August 24, 2008
BY JIM DeROGATIS Pop Music Critic jimdero@jimdero.com

The inevitable ascendance of the Jonas Brothers as the male tween-pop phenomenon of the moment was obvious when the group opened for Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus on her massive tour late last year.

The brothers crooned, cooed, spun and jumped, but “discreetly libidinous” was the only impression the Broadway-trained, closeted Christian trio from Wyckoff, N.J., made on me that night, and the 11-year-old Hannah/Miley fan beside me wasn’t much more enthusiastic.

“They’re cute, and I like some of their songs” — notably “Kids of the Future,” their reworking of Kim Wilde’s New Wave classic “Kids in America,” from the soundtrack of “Meet the Robinsons” — the astute young critic said. “But they’re not all that. I think you should trash them, Dad!”

The ecstatic screams that filled the Allstate Arena indicated that we were in the minority, however, and even louder was the behind-the-scenes grind of the massive Disney star-making and marketing machine, which already was cranking into high gear.

Now, its success is manifest.

The JoBros recently made history for being the first group ever to sell more than 100,000 digital downloads for three consecutive singles: “Burnin’ Up,” “Play My Music” and “Pushin’ Me Away.” Their album “A Little Bit Longer” had one of the biggest debuts of this century last week — 525,000 copies sold, marking them as the ‘N Sync of the new millennium. And, in a bit of obvious demographic pandering, they even appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone.

So, who are these goobers, and how did they reach these lofty heights?

The fabulously coiffed brothers — Nick (15), Joe (18) and Kevin (20) — grew up in the Jersey suburbs and were home-schooled by their mother and father, an Evangelical Christian minister and former church musician. Though he’s the youngest, Nick is the group’s leader and spokesman, as well as the breakout star: He started performing on Broadway at age 7, appearing in “Beauty and the Beast” and “Les Miserables,” among other musicals.

Nick first caught the ear of Columbia Records with a recording of “Joy to World (A Christmas Prayer),” and a solo album of Christian pop songs followed. Mindful of the “MMMBop”/Hanson model, however, Columbia thought it would get more mileage from a brother act — Kevin and Joe had contributed to Nick’s solo disc — and a bevy of pro songwriters including Adam Schlesinger (Fountains of Wayne), Desmond Child (Aerosmith, Bon Jovi) and Billy Mann (Destiny’s Child, Jessica Simpson) was brought in to help craft the Jonas Brothers’ 2006 debut, “It’s About Time.”

The time wasn’t quite right, however, and Columbia dropped the group in early 2007. Enter Disney-owned Hollywood Records, which had heard the potential via Radio Disney’s support of the act, and the Mouse soon launched an unequaled assault on tween consciousness, placing the brothers in commercials (they sang the jingle for Baby Bottle Pops), beauty pageants (they performed two songs at Miss Teen USA), TV movies (”Camp Rock”) and TV series — most notably an episode of “Hannah Montana.”

Ah, dear Hannah. “Nick and I loved each other,” Cyrus recently told Seventeen magazine. “For two years he was basically my 24/7.” But they split, she was inspired to write several bitter break-up songs on her new album, “Breakout,” and Nick reportedly has moved on to date fellow Disney commodity Selena Gomez. Mind you, all of this 15-year-old action is on the most chaste of levels: The God-fearing brothers are famous for sporting “purity rings,” symbols that they will remain unsullied until marriage.

“To us, the rings are a constant reminder to live a life of values,” Nick reluctantly told Rolling Stone when pressed on the issue. “It’s about being a gentleman, treating people with respect and being the best guys we can be.”

The Jonases’ dad, Kevin Sr., added, “On a personal level, faith is extremely important. But I kind of cringe every time I read references to them being a Christian band, for the simple reason that they don’t sing Christian music. Probably because of my background, the boys get lumped into the Christian-music genre. But it isn’t their genre.”

So what exactly is their genre? Here’s the rub: The Jonas Brothers are clearly selling pre- and just-post-pubescent sex via glossy, glitzy, mildly tuneful and gently rocking power-pop — the oldest game in the history of popular music — but they’re treading a fine line by trying to do it in the most asexual, non-threatening way possible so as not to alienate a single wary parent or trepidatious 10-year-old.

Witness the carefully crafted double entendre of “BB Good,” the opening track of “A Little Bit Longer,” and a prime example of Jonas music. Over a recycled Pat Bentar/Journey guitar riff, the boys sing about a seemingly innocent date — “I’ll pick you up at 7 / We can drive around and see a movie” — with a subtext laid bare in the choruses — “You gotta be be good to me / I’m gonna be be good to you / We’ll be happy as can be / Just gotta be be good to me” — and a tension that explodes in rather creepy fashion during the spoken-word climax: “Listen girl, you gotta be good / I don’t wanna hurt you … I wanna kiss you!”

That could just as well be dialogue from a date rape as the prelude to an innocent teen make-out session. “Please Please Me” it ain’t, lyrically or musically, and the troubling clash between the carefully crafted image and the ultimate message in the Jonas Brothers’ music was best nailed by Joanne Brokaw, the “Gospel Soundcheck” columnist for the religious Web site Beliefnet.

“I hate that their heartthrob, teen-idol status sends mixed messages about their stance on purity,” Brokaw wrote. “I love that the guys wear purity rings and I believe they believe in what the rings stand for. But when you see them posing seductively on the cover of Rolling Stone (really, who thought that was cute?) and talking about their first kiss in Tiger Beat (or Bop or PopStar or whatever teen magazine you pick up), without an explanation of what purity really means, there’s the danger that what they share with their peers is simply a message that says, ‘Wear a purity ring but still be consumed with lusting after hot guys.’ ”

Given that the life span of most teen idols is measured in months, not years, and those purity rings basically serve as an open invitation for the paparazzi to produce an image showing the JoBros being anything but, the group’s current peak is, like Hannah/Miley’s, probably also the beginning of the end. Meanwhile, though, as has been true throughout pop history, sex sells, no matter how hard you try to disguise it.