The Jonas Brothers phenomenon

The Jonas Brothers are here!

Follow pop music writer Malcolm Venable as he posts updates from the Oceana NAS meet & greet with military families to tonight's amphitheater concert. Click back for more photos and coverage from a day with the Jonas Brothers.

Were you there? Share your photos and your Jonas experience.

As pop boy bands go, the Jonas Brothers are a textbook example of how to do everything right. In a little more than a year, the sibling trio from New Jersey went from barely-heard-of teenyboppers with a Christian bent to mega-rock teen idols who happen to be wholesome role models. Toss good looks and charm into the brew and you have a recipe for stardom so flawless, so impenetrable, it couldn’t have been done better by Disney. Except, of course, it was.

In February  2007, the Jonas Brothers were scooped up by Disney’s Hollywood Records after they’d been dumped by their previous label for underperforming. Following a series of well-calculated Jonas placements (commercials, an episode of “Hannah Montana,” American Music Awards, etc.) the brothers shot stealthily and steadily up charts and into the hearts of the American public; the rest is history unfolding before your eyes. Here’s a look at the elements that merged to make the Jonas Brothers a 21st century boy band phenomenon.

Personality

The JBs are devout Christian guys who are guided by their mother and pastor father, Denise and Kevin Jonas. The trio have promised not to engage in premarital sex. They don’t drink or smoke. They all wear purity rings. They initiated a fundraising campaign called “You Decide, You Donate,” to correspond with a charitable foundation Web site, changeforthe
children.org. They gave that organization 10 percent of their profits in 2007. They are not finished with school.

“I’m actually, like in my second year so I just have a little while to go,” Nick said. “Joe is almost done, and Kevin is finished.” College, he said, remains up in the air. “We are pretty busy with the band right now and everything. But maybe in the future sometime.”
 

Mulitmedia

Perhaps you’ve heard of this little brand called Disney? Disney execs have been known to make things happen. The Jonas Brothers are now developing a sequel to their made-for-TV movie, “Camp Rock.” A book is on the way. A 3-D concert movie is due to hit theaters in January.

They have a YouTube channel and a reality television series, “Living the Dream,” which follows them on a tour. Another fictional TV series, “J.O.N.A.S. (Junior Operatives Networking As Spies)” which imagines the brothers as government spies, is scheduled to come out next spring.

The brothers

Nick Jonas, 15, is the one whose musical talents got the band its start; he plays drums, guitar and piano and was doing Broadway and Christian music when execs at Columbia Records encouraged his brothers to join him.

Joseph, 19, is the frontman. He had a birthday last week, for which he reportedly received a motorcycle as a present from his family.

Kevin, 20, plays rhythm guitar and is named for the boys’ father.

Fashion

Despite their youth, the JBs have perfected an up-to-the-minute, ultra-mod style frequently involving  skinny jeans, skinny ties, fitted blazers and Chelsea boots, a look pioneered by hard-drinking, hard-partying rock deities decades ago in London. Their fashion sense isn’t  an accident, they say.

“We love a lot of different designers,” Kevin said. “We all wear different things, like J. Lindeberg, Dior, Phillip William. We really do pay attention to what we wear, but we have a stylist. We work alongside her because we are extremely busy. So having the ability to even go shopping is an issue. So we’re able to pick the clothes we like when she brings them to us.”

Music

The Jonas Brothers have three records. “It’s About Time” was their Columbia Records debut. Released in 2006, it sold fewer than 65,000 copies, a performance that got them booted from the label.

In 2007, they released “Jonas Brothers” on Disney’s Hollywood Records label. The Jonas Brothers saw their fame skyrocket worldwide. Domestically, the album shot to gold, meaning 500,000 copies or more had been sold within three months. A month later, the record had sold over a million.

Their latest album, “A Little Bit Longer,” which came out a week ago, is already a smash; analysts expect it to sell near 725,000 copies in a week, double what Miley Cyrus sold. They’ve sold more than 100,000 digital downloads for three consecutive singles with “Burning Up” (183k), “Play My Music” (109k) and “Pushin’ Me Away” (116k).

The album is a critical hit too: Rolling Stone just gave it four stars, calling it “fantastic,” “a blast” and “assured as any American rock album released in 2008.”

“It’s got all these different influences in it, people like Elvis Costello, Johnny Cash, Prince,” Nick said. “Obviously these people have different sounds and genres, but take Johnny Cash and put it with the funk of Prince and the rhythm from Elvis Costello songs and it’s golden.”

For a little bit more fun