98 Degrees Is Fully Aware They Were the 'Non-Dancing Boy Band,' Jokes Nick Lachey

98 Degrees didn’t sign up to be a boy band, but fate has other plans.

Both Nick Lachey and Jeff Timmons appear in the new Paramount+ documentary Larger Than Life: Reign of the Boybands, discussing how the R&B-centric group ended up caught up in the boy band craze.

“The term boy band was one we were very hesitant to embrace early on. We never thought of ourselves as a boy band, at least in the conventional sense,” explains 51-year-old Lachey.

“And so we resisted the big time, boy band label. But then we became very aware that his was a movement that was happening and we were probably happy to be caught up in it.”

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Nick Lachey, Justin Jeffre, Jeff Timmons Drew Lachey in the early days of 98 Degrees in 2000.

Tim Roney/Getty

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Timmons, 51, agrees, adding, “The original plan for 98 Degrees was to sell us to the public as a true R&B group.”

“We were heavily influenced by Boyz II Men,” he adds. “But when our label saw the craze that was associated with boy bands, they thought, ‘Hey, we’ve got our version of a pop group like this.’ ”

Although they were initially resistant, after the conversation, Timmons says, “We thought, ‘Maybe that’s not a bad idea.’ ”

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Laughing, Timmons notes, “At that time, boy bands were all about dancing and God knows, we weren’t all about dancing.”

Lachey agrees that the choreography was difficult for them.

“We always joked that we were a non-dancing boy band. We’ve never auditioned, never taken a dance class. We got together, we moved to California, we sang for people and they discovered us. And from there, a completely different thing gripped us.”

Hear more about 98 Degrees’ rise to boy band stardom, along with other boy band stories, at Larger Than Life: Reign of the Boybandsnow streaming on Paramount+.

Categories: Trends
Source: HIS Education