What Does 98 Degrees Miss Most About the '90s?

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By Us Weekly Staff

These days, 98 Degrees feel hotter than ever. Since reuniting in 2012, “we’ve really loved performing, recording and making music,” saysJustin Jeffre. “The future is bright.”


That is, as long as there are no homicides. Jokes Drew Lachey: “We look at one project at a time and try not to kill each other.” Now, the iconic ’90s boy band — made up of Jeffre, 44; Drew, 41; his brother Nick, 43; and Jeff Timmons, 44 — will add joy to the holiday season with their 98 Degrees at Christmas tour, kicking off November 10 in Iowa and a corresponding Christmas album.

The foursome serenade Us.

Us Weekly: How is performing different now than when you first started?

Justin Jeffre: Our fans are older, so it’s more of a party for them and for us too. There’s less pressure. Back then, we were compared to everybody else. We were under a microscope. Now, we all have different things going on outside the group, so it’s easier to just have fun with it.

Nick Lachey: With families, we schedule wisely. It seems good in theory to bring them, but we get on stage, do the after party and wind down at two o’clock. Then the baby wakes up at six. So we’ve learned the best way is for us to do our thing, hit it hard and then take a couple days to come home and see everybody. 

Us: What do you miss most about the nineties?

Jeff Timmons: It was an innocent time. Social media wasn’t prevalent. Fans would camp out to see you instead of just tweeting about it. We would get out there and interact with them.

NL: People would actually buy records! I want to bring back music videos and the fact that you were able to watch them on MTV.

Us: Favorite boy band today?

NL: I was always a big fan of One Direction. They are all independently great singers. I don’t think anyone has taken their place. But it will happen. It always does.

Drew Lachey: I heard 98 Degrees was back.

JT: That’s what I heard too!

Nick Lachey and 98 Degrees Open Up About Their Kids Following In Their Musical Footsteps

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by Jennifer Drysdale - Entertainment Tonight

98 Degrees has spent years in the spotlight, but do they want their kids following in their footsteps?

ET's Sophie Schillaci caught up with the band in Los Angeles last month, where they opened up about fatherhood and the advice they would give their kids if they ever wanted to pursue a career in Hollywood.

Nick Lachey has already done the reality TV show route, but with three kids, he now says those days are behind him.

"It's one thing to do it when you're just a young person and you're in this business, but when you have a family, your sole job is to kind of look out for your kids," he explained. "I just feel like that's not the place for them to be, on a show that's in their lives and it's just not normal."

"There's nothing normal about that, so as a parent, the responsible thing to do is to definitely steer away from that," he added.

For now, Nick's three young children are just enjoying being kids.

"My daughter, especially, dotes on him and loves him and hugs him, sometimes a little too tight," Nick said of welcoming his third child with wife Vanessa, son Phoenix, last December. "Then Cam is now kind of realizing he is going to have this younger brother, and at some point, he can teach him how to play cars and ride scooters."

"They're both doing really well [with a younger sibling]," he added. "It's a lot of fun to have three in the house."

Nick's brother, Drew, has two kids of his own, and revealed that "unfortunately" they're pretty musically inclined.

"I was hoping for medicine, maybe law," he confessed.

"That could still happen," Nick noted. "But my kids are definitely musical and love it. My daughter's like a theater junkie."

Jeff Timmons, who has three kids of his own, said that his daughter, Alyssa, is pursuing a different path in Hollywood.

"My daughter has now transitioned into becoming a model all of a sudden," he shared. "Like, right out of the blue. She was wanting to get in the medical field, like Drew was talking about, and then overnight she decided to become a model and it's tough."

"I mean, having experienced the business, as you know, it's a tough business and you don't want anybody to experience the lower parts of it," Timmons added. "The high highs are great, but the lower parts are really tough, so trying to stand back as an experienced person in the business and watch her do her thing is tough, but also giving her advice, so it's a fine line. I have trouble figuring out where to cross on it."

Plus, they don't want to listen," Drew chipped in. "Mom and Dad don't know anything, ever, about anything."

"You can try to steer them in another direction, but then they say, 'Well, Dad, you did it,'" Jeff said.

Jeff and the rest of the band definitely did a lot in their day -- and aren't necessarily proud of it! See their style regrets in the video below.

98 Degrees Tease 'Magical' New Christmas Album 'Let It Snow'

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Desiree Murphy , ET

Christmas is coming early for fans of 98 Degrees!

The band, which consists of Nick Lachey, Drew Lachey, Justin Jeffre and Jeff Timmons, announced on Friday that they're officially reuniting for an all-new Christmas album titled Let It Snow. And while chatting with ET, the guys opened up about what it was like putting together the record, their first in four years.

Let It Snow is 98 Degrees' second Christmas album. They released their first one, This Christmas, in October 1999.

"That's one of the things that we're most proud of that we've done," Drew explained to ET's Sophie Schillaci. "We loved it, the way it came out. We also feel strongly about these memories that you make when you listen to Christmas songs… we still talk about what we were influenced by, by Christmas now. So, to be a part of a family tradition and something that [our fans] put on every year, that's something -- that's pretty magical."

Nick chimed in, telling ET that their goal was to come up with new songs they hadn't visited before.

"For me, I think my favorite is 'Mary, Did You Know?'" he said. "It's a lot. I mean, there are so many great Christmas songs out there and holiday songs that, thankfully, there were a lot to choose from. We kind of went through the list and picked our favorites."

