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Formed
Year: 1984
Origin: Dorchester, Massachusetts
Members : Daniel Wood Donald Wahlberg Jonathan Knight Jordan Knight Joseph McIntyre
Founder(s) : Maurice Starr and Mary Alford
Manager: unknown
Label: Columbia/CBS, Interscope, NKOTB Music
Genres : pop and r&b
In the early 1980s, Maurice Starr discovered Pop/R&B quintet New Edition, and guided their early success. After breaking ties with them, Starr and his business partner, Mary Alford, sought to create a white counterpart act. Fifteen-year-old Donnie Wahlberg impressed Starr and Alford with his rapping skills, becoming the group's first member.[He was initially joined by his younger brother Mark, who left the group after only a few months.Donnie then recruited his school friends Jamie Kelly, Jordan Knight and Danny Wood to join the group; Knight was followed into the group by his older brother Jonathan Knight , while Kelly left the group early on.
When a search was made to find a Michael Jackson-esque singer to replace Kelly, Starr recruited 12-year-old Joey McIntyre, who initially struggled to fit in with the group. With the final line-up in place, Starr rehearsed the boys after school and on weekends, and eventually secured the group a recording contract at Columbia Records.
Originally, the group was called Nynuk (pronounced "na-nook").Nikki Van Noy, author of the group's official biography, wrote in 2012 that the name Nynuk is "meaningless",although a 1989 article by Rolling Stone suggested a possible connection to Nanook of the North. Columbia demanded Starr change the name of the group. Subsequently, they settled on New Kids on the Block, after a rap song that Donnie Wahlberg had written and arranged for their first album.The group was signed to Columbia's black music division and originally marketed to black audiences.
After the failure of the first album, Starr had the group back in the studio for most of 1987 and 1988 recording their second album. Dissatisfied with the excessively bubblegum sound of their first album, the group wanted to have more input on their look, direction and song material. As a result, Donnie, Danny and Jordan received associate producer credit on the final product. The album, Hangin' Tough, was released to modest fanfare in September. The album's first single was "Please Don't Go Girl", a ballad released in the spring of 1988. Failure seemed destined a second time when the song became another that went unnoticed by the listening public, and Columbia Records made plans to drop the New Kids from the label. At the eleventh hour, however, a pop radio station in Florida began playing the song. Scoring listener approval, it soon became the most requested song on their play list. When Columbia caught wind of the positive response, they decided to keep the group on its roster and put more effort into promoting the single. Columbia decided to re-shoot a music video for "Please Don't Go Girl", hiring director Doug Nichol, and sent the video to thousands of radio stations across the country to show the group's visual appeal. National attention soon followed and "Please Don't Go Girl" eventually climbed to No. 10 on Billboard's Hot 100 Singles Chart—becoming the group's first hit.
