New Kids on the Block launched their Magic Summer 2024 tour, in support of their new album, Still Kids, back in June, and it’ll wrap on Aug. 25. Many other super-successful pop groups have long since split up, but New Kids are not only still together, they’re actually making new music. The secret to their longevity, they say, has to do with friendship, respect and the ability to refrain from trash talk.
“The challenge is, I think in some ways, is that we’re friends first, y’know what I mean?” Joey McIntyre tells ABC Audio. “So there’s a respect for each other that we don’t like to cross, like, certain lines.”
“It’s never going to be easy. And you’ll have, you know, discussions and maybe some arguments and disagreements,” he adds. “But we’re always knowing that [friendship is] what’s most important.”
New Kids initially disbanded in 1994, then reunited in 2007. Jordan Knight thinks that over the years, they’ve simply learned how to solve those disagreements.
“I think it’s about maturity,” he tells ABC Audio. “It’s really living and learning … and having relationships with each other, relationships with other people. And you just learn that you need to respect the other person, to value the other person. And I think … we all see everybody’s value in the group.”
And one way they show that respect? Not bad-mouthing each other.
“I saw a member of another group … he was doing an interview, talking about other members of the group, not in a good way,” Jordan recalls. “And I’m like, ‘Why are you talking … about your partners?’ It’s like he got goaded into it or something. Like, those types of things, I think through the years, we’ve learned not to do.” (
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