The dark Lou Pearlman claims and questions Dirty Pop: The Boy Band Scam misses out

Right now there’s a doc at the top of Netflix’s top 10 that everyone is talking about, Dirty Pop: The Boy Band Scam. The three-part series covers the rise and subsequent fall of pop-star band maker, Lou Pearlman.

Back in the 90s and early 00s, the world was crazy for breakout boy bands. Every young girl loved the Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC, and they defined that era of music. The recipe was pretty simple: Get a bunch of young, good looking boys and train their vocal and performing talent. The result was bands that made millions. The man behind these bands and their success was Lou Pearlman, but he wasn’t all he seemed.

The Netflix series pulls apart the glitz and glam surrounding the man responsible for launching so many careers, and reveals the crooked and complex financial scheme he used to build the foundation of his unstable empire. Lou Pearlman was sued for misrepresentation and fraud by a number of the musical acts he’d managed. They claimed they were being exploited, and Pearlman was pocketing huge percentages of their earnings.

Pearlman then ended up behind bars, when more of his fraudulent business was exposed. He owed hundreds of millions to banks, and had been conning investors into giving him cash for dodgy programmes. In 2007, Pearlman was charged with conspiracy, money laundering, and making false claims in a bankruptcy. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison, where he later died.

Here’s everything Netflix docuseries Dirty Pop: The Boy Band Scam missed out, and the questions there still are following it.

via Netflix

Lou Pearlman’s crimes ‘started decades before boy bands’

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One of the Dirty Pop’s executive producers is Michael Johnson, a drummer and former member of one of Pearlman’s boy bands, Natural. On the Reality Life with Kate Casey podcast, he explained Pearlman’s crimes “started decades before boy bands were a thing.” He said he has been trying to make the Dirty Pop documentary since 2009.

Dirty Pop: The Boy Band Scam fails to say Pearlman’s ideas weren’t exactly groundbreaking

Throughout the whole of Dirty Pop, we’re made to believe that Lou Pearlman was years ahead of his time, and pretty much invented the boy band world. However, as very well pointed out by HuffingtonPost, the music mogul’s ideas weren’t that groundbreaking at all.

New Kids on the Block were hugely successful long before the Backstreet Boys, and they imitated Black groups such as Boyz II Men, Jodeci and The Jackson 5.

Dirty Pop only glances over some sexual impropriety claims

via Netflix

A 2007 Vanity Fair article, titled Mad About the Boys, published accusations that Lou Pearlman sexually abused members of his boy bands, but these allegations are only briefly touched upon in the documentary.

In that piece, Phoenix Stone, a member of a one of Pearlman’s groups, claimed the bands were “an excuse for Lou to hang around with five good-looking boys.” It said: “In 1997 and 1998, the first allegations of inappropriate behaviour involving Pearlman appear to have surfaced.”

The claims were regarding the youngest of the Backstreet Boys, Nick Carter, whose mother said: “Certain things happened, and it almost destroyed our family. I tried to warn everyone. I tried to warn all the mothers.” She added: ““These children are fearful, and they want to go on with their careers.”

Pearlman was never convicted of any sexually motivated crimes, and later said of the feature: “The accusations that came out in that article, none of it was substantiated.”

More people in Dirty Pop: The Boy Band Scam spoke about Frankie Vasquez’s death, but it got cut

Dirty Pop addresses the death of Lou Pearlman’s best friend and business partner, Frankie Vasquez. At the time it was reported he died by suicide, however Frankie’s mother Julia Vasquez makes the shocking claim that Pearlman may have played a part in the death.

Speaking on Real Form Radio, executive producer of Dirty Pop Michael Johnson said some of the people who were spoken to for the Netflix doc shared more about the death, but then asked for it to be cut.

“A lot of people talked about [the possibility that Pearlman was involved] in their interview and they actually got scared and told us not to include it,” he said. “Frankie was Lou’s best, best friend and right hand man with all of his endeavours…right when the kingdom was crumbling, Frankie died.”

Dirty Pop gives no context to that strange Justin Timberlake comment

via Netflix

Near the start of the docuseries, there’s a moment with a baby-faced Justin Timberlake, and a poster of Janet Jackson. “That’s my favourite one,” he can be seen saying, pointing at the poster.

This is presented without the context of why it’s a notable moment, that being Justin Timberlake’s 2004 Super Bowl performance with Janet Jackson, in which he accidentally exposed her boob.

Other documentaries have been made about the scandal

There have been many more documentaries made about Lou Pearlman, some many years before Dirty Pop: The Boy Band Scam on Netflix. Pearlman was featured in the third season of American Greed, in the episode called “Boy Band Mogul” in 2009. 

Five years prior to the Netflix series, another documentary was produced by Lance Bass, a member of *NSYNC. The Boy Band Con: The Lou Pearlman Story was released on YouTube Premium in April 2019 and features interviews with Bass, and fellow band members J.C. Chasez and Chris Kirkpatrick.

Pearlman was also the subject of an episode of ABC’s 20/20 titled The Hitman: From Pop to Prison, and an Investigation Discovery docuseries examined sexual assault allegations against Backstreet Boys member, Nick Carter.

Dirty Pop: The Boy Band Scam is available on Netflix now. For all the latest Netflix news, drops, quizzes and memes like The Holy Church of Netflix on Facebook. 

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