Big Poppa's Bubble Gum Machine

Advice for the modern teen idol: there's more to it than just cashing royalty checks and autographing training bras. There are difficult issues that must be faced. For instance, some toy company may want to measure your face so that it can manufacture dolls with your likeness. You could make a lot of money selling them to your youngest fans, but then your older fans--the 12- and 13-year-olds--would think you're babyish and move on to Hanson. And then there's all the choreography you have to remember while you're trying to look as yummy as possible. And the whole goatee-or-non-goatee dilemma. And the fact that your manager keeps insisting you enter your hotels through the front door to keep the fans at the police barricades happy. It's a hard row to hoe for the turn-of-the-century dreamboat.

Still, these are fat times for bubble gum and its makers. Backstreet Boys, a quintet of clean--but not too clean--cut guys with great dimples and abs, was nominated for a Grammy as Best New Artist this year and has so far grossed more than $900 million in record, video and merchandise sales. Last year the group's eponymous debut album was the nation's third best-selling record, followed closely by its chief rival 'N Sync, another quintet of clean--but not too clean--cut guys with great dimples and abs whose eponymous debut was the year's fifth best seller. Both records, with their similar mixes of pop dance music spiked with just a touch of hip-hop edge, are still holding strong in the Top 40, as is 'N Sync's Christmas album. In January.

"Everybody is copying now," grumbles Maurice Starr, who put together the pre-eminent '80s boy groups, New Edition and New Kids on the Block. He is preparing to launch two new groups later this year. Quintets and quartets of young European hotties are also circling the American market. The Backstreet and 'N Sync numbers are like prepubescent chum.

"I don't think this thing has peaked yet," says Tom Calderone, senior vice president of music at MTV. The network was originally loath to air Backstreet Boys and 'N Sync videos, until viewer demand overcame the reflexive hipster's prejudice against groups whose faces appear on school binders with little hearts drawn around them by hand. Backstreet Boys and 'N Sync are currently MTV's most requested artists. "Whether it's cool or not," concedes Calderone, "it's what the viewers want."

If, to untrained eyes and ears, the two groups are virtually indistinguishable, there are a pair of good reasons for this. First, the time-tested formulas for making music for young girls to swoon to still work. They date all the way back through New Kids, the Jackson Five and the Monkees to the Beatles, who in their earliest, cuddliest incarnation were the progenitors of this sort of thing--if you don't count Frank Sinatra or Franz Liszt or probably some medieval troubadour no one remembers.

And second, both Backstreet Boys and 'N Sync are the brainchildren of the same man: Louis J. Pearlman, a florid 44-year-old entrepreneur based in Orlando, Fla., whose countenance suggests Ken Starr crossed with the late Chris Farley. Pearlman's ambition for his Trans Continental Entertainment and related companies is nothing less than to create a new Motown. O-Town, for Orlando, is the name he has given his sprawling $6 million recording studio that doubles as a boot camp for would-be stars. Here the crushes of tomorrow are groomed by teams of choreographers, vocal coaches, personal trainers, marketers, stylists and p.r. experts. Pearlman's stable includes a young girl group and three more up-and-coming boy groups, including C-Note, a quartet of three cute Hispanic guys and one cute blond guy, from whom many in the music industry are expecting big things when their first Latin-inflected CD is released this spring.

On a recent afternoon at the O-Town complex, C-Note is huddled inside a sound room harmonizing with a vocal coach, while down the hall, Take Five, a younger-than-'N Sync quintet for pre-preteen fans, is practicing footwork with a choreographer. Pearlman comes in to take a look, and the kids stop to give him hugs and shake his hand. "What's up, Big Poppa?" one of them asks (they actually call him that). "Did you get a haircut, man?" "You look like Tom Cruise," jokes another. Big Poppa beams.

At present, there are 24 young musicians signed to the studio, most found through ads in the trades or auditions; many are from the Orlando area, where performers now flock because of the increasing film and television production at Disney and Universal, as well as all the singing and dancing jobs at theme-park shows. The O-Town kids are paid $500 to $1,000 a week until their groups take off and they start making real money. Or not. A reporter jokes that if things don't work out, the boys can always go to work for the Chippendales chain, which Pearlman owns. "Or make pizza," Big Poppa adds. He owns a pizza restaurant too. Meantime, he tries to keep his young charges from the well-known temptations, drugs and whatnot, that come with the music business. "Big Poppa's watching," he says. Like a rich uncle, Big Poppa has been known to throw elaborate pool parties or fly group members and their parents to New York City for dinner.