Danny: “Eminem?”
CORRECT.
Jordan: “No? He did?! I don’t remember him ever saying anything about New Kids. What was the reference? Let’s look it up.”
On the track ‘Marshall Mathers’ from 2000’s ‘The Marshall Mathers LP’ (in which he sings: ‘New Kids on the Block sucked a lot of dick / Boy-girl groups make me sick’)
Donnie: “It’s fine. That was cool. We don’t control what other people write and honestly, none of us had even heard that song until you just mentioned it, so it didn’t matter to any of us.”
Joey: “Timing is everything. It’s nice to still be around and everybody can look back on that stuff….lightly…and with a wink and a smile.”
Donnie: “We’re not offended. It’s fine. We like Eminem.”
Joey: “And we like you too. We like you the most.
Jordan: “Really.”
Tell us about your new album ‘Still Kids’. When did you realise you wanted to record another album?
Donnie: “We always figured we’d do another album at some point. The fans – the Blockheads – would often ask, and we did a song a few years back with Rick Astley, Salt-N-Pepa and En Vogue [2022’s ‘Bring Back the Time’] and it really inspired us to start writing again and that lit the spark to lead to a new album.”
There’s a reworked version of the album track ‘In the Night’ circulating online that is a duet between NKOTB and Kylie Minogue…
Donnie: “We were thinking of releasing it later as a surprise, but now somebody’s leaked it. We’re all massive fans of her. She’s great. We wrote it, and sent her the song. It was surreal. She’s a super-talent. We didn’t even know if she would actually even hear it, but she had it for one day, and sent it back with her vocals. She’s fantastic.”
Any other surprise collabs in the pipeline?
Donnie: “No, apart from the ones already on there [with DJ Jazzy Jeff and Taylor Dayne], the New Kids priority was to collaborate with each other on this album.”
The verdict: 9.5/10
Donnie: “What question did you guys get wrong? Don’t I get a chance?!”
Joey: “We were busy mud-slinging for the first hour!”
New Kids on the Block’s new, eighth studio album ‘Still Kids’ is available now via BMG.