She made sure they did “The Right Stuff.”
New Kids on the Block singer Joey McIntyre’s mom wanted to ensure that the world-famous boy band kept it clean and wholesome.
“My mother was a staunch Catholic. I mean, she actually called the record company [because] there was a little too much cleavage in one of our videos and was like, ‘Change that clip,’” McIntyre, 51, the youngest of the five band members, told The Post.
McIntyre, the youngest of nine children, is thankful his late mom was so religious.
“I mean, thank God, because I wouldn’t be here, right? I mean, birth control was not an option, so that’s why they had nine kids. They just kept going, God Bless them.”
The pop star and his fellow bandmates — Donnie Wahlberg, Danny Wood and brothers Jordan and Jonathan Knight — released their eighth album “Still Kids” on Friday, their first in 11 years, and will embark on a 40-city concert tour this summer.
The group, which formed in 1984, disbanded in 1994, but reunited in 2008 because the timing was right, McIntyre said.
“You have to be patient. And I think a lot of people wanted us to get together for award shows or their TV show, all this stuff. And we knew we had something more special than that,” he said.
“And so when we were ready and we did do it, our fans were ready too.”
The guys enjoyed their fame in the ’80s and ’90s.
“I don’t think we were celibate, let’s put it that way. I mean, we were teenagers,” he said.
Even before the internet, girls were tracking them down.
“Oh, God, I mean, they were at our houses. It was crazy,” said McIntyre, who grew up in the suburbs of Boston.
Before the advent of social media, the boys had a hotline that fans, known as “Blockheads,” could call to hear pre-recorded messages from the group — unbeknownst to their parents.
“Now it’s famous for fans telling us all the time that they got grounded because their parents wouldn’t know and they’d find the phone bills and go, ‘What’s this $50 for?’” he said.
“Pink was famously grounded for calling in to our number.”
In February, they created a free hotline — 1-806-NEW-KIDS — where callers now hear a message from Wahlberg from the set of his TV series “Blue Bloods.”
“And it’s free, so you can call all you want,” McIntyre said.
When McIntyre, who was the last member to join NKOTB, was recruited, he was 12 and doing community theater.
“Our manager, Mary Alford, at the time was just calling around public schools to see if there were any little white kids who could sing and dance. And there weren’t many of us,” he recalled.
McIntyre, who lived with his wife, Barrett Williams, a Lincoln Square native, and their three children on the Upper West Side from 2018 to 2020, before the family moved back to Los Angeles, recounted the band’s humble beginnings in the Big Apple.
“When the New Kids first were trying to make it, New York was everything and we would drive down, packed in one car and knock on doors and pound the pavement, like, literally,” he said.
“We would go into people’s offices and sing and that’s how we got to the Apollo Theater is literally, running into the guy who booked it.”
They didn’t have instant success, and had to wait until the 1988 release of their second album “Hangin’ Tough,” which became the nation’s second best-selling album the following year — to achieve superstardom.
“We didn’t make it for like three years. We were just hustling, trying to get gigs. Our first album flopped,” McIntyre said.
NKOTB went on to sell over 100 million albums worldwide, receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and become the first music group to perform at the Super Bowl halftime show.
After the group split, McIntyre launched a solo career and released multiple albums, starred in “Wicked” and “Waitress” on Broadway, and even competed on the first season of “Dancing with the Stars.”
Besides getting fawned over by female fans, McIntyre gets approached by men “all the time” — who want a photo to bring home to their wives or girlfriends.
“Probably more so than the fans themselves,” he said.
“They want to get credit — and do something, get a little bonus.”
