In a tribute to Pearlman, *NSYNC member Lance Bass tweeted on Saturday: “Word is that #LouPearlman has passed away”. Pearlman died Friday at age 62. The Backstreet Boys would soon find competition with Pearlman’s new project, NSYNC, who would experience similar success though their two most successful albums would arise after NSYNC’s break up with Lou.
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Evan Agostini/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty ImagesNEW YORK – MARCH 6: Record impresario Lou Perlman and singer Aaron Carter attend the 6th Annual T.J. Martell “Family” Day’ Indoor Carnival Benefit at Cipriani’s Fifth Avenue March 6, 2005 in New York City.
Pearlman with members of Nsync, including Justin Timberlake, at a pizza restaurant in NY in 1995.
And it seems like the “Can’t Stop The Feeling!” singer is well aware of that fact too, as he took to Twitter on August 21 to mourn the loss of Lou, the man responsible for the creation of ’90s boy bands like NSYNC and the Backstreet Boys.
Timberlake tweeted Sunday that he hoped Pearlman had “found some peace”.
Despite success as a music mogul, Pearlman was accused of defrauding investors out of more than $300 million in what authorities called a massive Ponzi scheme.
Anyone who knows the backstory of both the Backstreet Boys and ‘NSYNC knows that their Svengali-esque manager, Lou Pearlman, was not a good guy.
In the post, he wrote: ‘Love him or hate him, Lou gave many of us our start. He fled the country, but was captured in Bali, Indonesia in 2007 and, in 2008, sentenced to 25 years for crimes including conspiracy and money laundering.
O-Town singer Ashley Parker Angel said it was a shame Pearlman “let greed get in his way”.
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AJ McLean, Howie Dorough, Nick Carter, Kevin Richardson, and Brian Littrell, went on to become one of the bestselling boy bands of all time, with 130 million record sales worldwide. A diabetic, Pearlman suffered a stroke in 2010 and his health was said to have never recovered.
