If you spot any errors in the transcript, email hello@underunderstood.

Adrianne:

This is Underunderstood. Hi, everyone.

Billy:

Hello.

Regina:

Hey.

John:

Hey Adrianne.

Adrianne:

I have a new segment for us.

John:

A new segment.

Billy:

Awesome. Is music going to play here?

Adrianne:

Yeah. Toss the some music in here, John.

John:

Okay.

Adrianne:

It’s called Fact Checking Trivial Pursuit. So I was with Sam’s family this weekend, and we like to play-

John:

The Samily.

Adrianne:

The Samily. And we like to play Trivial Pursuit with his parents, even though none of us are very good at it. In fact, I would say we’re all really bad at it. And this was the 20th anniversary edition of Trivial Pursuit which means it’s about the years 1982 to 2002. Here is one of the questions that we got. What boy band did NASA admit they’d hired to write a song about the ‘International Space Station and perhaps microgravity’ in 2001?

Billy:

I would say *NSYNC is the obvious answer.

Adrianne:

Yeah. Or Backstreet Boys.

John:

Because didn’t one of them trained to go to space?

Adrianne:

It was Lance Bass.

John:

It was Lance Bass. We learned that in the circle.

Adrianne:

I knew that but yeah, he was being sponsored to go to space with the Russians making him a cosmonaut, not an astronaut and then he lost his funding. So he never got to go to space.

Billy:

Also, this was well after 2001. But One Direction did a music video at the Johnson Space Center.

Adrianne:

Right. So the question was, what boy band did NASA admit they’d hired to write a song about the, quote, “‘International Space Station and perhaps microgravity’ in 2001?”

John:

There’s only so many boy bands. I think it’s *NSYNC.

Adrianne:

Okay, you think it’s *NSYNC?

Billy:

Yeah, it’s got to be *NSYNC.

Adrianne:

You think? Okay, the answer is Natural.

Billy:

Natural.

Regina:

Who is that?

Adrianne:

Does anyone remember the band Natural?

Regina:

No, I thought maybe you were going to say 2gether or O-Town or something like that, but Natural, I’ve never even heard of.

Adrianne:

So I did not remember this band either, Natural. That was the answer on the back of the Trivial Pursuit card. So I tried to look it up because I wanted to hear the song. And I found this article. This is from the New Scientist, and it’s dated August 9th 2001. “NASA on mission to planet pop. In an effort to reach out to a new generation of space enthusiasts, NASA is to harness the power of pop music. The space agency plans to commission a song from new US boy band Natural, and is also considering further music projects including, possibly a rap song, which Coolio may be asked to compose.”

Billy:

Okay, now you’ve got my interest.

Regina:

What!

Adrianne:

“Daniel Goldin, head of NASA said that the agency must awaken young people’s interest in space exploration. ‘If we have to do it by being hip, so be it,’ he said. The theme of Natural’s song has yet to be decided but there are already a few suggestions floating around NASA. “I would love them to do something about the International Space Station and perhaps microgravity,” says Bertram Ulrich, curator of the NASA art program which will officially commissioned the song in the autumn. Ulrich said — Ulrick, Ulrich — said that a music video for the song could conceivably be filmed at one of NASA’s launch sites in front of a spacecraft.”

Adrianne:

“However, he dismissed reports that NASA planned to put the band in space to perform its song, that’s totally crazy, he said. The band, Natural, comes from the same artistic stable as successful boy bands including *NSYNC and the Backstreet Boys.”

Billy:

Does that mean Lou Pearlman?

Adrianne:

Good guess. Lou Pearlman, the infamous producer and super grifter who was behind *NSYNC and the Backstreet Boys and ran a massive pyramid scheme on the side is indeed involved here.

Billy:

I do think, especially in 2001, for a Lou Pearlman-financed boy band, that it’s kind of essential that the songs be drenched in sexual innuendo, right? So this is a consideration with NASA?

Adrianne:

This is their first hit music video. It’s called “Put Your Arms Around Me.”

John:

It’s playing the guitar on a dock?

Adrianne:

Battle of the bands flyer.

John:

They’re going to join a battle of the bands? Is that what this is?

Billy:

Okay, so they’re clearly going for more of a band vibe. A band in the sense of having instrumentalists.

Adrianne:

I’m just going to skip a little bit, okay, so we get to the good part of the video.

John:

This is different. Okay, now we are talking.

Adrianne:

Now they are in outer space. Watch that. Do you see that?

Billy:

That part existed solely so that there was a part where they could throw us their pelvic regions.

Adrianne:

Yeah, I was just impressed by the Matrix bullet time.

