That's why I don't really care if people are making fun of me. For something like this to come around, it's like it's not going to come again. I'm just trying to enjoy every opportunity that comes to me, because for the last two years I have been cooped up in hospital rooms with doctors sticking me with needles and giving me bad news. "I told my doctors, 'I have to do it,' and they weren't too pleased," Cronin told MTV News in March 2007. The following year, however, he teamed with 98 Degrees' Jeff Timmons, NSYNC's Chris Kirkpatrick and Bryan Abrams of Color Me Badd for VH1's Mission: Man Band, which chronicled their ultimately unfruitful efforts to make a major super-group comeback. When his doctor told him he had leukemia, Cronin said, "it was like a train had barreled through the room."Ĭronin was said to be in remission in January 2006, but the cancer came back and he underwent a stem cell transplant that July, after which he spent months regaining his strength. "The doctor told me, 'You have one-third of the blood in your body, and it's putting an extreme strain on your heart," the singer recalled. "'I need you to get to the emergency room right now and I'll explain everything to you when you get here.'" One doctor had tested him for hepatitis A and, when that was negative, said he probably just had a virus, Cronin continued. But then another physician had him tested for mononucleosis and detected quickly that something wasn't right. But I never thought much of it, because I had always been a pretty healthy guy." Then 29, Cronin shared that he started noticing in late February that he was feeling tired "when I would walk up stairs, and I would start getting pretty sharp headaches. "I'm praying every second that this will come out of me," he told MTV News that April as he was undergoing his first round of chemotherapy. "But besides all this money stuff, he was really a creepy guy."īut Fischetti and Lima were quick to check in with their former bandmate when Cronin was diagnosed with acute myelogenous leukemia in 2005. "I had to go through lots of therapy," Cronin said on The Howard Stern Show in 2009 about his dealings with their former manager. Pearlman, who did end up in a legal battle with NSYNC that was settled for an undisclosed amount, died in prison in 2016 while serving a 25-year sentence for money laundering and other financial crimes. Cronin, who wrote "Summer Girls" and "Girl on TV" (inspired by then-girlfriend Jennifer Love Hewitt) never pursued legal action. Much like those other groups, though, LFO was also initially under the thumb of notorious manager Lou Pearlman, who sold Cronin's publishing rights out from under him because-as Cronin admitted in later interviews-he didn't realize he was signing them away when the group inked their contract with the Florida-based impresario. Now, Fischetti officially has that distinction.īefore sadness overtook the LFO story, their trajectory may not have been up there with the meteoric rise of Backstreet Boys and NSYNC-but at least theirs was a fairly common tale of a short-lived group having a few big songs and engendering enough popularity to keep chugging along in hearts and minds. "Summer Girls' wasn't the group's first-ever single (1997's non-charting "Sex U Up" may have hit too close to Color Me Badd's "I Wanna Sex You Up"-and what a time it was, kids), but it was the lead offering from their self-titled 1999 debut album.īy the time LFO (for Lyte Funky Ones) became a radio staple, Lima had replaced founding member Brian "Brizz" Gillis-which is why so many headlines heralded Fischetti as the group's sole surviving member years before Gillis died March 29 at the age of 47. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 and announced the arrival of another "boy band" to watch.Ībercrombie & Fitch-wearing girls everywhere took a shine to Rich Cronin, who was 24 when the song hit, Devin Lima, then 22, and Brad Fischetti, 23. Limpet, ruby slippers, Macaulay Culkin and Paul Revere?-went to No. "Summer Girls," with its ode to brand-name treats past and present and generation-spanning pop culture references-Has any tune since successfully comingled New Kids on the Block with Mr. When LFO stopped by in the summer of 1999, they dropped an extremely catchy hit.
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