65
TimeOff Music
The Jonas BroThers aren’T The firsT
boy band to make a comeback play. New Kids on
the Block broke up for 13 years but have been back
together touring for the past decade; meanwhile,
the U.K.’s Take That is still one of the most popular
acts across the pond, despite member shake-ups
over the years. The Backstreet Boys put out a No. 1
album in January and just wrapped a Las Vegas
residency. Even the Spice Girls, arguably the
biggest girl group of the ’90s, are in the midst
of a reunion tour, sans Posh Spice. But all these
groups have one thing in common: they’re trading
on nostalgia, filling set lists with early hits and
pandering to fandoms that first fell for them in
their heyday.
Nostalgia might be gratifying, but that doesn’t
make it cool. The Jonas Brothers’ secret weapon
is that the first time they were pop superstars,
they weren’t all that cool. When they launched in
2005, the three teenage brothers—Nick, Joe and
Kevin—were pastor’s kids from Wyckoff, N.J., who
made guitar pop that earned them a spot in the
Disney fold, starring in original movies like Camp
Rock and, eventually, their own Disney Channel
series, Jonas. Their four albums were beloved by
kids and tweens, but less so by the mainstream
pop establishment; the band never had a No. 1
single. After they split, Nick found success as a
solo artist with steamy R&B tunes like “Jealous”;
Joe fronted the pop-rock outfit DNCE, notching a
monster hit with the song “Cake by the Ocean”;
and Kevin started a family with his wife Danielle
and began working in real estate. The boys grew
up. So did their fans.
GrowinG up is a hard thing for pop stars to do,
especially those who emerge from the big machine
of children’s-entertainment behemoths like Dis-
ney and Nickelodeon. The Jonas Brothers’ contem-
poraries, like Miley Cyrus and Demi Lovato, have
navigated tricky territory as they matured in the
spotlight, trying to earn musical bona fides while
shedding their family- friendly public personae.
By pursuing solo enterprises, Nick, Joe and Kevin
each managed to find a groove independently,
even if they drew attention for their personal lives
as much as their projects: Nick tied the knot with
actor Priyanka Chopra last year, and Joe wed Game
of Thrones star Sophie Turner this spring. They be-
came celebrities in their own right, trading purity
rings for wedding rings.
Which might be why their first single together
in over a decade, “Sucker,” released in March,
ended up marking a high-water point in their ca-
reer, both in terms of its casual swagger and its
commercial success: it was the band’s first No. 1
single. Produced by OneRepublic front man Ryan
Tedder, who’s helmed hits for everyone from Tay-
lor Swift to Beyoncé, the song sounds more like an
earworm Maroon 5 might release than something
you’d hear on Radio Disney. It’s adult, confident,
even sexy. (So is the music video, which starred all
three brothers’ wives; it’s up to over 146 million
views on YouTube.) For their new album, Happi-
ness Begins, out June 7, they tapped more pop hit-
makers, including Max Martin and Greg Kurstin;
it’s a bid for the Top 40 jugular more than a nos-
talgic cash-in. They seem, authentically, to be hav-
ing fun. “Coming back together wasn’t because
they needed it,” says their longtime manager Phil
McIntyre. “They came back together because they
missed doing it together.”
It’s an impressive feat for a band that might
have seemed doomed to go the way of Hanson,
but it’s also a testament to the public appetite for
something that feels at once new and familiar that
the Jonas Brothers have managed to pivot so effec-
tively into a grownup pop group. “Sucker” is just
the beginning. They quickly followed it up with a
song called—what else?—“Cool.”
REVIEW
A boy band
returns anew
By Raisa Bruner
PEGGY SIROTA—UMUSIC
△
In addition to
their new album,
Happiness Begins,
out June 7, the Jonas
Brothers (above,
from left, Joe, Kevin
and Nick) released
a documentary
this month and
are working on a
memoir