Ben Bledsoe:

So as Billy figured out, this was a Lou Pearlman band that never really got off the ground in the US, although they did have some international success. According to Wikipedia, big in Germany, big in the Philippines. Okay, so I’m googling. I’m trying to find the song, the NASA song. I just want to listen to the NASA song. I’m finding a lot of other stuff. I’m finding other collaborations between NASA and musicians. Other things that NASA has commissioned that I came across while I was looking for the natural songs, they commissioned Laurie Anderson as the artist in residence in 2002. Fast forward to 2016 when the Juno Rover probe approached Jupiter, they commissioned songs around that. They’ve got GZA, Trent Reznor, My Morning Jacket and Weezer. Weezer’s song is called “I Love the USA.”

John:

That’s a great lineup. I would go to that music festival.

Ben Bledsoe:

[music – I Love the USA]

Adrianne:

I’m still looking around for this freaking song by Natural. I have listened to a bunch of their songs, looked at the lyrics, nothing that was obviously about the International Space Station and perhaps microgravity or anything NASA.

Billy:

But it didn’t say it was released either, right?

Adrianne:

Right. So then I found this article from The Wall Street Journal, which is from a day before the New Scientist article, basically about the same thing but with some more detail. So same deal. They got a quote from Lou Pearlman, the group’s manager who has also launched the Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC. “NASA is hip and getting hipper,” he says. But this is the opening of the article.

Adrianne:

“At the launch of space shuttle endeavor earlier this year, teenage girls screamed and swooned. Were they thrilled at the sight of the spacecraft blasting off to the heavens? Probably, but they were really excited when just after liftoff, a new boy band broke into song. As part of its cultural outreach program, The National Aeronautics and Space Administration asked the teenybopper group, Natural, to perform at the launch and has commissioned the band to do a song about space travel on its new CD.”

John:

Great.

Regina:

What!

Adrianne:

And then, later in the article, it says, “Music may offer NASA its chance to reach the broadest audience.” In addition to commissioning a song called Down to Earth, from the boy band.” So we got the name of the song.

John:

Seems like the opposite of what really they should be doing.

Adrianne:

Yeah, up to space.

John:

Yeah.

Adrianne:

And then, I found another story from The Times of London which said, NASA’s updating its rather fusty image, and to shift it into a new orbit, the space agency has commissioned ‘Down to Earth’, a pop song about how small the Earth looks from the Moon. The song is performed by Natural, America’s hot new teen band. So then I went back to Natural’s discography, and Wikipedia says they had two albums and nine singles and Down to Earth is not here. Here’s my question is, what do we think happened here? Was the song ever made? Did Lou Pearlman decide that NASA could not pay enough?

John:

Yeah, but was it even written?

Adrianne:

The New Scientist article says, “Plans to commission.” The Wall Street Journal article says, “Commissioned.”

John:

I want to hear the song if it exists.

Adrianne:

I know. I want to hear the song if it exists also. Okay, I’m going to keep poking into it. I bet one of these band members would talk.

John:

Or sing.

Adrianne:

Yeah.

Billy:

Coming up, Adrianne takes your ears on an all expenses paid trip for two to Orlando, Florida.

Billy:

Hi, listeners, it’s Billy. I just want to quickly thank everyone who has participated in our Patreon. If you don’t know, this show is produced by the four of us that you hear on it, we are completely independent. And in order to support that effort, we’ve set up a Patreon, it’s at patreon.com/underunderstood, you can find a link to it in the show notes. And if you pledge on there, one thing you can get access to is Overunderstood, which is a bonus show that we do every week regardless of if Underunderstood is currently in season and we have over 50 episodes in there already.

Billy:

That show is a bit looser, it’s more conversational and it’s a bit more of an open dialogue with our community. So if you’ve already contributed to Patreon, and you’re part of that community, and you’re in our Discord, thank you so much. And if you haven’t yet checked it out, go there, dip your toes in, you can see what’s on there without actually having to pledge, and if you do pledge, you could just do it for a month, pay us $5 and get access to 50 episodes and then totally bail on us. That’s fine. It’s your life. Live your life how you want. But if you choose to stick around there’s a great community there, and we would love to have you, and we really appreciate your support. So I don’t know, if you haven’t yet, maybe go take a little peek. Patreon.com/underunderstood. Alright, back to the show.

Adrianne:

Hey, everyone.

John:

Hey, Adrianne.

Adrianne:

I’m very excited. I actually found some answers about Natural and the missing NASA song.

John:

Was it in space?

Adrianne:

It was in some kind of space. Let’s just start with a guy named Steve Kipner.

Steve Kipner:

Good to talk to you.

Adrianne:

Steve is an Australian pop songwriter who lives in LA now and you definitely know his work. So for example, do you remember this song?

Ben Bledsoe:

[music]

Regina:

Oh my God, yes. Christina Aguilera, Genie in the Bottle.

Billy:

Genie in the Bottle.

Adrianne:

Absolutely. How about this song?

Billy:

Yeah.

