A new documentary about boybands includes an unusual claim about how 1990s pop group 98 Degrees was managed on its first tour.
In Boy Band Confidential, lead singer Nick Lachey says the group’s record label tried to keep the band out of legal trouble by giving them a handbook that listed the age at which people in each state could legally consent to sex.
“This is going to sound super shady, but … I remember our first tour, someone at the label gave us a book, and it was the age of consent in every state in the country,” Lachey says in the documentary. “And like, we kept that book on the tour bus.”
The documentary is scheduled to premiere on Monday at 9pm ET on the cable network Investigation Discovery.
According to the film, the handbook was part of an effort by the label to limit the band members’ potential for legal problems as they traveled across the US during the height of their early fame.
98 Degrees emerged in the late 1990s as part of the era’s boyband boom, and the new documentary revisits the pressures and controls surrounding life on the road. Lachey’s account stands out for the specificity of the guidance the group received while touring.
The story appears in a project that looks back at the boyband phenomenon and the ways record companies managed young pop acts during that period. In Lachey’s recollection, the book was not just handed out and forgotten. He says it stayed with the group on the bus throughout the tour.
The documentary does not present the handbook as a joke or a rumor; it is described as something the label provided in an attempt to reduce risk. Lachey’s comments are the central detail in the report, and they frame the band’s first tour as one shaped by caution as much as promotion.
For fans of 98 Degrees, the anecdote offers a glimpse into the more controlled side of the pop industry in the 1990s. It also underscores how record labels sometimes tried to manage the behavior of touring acts in an era before social media and constant public scrutiny.
Boy Band Confidential premieres Monday at 9pm ET on Investigation Discovery.
