My dad is the oldest of 11, so when I stayed at my grandparents' house prior to starting school, my youngest aunts were still in high school during a time when kids blasted MTV all day every day. Of many, three songs in particular still occupy an intimate corner of my brain: "Electric Boogie," "Baby, Baby," and, sitting upon the earworm throne, "You Got It (The Right Stuff) by New Kids on the Block.
Thus, the temptations of (genre)wave be damned, I decided to cook up my own hackneyed, saccharine 90s boy band jam, featuring all the tropes, like an overused drum machine, heavy reverb, and those soothing piano and synth samples. The always delightful damifortune provided vocals, while a friend offered his lower-end voice for the obligatory awkwardly spoken word section.
Now, I *love* drafting up excessively wordy backstories for projects I'm involved in, so the remaining text is dedicated to that.
* T H E C A N O N *
1992 — an age of ever-expanding cable television, bright neon palettes, and, last but certainly not least, trios, quartets, and quintets of teenage heartthrobs hogging the music charts.
Except wannabe music mogul Roy Boulder didn't have that. He didn't even have a duo — just a nephew with a shit voice, pretty face, couple of dance moves, and a pain-in-the-ass father who never let Roy forget the time he crashed their Camaro shooting that video for a glam metal band named "Accelerator" whose only verified claim to speed was how quickly they drowned themselves in liquor before a show.
What a nightmare, thought Roy, watching his nephew butcher "Do-Re-Mi" as he warmed up in a studio microphone. Desperate to salvage the project, and forever shut his brother up about the grand favor he was owed, Boulder assembled the most ragtag collection of "lookers" he could find.
And so were "The Heartbreak Boys" born.
Leading the pack was baby-faced, and otherwise remarkably unremarkable, nephew Ken Boulder. Surrounding him was an assortment of his "closest friends, bound together by friendship, a shared passion for long walks at night to the pizza shop, and a special touch of magic found nowhere else," the latter of which very opaquely addressing the check Boulder cut for each of them just to make the group's singular disastrous recording session:
Eddie "Sweet Pea" Mazzanti — a chain smoker packing meat on the Lower East Side and the group's baritone.
Tommy "Smooth" Sanders — the smooth-talking "serious" one, mostly because he was 43 and currently embroiled in an arson case that was later dismissed after Sanders was found guilty on a second, much worse arson case.
Miroslav "The Dream" Jovanović — a Bulgarian separatist guerilla fighter who fled to the United States after a botched attack on a Soviet facility. Nicknamed "Mikey J" to make him more palatable for Western audiences. The only capable singer in the group, but could only sing without an accent and otherwise spoke poor English.
***
Roy's nephew finally convinced him that it was time to enter the studio, but promptly forgot the notebook that held the lyrics to their lead track "Love You Forever, Girl...Baby...Yeah." Panicked, Ken forgot all the words and Mikey J was forced to ad-lib the entire track. The song was a financial nightmare and immediate failure for all parties involved, except for Jovanović who returned to Bulgaria after the fall of the USSR and made $50,000 selling the song illegally to be featured in rental car commercials in his home country.
Without further ado, here it is. Enjoy!