Regina:

98 Degrees?

Billy:

98 Degrees.

Adrianne:

Correct. And then also, this one’s a little trickier.

John:

I don’t know this one.

Adrianne:

I’ll give you a hint. This is the demo that he recorded for what eventually would become the song.

Regina:

I feel like I know it but… Oh, yeah.

Adrianne:

So this was the original demo reel for what became Olivia Newton-John’s song “Physical.”

Billy:

The male lead that was throwing me off.

Adrianne:

Yeah. So Steve’s also written for Dolly Parton, The Temptations, Chicago, Cheap Trick, LFO, Huey Lewis and the News, he’s written for everybody.

Steve Kipner:

I know. I’ve just done what I do one job all my life. music, I don’t know how to do anything else. I can’t change a light bulb.

Regina:

Don’t seem usually exclusive but…

Adrianne:

Anyway, Steve was already a very well established songwriter when the boy band phenomenon appeared in the US.

Steve Kipner:

I thought, “Well, I want to get on this bandwagon.” So I just started sending a few songs to these different types of bands. And before I knew it, I definitely had some people wanting to sing my songs.

Adrianne:

Steve wrote Natural’s first hit, which is probably their best known song, Put Your Arms Around Me. We listened to that a little bit.

Ben Bledsoe:

I wonder if you want to pull it up on YouTube and listen to it for a second to jog your memory.

Steve Kipner:

I remember it. Let me just see where YouTube is here. Yeah, just a minute. Natural.

Billy:

I like how he pulls it up the same way we all do.

John:

Yeah.

Regina:

He has to sit through the pre roll.

Steve Kipner:

Put Your Arms Around Me, I found it.

Ben Bledsoe:

[music].

Ben Bledsoe:

There are certain songs of course that I feel a little bit more proud of than others because I remember every detail about them. This one, not so much.

Adrianne:

This is just another job for Steve. So he never actually met the band. He didn’t know who the song was going to be for when he wrote it. The job just came in through the publisher, and computers and the digital production made it really easy.

Steve Kipner:

We just wrote that song in a day.

Adrianne:

And the trick with Put Your Arms Around Me was that the song was pretty much predestined to be a hit. It didn’t really matter what it sounded like. Do you remember Claire’s Accessories?

Regina:

Yes.

Billy:

Claire’s in the mall?

Regina:

Like the glitter and headbands? Yeah.

Adrianne:

Yeah.

Billy:

Where I’d get my second hole?

Adrianne:

Right. Yeah.

John:

What did you just say?

Billy:

Where you go and get your second hole.

Adrianne:

Yeah, where you get your second hole.

John:

That’s what I thought you said.

Adrianne:

Claire’s, mandatory stop for teens in the mall, it’s where you go to get your ears pierced. Claire’s promoted the single in its store.

Steve Kipner:

And there would be a minimum guaranteed amount of records sold. So it was fine with me. But it wasn’t like… That also felt, if I’m really honest, a little bit of a cop out because it’s not really people loving that song, it’s because they can’t help it. They get it in that with their facewash, whatever it is.

Adrianne:

The press release from Claire’s at the time claimed that this magical partnership between Natural and Claire’s happened because the band was on a flight with a Claire’s executive and then sang for her. And she loved them so much that she cut this deal. I’m not sure if I buy that. It sounds like marketing spin, but sure. So I went back through the Billboard magazines from 2001 and 2002, and it looks like Natural did not hit the hot 100 in the US, which are the most popular songs. And at the time, this was mostly judged by radio play. But they did get to the top of Billboard’s singles sales chart. So they sold a bunch of copies and also did even better in other countries like the UK and Germany. Anyway, I was hoping that the band had tapped Steve to do their NASA song but he had never heard about it. And in fact, he never wrote anything else for Natural. He just did that one song, never gave it much thought, just another job.

Steve Kipner:

I’m certainly no Mozart type of a guy. I’m just a pop guy.

Adrianne:

So that was a dead end. And it seemed like I should probably just see what the band members are up to these days.

Ben Bledsoe:

Can you hear me?

Adrianne:

Yes, you sound great.

Ben Bledsoe:

Perfect. Thank you. You sound great as well.

Adrianne:

This is Ben Bledsoe. He was the bassist and one of the main vocalists for Natural.

Billy:

Wow.

Ben Bledsoe:

I was born in Snellville, Georgia, it’s basically Atlanta and on the sign up front of the city at their town. It says “Everybody is somebody in Snellville,” because it really was a small town.

Adrianne:

Ben’s father is a world-renowned entomologist and moved around a lot for work. So pretty soon, the family moved from Snellville to Northern California.

Ben Bledsoe:

My mom was teaching summer course at the local college, which is across the street from my middle school at the time. And I saw that they were taking auditions for a musical and they were looking for kids. It was for “The Music Man,” so they needed some kids. And I did that show, and basically the next show was “Oliver,” and I was cast as Oliver and then it took off.

