Dirty Pop

Somehow as grunge was choking out new wave music in the 1990s, boy bands began to sprout up. Many of them owe their creation to one man, Lou Pearlman, who is the subject of the new Netflix documentary Dirty Pop: The Boy Band Scam.

A cousin of Art Garfunkel with no prior music industry experience, Pearlman formed and managed the Backstreet Boys, ’N Sync, and other supergroups (plus the girl group Innosense, whose lineup briefly included Britney Spears). A journalist featured in the documentary claims that “no one had a better talent for finding and developing teen pop,” than Pearlman. But Dirty Pop demonstrates that the success of Pearlman’s bands gave him cover to operate a Ponzi scheme that bilked a thousand investors out of $300 million.

Dirty Pop winds the clock back to the early ’90s with video clips of the nascent Backstreet Boys crooning to swooning girls at high school assemblies. In the three-episode series, band members reflect on their relationship with Pearlman as they watch their younger selves on screen. AJ McLean says Pearlman was like a “second father” to fellow Backstreet Boy Kevin Richardson, who had lost his dad to cancer. The film also interviews friends of varying loyalty and business associates of Pearlman, as well as his former attorney Cheney Mason (who would later help Casey Anthony beat charges of murdering her 1-year-old daughter).

The documentary uses innovative artificial intelligence to let Pearlman speak for himself, despite his having died in 2016. “Real footage” of Pearlman “has been digitally altered to generate his voice and synchronize his lips” to read passages from his book Bands, Brands, & Billions, published four years before he was convicted of conspiracy and money laundering.

Pearlman ran legitimate businesses, but some ended suspiciously. For example, corporate blimps he leased—to MetLife, McDonald’s, and others—crashed, and he collected insurance payouts. A “master forger,” Pearlman hand-drew official-looking imprints on documents that fooled major financial institutions—once securing a $1 million loan from Bank of America. But it was the boy bands’ impromptu performances at small gatherings of wealthy investors that sealed many deals.

Pearlman’s AI narration and actual TV interviews depict him as an industrious entrepreneur with a pleasant demeanor. The band members called their portly, bespectacled benefactor Big Poppa.

Pearlman’s mistreatment of his protégés seems to extend only to his business dealings with them. Patrick King, who sang with Natural and lived at Pearlman’s house for seven years, says Pearlman never once engaged in sexually inappropriate behavior with him or anyone else. Pearlman covered the bands’ living and travel expenses but didn’t cut them in for much of the revenue. (In the 2019 film The Boy Band Con: The Lou Pearlman Story, Lance Bass of ’N Sync states that Pearlman secretly charged the bands’ expenses against their future earnings.) Pearlman also took sizable management fees and a share as the sixth member of both the Backstreet Boys and ’N Sync. The two pop quintets eventually bought their way out of their contracts with Pearlman.

Dirty Pop might serve as a cautionary tale for people considering nontraditional investments, but it probably won’t deter young artists who are desperate to break in to the entertainment industry. O-Town member Erik-Michael Estrada sums it up best. After Pearlman’s legal quarrels with the Backstreet Boys and ’N Sync became public knowledge, Estrada still sought out Pearlman’s management despite “massive concern” because “when are we getting an opportunity like this?”