Sure, I listened to the New Kids on the Block. I was a young girl in the 90s - find me another like myself who didn’t listen to this band. They rocketed to success, blazed a trail for all the boy bands which came after them, and sold 70 million albums while swinging their legs back and forth and wearing ripped-up jeans. I mean, what says superstars quite like that?

Now they’re all almost forty, and they’re going to attempt to do it (or…something sort of like it) again. Honestly, plainly, I’ve never been into aging rockers. I admire bands like The Rolling Stones and performers like Paul McCartney and sure I think they’re great, but there’s also something a little sad about almost-geriatric singers still playing an electric guitar (don’t believe me? Did you see the Super Bowl halftime show?).

Twenty years after “Hangin’ Tough,” NKOTB is going to reunite, and they’re going to much more than simply appear on TV talk shows. New Kids member Donnie Wahlberg (you know, Mark’s brother) said that he, Joey McIntyre and Jordon Knight wrote 80% of the new album. But don’t you worry, New Kids fans - when they go on tour, they’ll sing some of the old songs, too. Can you imagine the spectacle of thirty-something men dancing around singing “Popsicle” and “Stop It Girl”? Hey, when they tour in December they can even sing “Funky, Funky Xmas” (which is from the Christmas record, an album so obscure it’s not even listed on the band’s Wikipedia page).

Again, let me remind the world at large that the New Kids are no strangers to this comeback thing. They did it in 1994 with “Face the Music,” but unfortunately all they faced was the breakup of the band and the grim reality that no one wanted to listen to NKOTB anymore. Is there any way the New Kids can gain new fans from this new attempt, or is this just a weak effort to gain money from all the fans who are now all grown up (and damning themselves for ever liking the band in the first place)?