Adrianne:

Suddenly, Ben is taking auditions constantly. He’s doing modeling, he’s doing acting, he’s singing, he’s driving down to LA, he’s bringing in a little money. So then Ben’s dad gets another promotion and he gets the option to move basically anywhere in the Eastern half of the country. And the family all gets together and consults on where they want to go.

Ben Bledsoe:

I knew for me, acting and stuff wise, that it was probably in New York or Orlando because at the time, Nickelodeon and Disney and stuff were still filming out of Orlando. I thought that sounded way better to me at that point in my life than New York, which sounded a little scary.

Adrianne:

Which it is. So they move to Orlando and Ben finds himself in the middle of the Mickey Mouse club scene. He’s meeting all these cool kids. He’s on Kenan and Kel, he does Shelby Woo, he sings a duet with Mandy Moore at a Christmas show. And it’s actually how he gets this audition that foreshadows the rest of his musical career was through Mandy Moore’s agent seeing him sing.

Ben Bledsoe:

She calls me and says, “Hey, I have an unusual audition for you, I’m probably going to go with you and your parents obviously can come as well. We can ride together whatever you want,” which is very unusual, at least in my experience for an agent to go to an audition with you. She said there’s two or three songs. She was like, learn these songs and-

Adrianne:

Do you remember the songs?

Ben Bledsoe:

I remember at least two of them. One was “As Long As You Love Me,” and one was “Quit Playing Games With my Heart.”

Adrianne:

The Backstreet Boys were sourced and formed in Orlando but Lou Pearlman sent them to Europe to get started. They did their first tour there, they did their first release there. So Ben had never heard these songs. They weren’t on the radio in the US.

Ben Bledsoe:

And so we go in and this big guy is there and he greets us, and he wants us in, and shows us all this crazy music memorabilia and some Star Wars stuff that’s limited edition. Super, from the set type stuff.

Adrianne:

So the guy of course, is Lou Pearlman.

Billy:

Lou Pearlman.

Adrianne:

Lou Pearlman is credited with having a huge influence on pop culture. He also put his artists in very predatory contracts. He would act like this generous guy, super supportive, hype man and then he would turn on you and become this ruthless cold businessmen. Multiple artists he managed also described how he came on to them sexually or secretly took videos of them. On top of that, he defrauded thousands of investors in Florida in a pyramid scheme, and he died in prison in 2016.

Ben Bledsoe:

I sing the songs, he’s like, “This is really great. I really like your voice.” So basically, what’s happening is I have this band, this boy band, and they’re called the Backstreet Boys and he was like, “Nick turns 18 this year, and we’re worried that Nick is going to leave. So we just want to be prepared. If he does leave, we’re looking for somebody to take over.”

John:

I like the idea that you turn 18 and immediately you’re out of the band.

Adrianne:

Right. It’s like a little “Logan’s Run.”

Ben Bledsoe:

We start talking and I don’t know what triggered it. But all of a sudden, he realized that I also sang low and could beat box and things like that. And he was like, “There’s this band that I just put together.” He was like, “We were looking for somebody. The band is called *NSYNC and their last letters of each name is the first letter of *NSYNC.”

John:

Last letters of each… ?

Billy:

Yeah.

John:

Wait, Billy, you know this?

Billy:

Yeah, of course.

John:

What does that mean?

Billy:

Yeah, I absolutely knew that. Why do you think it’s spelled so strangely?

Adrianne:

Okay. So you’re referring to the fact that the letters of *NSYNC were supposed to correspond with the last letter of each band members first name. So Justin, N, Chris, S, Joey, Y, and so on.

Billy:

So he would have to replace Justin if he were in *NSYNC.

Adrianne:

No.

Ben Bledsoe:

So N is for Justin, and S is for Chris and all this stuff. And he was like, “We just brought somebody in. His name is Lance. So we have to make it up and call him Lansten as a way to fix it.” He’s like, “Your name is Ben, and you sing low, and you sing high.” And he was like, “Not to be rude, but he’s really struggling with the dancing too.”

Billy:

Wow.

John:

Lansten Bass?

Adrianne:

Yeah, so I didn’t remember this, but I reached out to Lisa Del Campo, who is Lance Bass’s personal assistant who we all know from our favorite reality show, “The Circle,” and she responds within five minutes. And she confirmed that Lance did have to temporarily rebrand as Lancsten so that the last letter of his name could be the second N in *NSYNC.

Billy:

Right, two N’s. I wasn’t thinking about that.

Adrianne:

But you were maybe almost in Backstreet Boys or *NSYNC. That’s wild.

Ben Bledsoe:

It’s at least what Lou said, which you can take with a grain of salt at all times.

