And when that happens, when you've finally run off all but a few hundred dedicated fans, you'll have the choice of exploring obscurity or desperate bids at a comeback.
Jordan Knight has chosen the path of desperation.
Knight was once a piece of meat who was packaged with four other slices into the 'group' New Kids On The Block. The group hit the top ten in 1988 with "Please Don't Go Girl" and would go on to rake up three number one singles but, by 1994, the best they could do was number 66 with "Dirty Dawg." The song was as ridiculous as the video -- neither of which would ever pass for sexy -- not with people who had actually had sex nor with even young kids who have just a vague idea of what sex is.
1988's Hangin' Tough would sell 8 million copies in the US alone, two studio albums later (not counting a Christmas album), they had to face the music when 1994's Face The Music couldn't even go gold.
The group got back together in 2008 for The Block which demonstrated that . . . they still can't even go gold -- an 'accomplishment' they repeated with 2013's 10.
And then there's Jordan Knight -- blasting from one reality show to another in a desperate bid for a comeback.
Reality, there is no comeback. Maybe if he were gay (he's not) and came out, he could grab the spotlight. Otherwise? Pretty boy's getting a middle-aged man's frame.
Even worse, he has no idea what sexy is.
Knight's best chance at a comeback was with his first solo album, the only one of four albums to go gold. The 1999 self-titled album featured the Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis produced "Give It To You" -- Jam and Lewis know a thing or two about sexy (see especially the work of Jimmy Jam, Terry Lewis and Janet Jackson) and they helped Jordan come off sexy and get a top ten hit. The album also had a cover of Prince's "I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man" which squeaked into the top forty. Maybe using a guy on backing vocals (Robin Thicke) wasn't the smartest thing to do when you were running around not just insisting you weren't gay but making clear how insulting you found that allegation to be?
Having run off most of his one-time fans who were gay with promotion for the first solo album, he had a dwindling audience for the three which followed. And each one more desperate than the last.
2011's Unfinished may be the most desperate and most deranged a faded teeny bopper has ever come off.
At 41, Jordan attempts to play a pin up on the cover but comes off looking like a trick displaying his package while he works the bus depot. That might have worked if he'd been ten years younger. It could have been sexy camp if he hadn't run off his gay following.
Instead it was just pathetic.
No where was that more clear than on "O-Face" which Jordan Knight co-wrote.
O-face is the term for your sex face. And if there's anything less sexy than the lyrics to the song, it was Jordan's performance of it.
His attempts to sing the moans of his female partner sounded like geriatric sex, not like people in the midst of thrusting. Long pauses, long, weak-ass moans.
The lyrics also failed because -- and only a teeny bopper with ego larger than a penis would ever make this mistake -- it was all about how turned on she was by him. That's not a seduction, that's a boast.
And not a convincing one especially when Jordan sings:
Ice cubes between your lips, girl
Hot wax drippin' down
That's when I know that I gotcha
I'm gonna' give you you're fix, girl
How stupid can you get?
Jordan Knight hit the charts in the eighties right when Madonna had just emerged as a hit maker. She would explore sex repeatedly culminating with 1992's Erotica. By the time that album's singles had finished their chart run (1993 with "Rain"), Madonna would have achieved 29 top 40 hits -- ten of which went to number one. And Jordan Knight tries to copy from Madonna.
But instead of copying her successful portrayal of sex in music recordings, he goes for her filmography, specifically 1993's lousy Body of Evidence.
Ice cubes and dripping candles?
Poor Jordan Knight. He's clearly never been laid right.
Well, maybe that's good?
Maybe he'll get caught with a cock in his mouth yet?
That remains his only hope of a musical comeback.