How New Edition Avoided 'Heart Break' - Andscape

It was 1986, and New Edition needed a slam dunk.

The all-male singing collective from Boston housing projects was on its way to becoming a true supergroup — but only if its remaining members could convene and create the album that Jheryl Busby knew they had in them. Busby, who began his career at Stax Records and became president of Motown, was then president of black music at MCA Records.

New Edition, founded in the Orchard Park Projects in Boston’s Roxbury neighborhood in 1978, was down to four members: Ricky Bell, Ronnie DeVoe, Michael Bivins, and lead singer Ralph Tresvant. Bobby Brown had been voted out of the group in 1985 due to his on-and-off stage antics, and he was prepping for his second solo album, the instantly classic Don’t Be Cruel.

New Edition had experienced multiplatinum success with its second effort, 1984’s self-titled album, and 1985’s platinum-selling All For Love secured its space as the signature teen group of the mid-’80s. But the group’s fourth effort, 1986’s Under The Blue Moon, was a collection of doo-wop covers that barely went gold. To add to the disarray and disappointment: Back taxes were stressing out Bell, DeVoe, Bivins and Tresvant — and they weren’t even 20. They were the teen idols who made black girls born in the ’70s rip pages from magazines like Right On! and tape them to their bedroom walls. New Edition’s Candy Girl, Popcorn Love, and Mr. Telephone Man soundtracked skating rinks on Saturdays, and was the type of music designed for hand-holding and first time slow-dancing. The idea that this group was somehow on the verge of breaking up would have been inconceivable to the legions of fans it amassed during successful domestic and international tours.

They needed to create another huge album. And Busby — who had been instrumental in the crossover careers of Jody Watley, Patti Labelle, and Gladys Knight — paired New Edition with Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis — two members of Prince-associated Minneapolis band The Time. Jam and Lewis were hotter than hot. They’d worked with Janet Jackson, the youngest member of the Jackson family, garnered insight into her life and helped her create Control, which sold 5 million copies, is easily one of the best albums of the 1980s — and certainly one of the most transformative albums ever recorded.

This week, the group receives its long overdue star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, right before BET presents the much-anticipated origin story of New Edition in an excellent, unfiltered three-part miniseries that all of the group members helped to produce. But this is the story of Heart Break: the best-selling album that catapulted them to icon status, launched Tresvant and Gill to platinum solo careers and set Bell Biv DeVoe off into the pop stratosphere.

These conversations took place in the autumn of 2016, and have been edited for clarity and length.

Everyone quoted is identified by the titles they held during the Heart Break era.