Adrianne:

So nothing comes of this audition. Nick Carter stays in the Backstreet Boys, Lance Bass stays in *NSYNC.

Billy:

So you think it’s possible that Lou Pearlman was trying to instill some FOMO in him? Like, “If you were only here a month earlier, I would have put you in this giant band.” Or, “If you were here three weeks earlier, I would have put you in this giant band.”

Regina:

Yeah, I think so.

Adrianne:

Yeah, I think that’s possible, except that Ben had no idea who either of these bands were.

Regina:

I think I’m with Billy. I feel like this is a way of making him feel like he missed out on two opportunities. So there’s no way he’ll miss out on the next one.

Billy:

Yeah. Here’s this crappy a third one to take instead.

Adrianne:

Anyway, Ben starts to make things happen for himself on his own. Back to Orlando, the pop hits of the boy band era are starting to hit the radio. The parties are hopping, the teens are bopping and there is this speed dating happening just like all the time between these talented young singers who are trying to start bands with each other.

John:

So it’s this frenzy of kids that would have parties on the weekends and sing a capella to each other and have a capella battles and everything.

Adrianne:

So that’s Michael Johnson. He was the drummer for Natural.

Michael Johnson:

People were moving from all over the country to just get together and we would meet at these teen nights at House of Blues in Orlando. Everybody would go there to see who’s next in the line of bands and I wound up meeting Ben at one of those parties. And we hit it off right away.

Adrianne:

At this point, Ben had joined up with Marc Terenzi and Michael Horn. But they needed more guys. And those guys ended up being Michael Johnson and his best friend Patrick Kane. So the band now consists of Ben, the easygoing one, Marc, the fame-hungry one, Michael Johnson, the goofy one, Patrick, the business savvy one, and Michael Horn, the creative one. So Horn was rebranded as “J” Horn in order to avoid having two Michaels. He’s J now for the rest of the story. So they start singing a capella outside these teen nights at House of Blues, and they’re handing out flyers, they’re taking every audition that comes up, they’re building have a fan base and they became a hit in their own right.

Michael Johnson:

We finally got our own teen night at House of Blues. And it was our very first show and we sold it out with all the fans that we’d made from just hustling our asses off. The buzz started.

Adrianne:

At one of these auditions that they were always taking, they end up in front of Veit Renn who is another super producer in Orlando. Veit takes them under his wing and starts sending them out on gigs in Europe.

Ben Bledsoe:

All very smaller gigs, maybe at a small festival or something where it’s the Leiderhosen festival or something.

Billy:

When do we start taking Underunderstood on a Bavarian tour?

Adrianne:

I know. I want to play the Leiderhosen festival.

Ben Bledsoe:

So basically, we’ve made it. We’re flying to Germany on a plane to play in another country. We literally only have four songs that we know how to play and, or sing and dance. We’re still a hodgepodge of things at this point.

Adrianne:

And they find themselves backstage at this massive festival in Cologne called Popkomm. And a concert promoter walks up to them because one of the headliners had to cancel at the last minute.

Billy:

I’m going to extend my conspiracy to say that this was all pre arranged by Lou Pearlman. This is some deep level manipulation.

John:

Like stolen passport?

Adrianne:

Totally could be.

Billy:

To make them feel like that all of this is serendipitous and destined.

Adrianne:

Right. It’s a fairy tale.

Billy:

Yeah, exactly.

Ben Bledsoe:

And so she was like, “Guys, can you fill in for them?” And we’re like, “We only have four songs.” She just looked at us with her cigarette half out of her mouth going, “Play the shit out of those songs.” And so we’re like, “Okay.”

Adrianne:

And they play.

Michael Johnson:

I don’t even think we had cables long enough for the guys playing guitar and stuff to even move around on a stage that big. We had never been on a stage that big ever.

Ben Bledsoe:

And so you can see the sound travel because as we hit the first note and start jumping, bouncing the music, we saw the whole audience, it’s basically a wave of people rolling back as they hear the beat. And I was just like, “Holy crap!” I just remember that moment of realizing, “This is big. There’s a lot of people.”

Michael Johnson:

I’m thinking about it. I do remember it being just incredibly overwhelming and very awkward.

Ben Bledsoe:

I’m completely numb as to how it went because it was just larger than life.

Adrianne:

But someone was impressed. Because guess who’s also at Popkomm?

Billy:

Buzz Aldrin.

Adrianne:

Lou Pearlman.

Billy:

Right.

Adrianne:

Back in Orlando, there’s a whisper network and the guys in Natural had been warned about Lou Pearlman. They were told he was striking bad contracts, and so they figured, “We have a good deal with Veit Renn, we’ll stick with him.” And they would go practice at Lou Pearlman’s labels practice stage because it was just a big practice stage in Orlando at Transcontinental Records, and they would literally stop playing if Lou walked into the room. But in Germany, Lou finally caught up with them and saw them play.

