Boy/Girl Bands and the Billion Songs you assemble a commercial product: hand picking the members, casting the roles, testing the sound on target demographics, and distributing it globally. The result was a decade of sheer market dominance. It was music that traditional critics utterly turned their noses up at, but it is music that let's be honest the world has never stopped listening to. Lou Pearlman and the Orlando Factory The name that symbolizes the 1990s boy band boom more than any other doesn't belong to a singer. It belongs to a manager: Lou Pearlman. Largely forgotten by the general public today, Pearlman was the quintessential icon of ruthless, unbridled 1990s corporate ambition, living out every stereotype of the decade's wild hustle (For an incredible deep dive, read Tyler Gray s The Hit Charade: Lou Pearlman, Boy Bands, and the Biggest Ponzi Scheme in U.S. History Gray was the only journalist to interview Pearlman during his 20