“I’ve seen arenas my whole life, which is a blessing and a curse,” Griffin McIntyre tells LPTV. “Because I have high standards — and I want to get there.”
Griffin is sitting at Studio City’s Licorice Pizza Records, where he’s about to play his first official live show in the intimate space to celebrate the release of his debut single and video, “Risk It All.” He may be a new kid on the pop block, at age 18, but he has actually grown up around music and on arena stages his entire life — because his father is an actual New Kid on the Block, Joey McIntyre.
New Kids on the Block sensationally got back together just one year after Griffin was born, so Griffin grew up accompanying Joey on various NKOTB reunion tours. But he “never really thought about” his father being a former teen idol (“I just always kind of knew he’s a singer, but he’s a very normal guy; he’s just my dad,” he shrugs), and it took him a while grasp the concept of fame in general (or realize that a breakout pop diva named Lady Gaga was opening for his dad’s band on tour).
However, it was always clear that Griffin was destined to become a performer himself. As an infant, he was literally humming before he could talk, and he caught the dancing/musical theater bug not long after that.
“Gene Kelly was a big thing for me,” Griffin recalls. “I asked a balloon guy once [at a children’s party]… everyone asked the balloon guys, ‘Hey, can you make Spider-Man?’ But I asked him to make Gene Kelly. And he made a [balloon] dude in a suit, and I carried it around.” Griffin later studied various dance disciplines — “ballet, tap, African, hip-hop, modern, all of that stuff” — with none other than Fame icon Debbie, who, much like her tough onscreen character, taught him that if he had big dreams and wanted fame, he’d have to start paying in sweat.
“I owe a lot of my performance vibe to [Allen]. She’s just a role model to me, and definitely a teacher and a mentor,” Griffin says. “It started at Dance Debbie Allen Academy, and that mindset, I feel, is still in me.”
His work ethic paid off. Griffin was just 12 when he got first big showbiz break, on only his second-ever audition, landing a role in the Netflix musical sitcom Country Comfort (which also starred American Idol‘s Katharine McPhee). But he waited until now to properly launch his pop career — because before, no music opportunities came his way that ever felt quite right.
“In these past couple years, you might know, there’s a boy band frenzy right now,” Griffin chuckles. “Companies and record labels are putting together boy bands, and it’s very bright and shiny. And I tried to go down that route. But no, I’m not doing it. … I saw the industry on that side, and I am so grateful for that journey. It taught me a lot — and it taught me what I don’t want. I’m a solo artist. No boy band.”
Griffin says he “had to say no to a lot of cool things,” admitting, “That’s what keeps you up at night. But I knew. It’s like, ‘Hey, does this feel right?’ And if you can’t go to bed many nights in a row, maybe you should just do the thing that you want to do.”
The solo route was by default the best option for Griffin, because while some skeptics might assume that he’s some “nepo baby” taking advantage of his family’s industry connections, he actually had to hustle — just like any other unknown up-and-comer living in competitive Los Angeles and recording self-produced music in his bedroom. “I used to be like, ‘Hey, can we do a session?’ But people [in the music business] are very bougie, and they don’t want you. They’re like, ‘How many followers do you have?’ So, I had to do it on my own,” says the singer-songwriter/guitarist/pianist. “But I like proving myself to people.”
Griffin did have a little help from another famous mentor, super-producer Linda Perry, who he’s known his “whole life” and with whom he has “a special relationship.” He and Perry co-wrote one track, “Shadows,” that will come out eventually, possibly as the follow-up to “Risk It All.” But the biggest lesson Griffin learned from Perry was how to stay true to his own vision, because most of their collaborations ended up being shelved — which was Griffin’s surprising decision.
“I learned that if you want something to sound a certain way, you are the person who knows what it should sound like,” Griffin says. “I went in with [Perry] and we wrote a bunch of songs — songs that I didn’t really like, to be honest. And she knows that. She respected that. She was like, ‘You need to do this on your own. You need to produce your stuff on your own.’ So, I went home and did my stuff. … I had to really step up in the writing process. I wasn’t as good of a writer as I am now. I definitely was not the best; now, I’m all right. But I think [the Perry sessions were] just a different vibe, and I had to step up to get what I want.”
However, Griffin has learned the most from his proud and supportive dad, who was only 13 when he began his only career with NKOTB, but at age 53 remains humble and grounded.
“He’s always a practice guy — just ‘practice, practice, practice,’” Griffin says of Joey’s own work ethic. “One thing I respect about my parents is they kind of let me figure a lot of stuff out on my own. … They’re always telling me, ‘Go to dance class. Try to make a song.’ If I was playing soccer, it’d be the same thing: ‘You’ve got to go to practice. You’ve got to shoot your shots, kick the ball.’ … And I like being a student. I think people take me seriously because they see that I really care.”
While there will always be a number of curious New Kids fans who’ll follow whatever Griffin does simply because of his lineage, he’s already building his own devoted fanbase. That’s very evident from the audience at his Licorice Pizza in-store, which is almost entirely composed of excited Gen Z and Gen Alpha girls. And while Griffin is “very grateful” for any attention he gets as a young new artist — “This is where I started. My dad is a singer, and I grew up with his fans. He did too,” he explains — he’s happy that he “risked it all” professionally, and that he didn’t join a boy band or do anything else that his gut told him not to do. And he hopes to one day grace arena stages on his own.
“I’ve made the right decision,” he smiles. “I’m in the right place.”