Ben Bledsoe:

When he saw us at Popkomm, he came back, he found us, he was like, “Guys, tomorrow. I’m setting up tomorrow with you the top like five labels. I’m going to have you play in front of them, I’m going to get you a sign.”

Adrianne:

So they’re coming down off this high of playing for this huge crowd and they don’t have anything to do the next day. So they’re like, “Alright, we’ll do the audition.” And they play, and they absolutely bomb. They do not get signed. And the whole thing is dicey because they’re supposed to be working with Veit Renn, right? And Veit’s not happy about it. I contacted Veit to get his side of the story but he was worried about his NDA and couldn’t get in touch with his lawyer in time. But he and Lou settled, and Lou gets control of the band. And the guys are a little worried about Lou’s reputation but they’re also excited, because Lou’s excited.

Ben Bledsoe:

Lou didn’t miss a beat. He brought in Steve Kipner right away. He was like, “He did ‘Let’s Get Physical” and he did ‘Genie in a Bottle,’ and he did all this stuff, and Lou’s doing his shpiel, and so he’s got this song and he plays it for us and that was pretty much it. I think maybe a week later, we were in the studio recording it, and that was “Put Your Arms Around Me.” And that became our first single globally.

Adrianne:

Lou also booked them on this big tour.

Ben Bledsoe:

It was our first trip with Lou as our manager. He was like, “We’re going to go to the Philippines.”

Adrianne:

And of course, Lou ambushes them with a surprise contract as they’re about to step on the plane.

John:

Of course.

Adrianne:

Long story short, they’re told, either sign the contract and get on the plane and do the tour or it’s all over.

Billy:

You can’t get on the plane. You are going to be stranded on this tarmac.

Adrianne:

Well I think it was more like, “You won’t get to go on this fabulous tour that we’ve all been looking forward to.”

Billy:

Right.

Adrianne:

And it was a fabulous tour. They have an amazing time, a wild time in the Philippines. They hear their song on the radio. They play alongside these huge acts like they played with Puddle Of Mudd. And they play the President of the Philippines’s birthday party. And then, she loves them so much that she asks them to come to dinner with her. And then she lends them the presidential motorcade so that they can drive around the Philippines without getting stuck in traffic.

Billy:

I’m convinced all of these was prepaid for it. This is all part of the manipulation. That song was timed to play on the radio station at a certain time when they were in the cab.

Adrianne:

Either way, Lou is making things happen for them. He’s just manifesting opportunities. You remember the story from the Claire’s press release about how they made this deal because the Natural guys singing to a Claire’s executive on plane?

Billy:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah.

Adrianne:

That turned out to be true. Ben told me Lou is sitting up in first class with Michael and Michael had blue hair at the time.

Ben Bledsoe:

And this woman who’s sitting next to Lou goes, “What’s the deal with his blue hair?” And he’s like, “This is Michael. He’s a part of my band Natural. You got to check them out.” Lou doesn’t miss a beat. He doesn’t care who you are. We’ve sung for our dinner at Lowery’s and Morton’s before, it doesn’t matter. He’s, “Show these people who you are, blah, blah, blah.” Constantly pushing and promoting and whatever. So he’s like, “Get all the guys.” So we go up where we sing, who knows what, a capella for this woman. Then it turns out, it was all worth it. She was basically the head of Claire’s and so they did this thing where they really start single and we got our first gold record through Claire’s, again, through some magic Lou pulled out on a plane one time from somebody asking, why does this guy have blue hair?

Billy:

Okay, some scheme.

John:

Billy, I feel like there’s a combination of scheming and really outrageous luck for Lou Pearlman through his entire life.

Adrianne:

Yeah, I agree with that. Anyway, so I got swept up in this fairy tale story of the career of Natural. But I had really called these guys to talk about this NASA deal. So I asked Ben about it.

Ben Bledsoe:

I remember one day Lou was talking to us, I think we were actually in Orlando. We were at NYPD Pizza or whatever, his pizzeria. And he’s like, “I’m working on something really cool. I met somebody from NASA and I have some crazy ideas.” So this is where Lou excelled. Is he just would make up some crazy idea and then somehow, it would manifest. So I don’t know who his point person was. But basically, we started getting deeper and deeper with NASA.

Adrianne:

So Natural starts going to all these NASA events and sometimes they would play and sometimes they wouldn’t play and just meet Warren Beatty and hang out with astronauts. And all this time, Lou is talking this big game about how they’re going to do all this over the top branding, co-branding stuff with NASA.

