Jordan Knight claims his band New Kids On The Block didn’t receive "any credit whatsoever" in their heyday in the 80s.
The 47-year-old singer – who is joined in the group by Donnie Wahlberg, Joey McIntyre, Jonathan Knight and Danny Wood – says the most negative part of being a teen idols was people wanting to "bring them down" because they were so big.
The ‘Step by Step’ hitmaker also said that taking people around him for granted is another regret.
He explained: "Things come with success – a lot of people start asking you for things. It’s funny, you end up giving more to people you don’t want to give to and the people you’d rather give to get a lot less.
"Because the people who have no shame are the ones asking for everything, while the caring people don’t want to bother you.
"The constant scrutiny was also difficult. We were so big, a lot of people wanted to bring us down.
"I felt critics wrote unfair things but they were responding to the massive hype around us so maybe they were trying to even it out.
"There was a lot of unfair criticism and hateful remarks."
Asked what their critics were saying about them, he told the Metro newspaper: "’They’re not talented, they can’t sing, they’re manufactured’ – we didn’t get any credit whatsoever.
"They were saying we were just robots who did what people told us to do."
The band recently released new EP ‘Thankful’ – their first new music since 2013 – but they are no longer bothered by negative comments as they are not the biggest band in pop now.
Jordan said: "We’re not the new phenomenon we were back in the day, so people don’t put as much energy into knocking us down. And we’ve grown and we’ve proved we do have brains in our heads and can manage our careers."
New Kids On The Block were under ‘constant scrutiny’
