson in “Drag: The Musical” from 2022 to 2024.)
But while some things stay the same, there’s also new, maturing themes McIntyre plays with on “Freedom,” tying it into the album’s loaded title.
“It depends on what your perspective is, but for me, it’s more about personal freedom,” McIntyre said. “It’s really about carving out your own autonomy and carving your own path. It’s not just about freedom from bad stuff or freedom from being held down. Abundance can kind of lock you down, too.
“A good family or a good job or something you’ve been involved with for a long time can zap you in a way, and you can spend a lot of time going, I wish, I wish, I wish,” he added. “I think I finally put a lot of those stories to rest by just expressing them and opening up about them [on this album]. … That was the fire behind it.”
Reading between the lines, there’s a sense that McIntyre fighting for independence in his solo career was one of those well-won battles. During our chat, I mention that in the process of writing a recently published NKOTB 40th anniversary celebration book, I was taken with just how much he struggled — and persevered — with his solo career in the ’90s. (It was a time when record labels wouldn’t take McIntyre seriously, leading him to pay to record and self-release his first album, “Stay the Same,” before fans and Sony/Columbia caught on and distributed it properly in 1999.)
“I was young coming off of this massive roller coaster ride of being in the biggest pop band in the world and then just trying to come down and be a regular guy in his early 20s. It took a lot of sifting through,” McIntyre revealed of that pivotal time. But as the youngest of nine in a working-class family, he had a good foundation to always keep trying. It’s an embodiment of the term that McIntyre fans have proudly owned over the years: Bravehearts.
“The thing that it came back down to is that I’m still just a theater kid. … It was just for fun and for free, as we say. It was for all the right reasons. And when you connect to that, that’s what kept me going. I was making music that I was really happy about,” he added.
And the effort paid off.
“I’m looking across the room right now at a gold record for ‘Stay the Same,’ and it’s pretty cool.”
Selena Fragassi is the author of “New Kids on the Block 40th Anniversary Celebration” (2024, Quarto Publishing Group).