Ben Bledsoe:

He probably just met a guy that was from NASA, and maybe on another flight, who knows what happened. And he was like, “If we get enough money, I’m going to put the Natural logo on the side of the rocket.” Crazy stuff. He’s just saying crazy stuff. And we’re like, “Hello, this cool.” They wanted us to write a song that was going to be played from the International Space Station. And so they were going to do it as a way to build excitement for the space program, so they wanted to have a big band. So the initial conversation was Aerosmith. They wanted to have Aerosmith create a custom song and have it performed from the ISS.

Ben Bledsoe:

And I think Lou just got in there and was like, “No, I’m going to take this over. Aerosmith, you don’t want them. What you want is guys that can actually fly up to space if you want them to and perform at the ISS.” He was literally lobbying for us to go to space to the point where, from what I heard, and again, some of this is from Lou, so some of this could be fabricated. But they were talking about how they were already testing instruments in zero gravity. And we were already talking with those people about if that was a possibility that we were basically willing to sign off on it.

Adrianne:

So Lou is telling the band that not only are they going to write a song for NASA, but they are going to go to space.

John:

How common is it for civilians to wind up in space?

Adrianne:

It’s unheard of at this point. I don’t think they realized how extreme of an operation that would be to send a band of civilians to space, five of them. And so the guys are fully bought on this. They’re talking about it like it’s going to happen. They think they’re going through training, they think they’re going to go sing, they think they’re writing the song, they think it’s real.

Michael Johnson:

They wanted to send us to space and we would be the first people to perform a song from space.

Ben Bledsoe:

J said, “Definitively no guys. I love you guys but that’ll be the last time in the band if that’s what it takes to stay in this band.” The rest of us we’re like, “Are you kidding me? This is the greatest opportunity of all time.” So we were super excited about it.

John:

I think I would be the J.

Adrianne:

Yeah, no, I would be the J if Underunderstood went to space, I’d be like, “Sorry guys.”

Regina:

I don’t know about this.

Billy:

I’m down, I’d go.

Regina:

Of course you would, I think it might just be you, Billy.

Adrianne:

So Ben and Michael start writing the song. And they’re collaborating with Danny O’Donoghue, who is now in the band, Irish rock band, The Script. And the song that they worked on was not called Down to Earth as the papers reported. Ben thinks that’s something that Lou made up on the spot when asked by a reporter. It was called, “Is There Anyone Out There?”

Billy:

Oh, that’s much better, actually.

Adrianne:

Yeah, it makes way more sense.

Ben Bledsoe:

So it was called “Is There Anyone Out There?” The concept was more about just exploring everything. I think we wanted to leave it open to interpretation and that it could be like a religious concept for somebody or it could be a relationship conversation with somebody or it could be aliens for somebody or it could be anything. We wanted to leave it nonspecific, because I think we knew the gravitas of it being a song that would have some place in history, even if small.

Adrianne:

Ben said that the song was sort of serious mid tempo with an acoustic vibe.

Billy:

That’s really smart, actually, because we were talking earlier about like, how would you do it without sexual innuendo? But a ballad about longing really fits. I mean, it makes sense.

John:

Did you get him to sing it or anything?

Adrianne:

Yeah, he was actually really shy about it. But he did sing a little snippet.

Billy:

Oh, wow.

Ben Bledsoe:

And it was sort of like (sings), “Is there anyone out there? I’m calling.” I don’t remember the lyrics. “You out. Is there anyone out there? I’m calling you out.” I don’t know if it’s almost more of a Train-y vibe, Train type vibe now that didn’t I don’t think existed at that point or we didn’t know it but it was cool. It was really pretty.

Billy:

Train. I mean, Drops of Jupiter also it’d be a good candidate.

Regina:

I was going to say that too.

Adrianne:

So they’re working on the song, it’s going well. They’re writing lyrics. They’re writing tunes. And what ended up happening was actually really sad. This is Michael’s recollection of the end of the collaboration with NASA.

Michael Johnson:

We’re going to be writing a song with… I believe his name was Will McCool, which is obviously the coolest name ever. But he was a crew member on Space Shuttle Columbia. So we were preparing to go through a space training, talking with NASA about what needs to be done, how we’re going to pull it off talking to all the space-side people about how we’re going to pull it off. And in the meantime, we were singing the national anthem for the launch of Space Shuttle Columbia, which Will McCool was on. And he was a big music fan and played guitar and stuff.

Adrianne:

Yeah, so the launch of Columbia was in January 2003. And it went well.

Newscaster:

Three, two, one. We have booster ignition and liftoff at Space Shuttle Columbia with a multitude of national and international space research experiments.

Adrianne:

So the idea was that Michael and Danny would collaborate on a song with Will McCool, and they’d prepared some of it and the plan was to bring it to Will and then finish it with him. But Will was on that shuttle’s last flight. The band is getting back from an international trip when they see Columbia on the news.

Michael Johnson:

I remember getting to the airport when we landed and seeing that the Space Shuttle Columbia had blown up on reentry.

