Jordan Knight

Jordan Knight served as a primary singer for the late-1980s teen-pop phenomenon New Kids on the Block, supplying his smooth falsetto on chart successes that included “You Got It (The Right Stuff),” “I’ll Be Loving You (Forever),” and “Cover Girl.” He also supplied background vocals and early production work on projects by Tommy Page and Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch, then gradually assumed that same production responsibility inside New Kids on the Block once Maurice Starr’s sway over the act diminished. By the arrival of the 1994 album Face the Music, however, the group’s appeal had likewise faded, and Knight stayed largely out of the spotlight for several years after the ensuing split.

In an unexpected return, Knight—much like former bandmate Joe McIntyre—capitalized on renewed enthusiasm for teen-oriented boy bands such as *NSYNC and the Backstreet Boys to begin a solo career. The 1999 single “Give It to You” reached the upper reaches of the charts and paved the way for his self-titled debut album later that year. Throughout the first half of the 2000s he maintained a schedule of live dates and public appearances. Although the 2004 release Jordan Knight Performs New Kids on the Block: The Remix Album struck some observers as opportunistic, he followed it a year later with the EP The Fix, which displayed a promising adult-contemporary direction. Love Songs, a set of reinterpretations of well-known romantic pop standards, appeared in 2006 and yielded the modest adult-contemporary single “Say Goodbye,” a duet with Debbie Gibson.

Knight rejoined New Kids on the Block for the 2008 album The Block and for the 2011 co-headlining tour with the Backstreet Boys. Also in 2011 he issued Unfinished, his first batch of original pop material in more than a decade; the collection climbed to number 48 on the Billboard 200. In 2014 he partnered with Backstreet Boy Nick Carter on the duet album Nick & Knight, which entered the Billboard 200 at number 24 upon its September release.