"One that's a little bit different," added Jeff, "it's called 'Run Rudolph,' which I've never heard of before. It's got, like, an old Motown sound to it, kind of cool. Kind of a throwback to our roots at Motown and the track's pretty amazing, so I'm really excited about that one."

Even more exciting, Nick confirmed that Let It Snow, which will be released via UMe on Oct. 13, will also feature one original track. The band will then embark on their first-ever 31-city Christmas tour beginning Nov. 10 in Larchwood, Iowa.

"We're going to do the hits as well, but it's going to be a Christmas tour," Justin explained. "We're going to do some songs from the latest CD and, yeah, we're looking forward to it. We toured last summer and had a blast and I think we have a lot more fun these days than we did back then [20 years ago]. Maybe it's because we're just more experienced and there's less pressure, but the fans are still there."

"We built the schedule so that we'd be out for four or five days, then we'd all have a couple days off so we have the opportunity to go home," added Drew, who shares two kids, son Hudson and daughter Isabella, with his wife, Lea Dellecave. "Having your whole family on the road, it's tough for everybody. It's tough for them, it's tough for us."

As we patiently wait for the album to drop, watch the video below to hear more from our exclusive chat with the guys!

98 Degrees Are Back with a New Holiday Record and Tour: ‘We’re Having More Fun Now Than We Ever Did in the Past’

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BY NICOLE SANDS

The hardest thing they’ve ever had to do is be apart!

Just 20 years after famed boyband 98 Degrees released their self-titled debut album, band members Nick Lachey, Drew Lachey, Jeff Timmons and Justin Jeffre are celebrating by returning to the stage for a tour to support their upcoming second Christmas album, Let It Snow.

“We wanted to do a project, in part, because it’s the 20^th anniversary. We thought, ‘What a great chance to come back 20 years later and do something else,'” says Nick tells PEOPLE.

Yet, after selling 10 million records worldwide and achieving eight top 40 singles in the U.S. since their start in 1997, their “favorite musical project we’ve done together” still remains their 1999 Christmas album This Christmas.

“We thought, ‘Why not do a second version of that?’ and try to create the same type of timeless classic sound that we thought we accomplished in the first one,” Nick says about why they decided to come back with a holiday album. “It just made the most sense. We loved the first record and we’re loving the second record, too.”

While the exact holiday tunes they’ll be recreating are still under wraps, the album willinclude one original song and will not repeat any songs from the first record.

“We have two a cappella song on this record – similar to the last where we also had two – but a cappella has been something that we’ve always done and prided ourselves on, so there’s that element. Then we just literally went down our favorite Christmas songs and figured out which would work well and compliment each other,” says Drew. “We didn’t just want song after song, we wanted a journey – for the album to be a complete work of art as a unit.”

While the men agreed to take a long hiatus from 2003 until 2012 to fulfill other ambitions and opportunities, Justin says “it’s always great to get back together and to tour and interact with our fans.”

“It’s always been a passion of ours and that’s why we started this a little over 20 years ago now,” he says. “There’s something about just the creative process and I think we have something very unique with our blend, similar interests in music and similar influences and work ethic.”

He continues, “It’s what we love to do and I think we’re having more fun doing it now than we ever did in the past.”

“My oldest daughter was really young when we first got started, so she wasn’t aware of what this was, and we had such a long break and a lull that I was producing at home and doing other things,” says Jeff.

“It was a luxury for me to have her out on the road a few years ago when she was 15 and she actually thought I was cool!” he jokes. “It’s a great experience with these guys, but experiencing tour life with your children is really cool.”

That’s not to say all the kids will be hitting the road. Nick’s three children and Drew’s two “will come out at some point,” Nick says — but not much.

“We’ve discovered with a couple tours [that] it’s just easier for us to go out there and do it rather than totally disrupt their lives,” Drew explains. “Nick has a 6-month-old [son Phoenix], so there are sleep patterns, and then we have kids who take naps and kids in school and sports … you make the schedule so that you can go in and out and fly back and forth.”

Nick Lachey Pokes Fun at His 98 Degrees Days With an Epic Blast From the Past

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by JULIANNA RESS 

Nick Lachey is no longer predicting a forecast of 98-degrees.

The 43-year-old star took to Instagram today to share a hilarious throwback from his boy band days alongside a more current image of him recreating the pose. But there's one stark difference—turns out covering up his 98 Degrees tattoo wasn't the hardest thing.

The original ink featured a black and white sun with "98˚" printed in the center, while his updated tat blocked out the band name by filling in the sun's center. Captioning the post, "Today's forecast," the text on the singer's meme read, "How hot is it? Hell if I know but it sure is sunny…"

Nick may be saying goodbye to his boy band (or weatherman?) days, but every day is still 98 degrees in our hearts.

Despite the change in body art, the father of three looks incredibly similar to his former pop star self, recreating the unmistakably late 90s-early 00s look to a T—fitted tank top, chain necklace and that textbook teen idol smolder (though we wish he would bring back the frosted tips as well).

While his 98 Degrees days are long gone, the star has been busy raising his three children with his wife Vanessa Lachey, the youngest of which was born just last December.

"You have three, and then you realize: we're truly outnumbered now," Nick joked to E! Newsback in May. "It's such a blast to be at home with them and see the way they interact with each other.

Though he's left teen stardom behind, it looks like Nick Lachey is happy trading it for fatherhood!