Newscaster:

Space Shuttle Columbia. And if you’re just joining us, 100 miles south of Dallas, Texas at an altitude of 200,000 feet, the Space Shuttle Columbia, on its 28th mission broke up in flight six times the speed of sound. Take a look at the [inaudible 00:39:11].

Michael Johnson:

I’m getting chills and choking up talking about it. But I’ll never forget being in that airport and seeing that on the television that the guy that we were supposed to write this song with or finish the song with… First of all, he was dead. And everybody that we had sung the national anthem for, for the launch, for all of their families and everything, they were dead. And it was just international tragedy, of course. But it was so personal to us that… I know that at that point, the song there was like nothing that we were trying to do or like us going to space as exciting as it would have been. None of that mattered. For me, it was all gone, that was just not going to be a thing that happened anymore and that’s where that project just ended.

Adrianne:

The Columbia disaster killed seven astronauts. And NASA shut down the space shuttle program for two years.

Billy:

And what happened to the band?

Adrianne:

Well they broke up. It started with Marc.

Michael Johnson:

Marc being Marc, he… I don’t mean to blame it all on him. It just kind of was the straw that broke the camel’s back. He did the ultimate no, no, when you’re in a boy band. First of all, he got a tattoo. So that was like…

Adrianne:

Oh no.

Michael Johnson:

That was like blood in the water. And then he got a tattoo of the girl who he had just gotten pregnant, and then wound up marrying. So when you’re in a boy band, there are rules. And those are all the things you are not supposed to do. No tattoos, no girlfriends, and no kids. So he did all of those things in one swoop. And one thing that kind of came from Marc’s relationship, her name was Sarah Connor. She’s like still a massive star and massive singer and in Germany. And we started understanding that, even though Sarah was opening for us, her dancers were making more money than us.

Michael Johnson:

And we started through her eyes, understanding, “Okay, something’s wrong here.” We just started questioning everything because up until then, we had been isolated from the rest of the industry because we weren’t on a normal record label that has other artists that we could talk to. It was like everything was going through Lou. Our deal with BMG was through Lou. We didn’t have label mates. We were kind of on an island that Lou had created. So we didn’t have other people to talk to, to be like, “How much are you making on this show?”

Adrianne:

So ultimately, the band members, this caused a lot of arguing within the band and ultimately, they went their separate ways.

John:

This seems like something I’ve heard about other Lou Pearlman acts.

Adrianne:

Yeah, that’s sound a little familiar.

Regina:

Yes.

Billy:

Yeah. That they come to the realization that they weren’t making enough money and move to terminate the thing.

Regina:

If they can.

Billy:

Yeah.

Adrianne:

So if you remember, we started this out as a challenge to fact check Trivial Pursuit. And I’m happy to say the question, which was precisely worded was correct. NASA did commission a song from a boy band, it was going to be performed by Natural, it was called, “Is There Anyone Out There?” And it was about searching for someone or some meaning in the universe. But the song was never finished. And we don’t have any way to hear it.

Ben Bledsoe:

It’s lost to all time because it literally was never made.

Regina:

I think we should commission it.

Billy:

Yeah, we got to make it.

Adrianne:

Interesting you say that because my original goal was to hear something, like to listen to this song. So I thought maybe we could do the next best thing. So I asked Ben and Michael, would they be okay with it if we tried to finish it? And they were both super supportive, if you’re okay with it.

Michael Johnson:

That is amazing.

Ben Bledsoe:

This is your creative space now.

Adrianne:

Of course, I had to go back to Steve Kipner to see if he had any tips.

Steve Kipner:

You don’t want to bore us, you got to get to the chorus, is an expression we always used.

Adrianne:

Don’t bore us get to the chorus.

Billy:

Yeah.

Adrianne:

So we tapped an extremely talented songwriter named Jon Fuller. And we sent him the brief and I do believe he understood the assignment. So this is, ‘Is There Anyone Out There? [music]

Regina:

Underunderstood is Adrianne Jeffries, John Lagomarsino, Billy Disney and me, Regina Dellea.

Adrianne:

Super special thanks to Jon Fuller who provided us with the certified bop, “Is There Anyone Out There?” Based on concepts by Ben Bledsoe, Michael Johnson and Danny O’Donoghue with additional production by John Lagomarsino. You can find the song and links to Jon Fuller’s work on our website.

Regina:

If you want to support the show, which helps us pay people like Jon for their great work, go to patreon.com/underunderstood. It’s $5 a month to access our Discord chat room and over 50 episodes of our bonus show Overunderstood.

Adrianne:

Email us at Hello@underunderstood.com if you have a question from Trivial Pursuit that you need fact checked or if there’s just something that you can’t find the answer to on the internet.

Regina:

Thanks for listening, we’ll be back in two weeks.