Many college students were probably not even alive yet when the New Kids on the Block released their debut album, but today the group released their first album in fourteen years, All Grow’d Up. It seems time to reconsider their band name, as it’s become quite the misnomer. Certainly, they can no longer be referred to as a boy band, as each member is approaching 40.

Still, misguided music critics have raved over the reunion album. Take Glenn Gamboa of Newsday:

Certain expectations come with reunion albums, especially ones where the group has been apart longer than they were together.

 

But New Kids on the Block's "The Block" (Interscope) confounds them all. Not only does the Boston quintet's first new album in 14 years surpass the usual cobbled-together-so-we-can-tour reunion record, it is actually the best album of their multiplatinum career.

The music video for the first single, “Summertime,” is horrifying enough, a montage of the man band singing into the camera with dreamy-eyed expressions resembling Vicodin-induced hazes covered by thick layers of pancake makeup, feeling up young ladies, dancing synchronized in matching white suits, and singing in voices uncannily unchanged since their original pre-pubescent musical endeavors.

Really, it’s not even their faults though; it’s the fault of whoever indulged their delusions of a middle-aged comeback and bought those white suits.