Dream Street
Biography
Dream Street was an American pop boy band formed in late 1999. The boys broke up in 2002.
The group was put together by producers Louis Baldonieri and Brian Lukow, and featured five boys from New York: Jesse McCartney, Greg Raposo, Matt Ballinger, Frankie Galasso, and Chris Trousdale. Baldonieri and Lukow hoped to make an impact on the pop music industry by introducing a group of teenagers to the scene, all of whom had prior stage singing experience.
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Their eponymous debut album was released in 2001 and was certified Gold in the US by the RIAA. The final Dream Street release was the soundtrack album to the released 2002 film The Biggest Fan, starring member Chris Trousdale.
Despite the album going gold, the group failed to become more popular than preteen market stars like NSYNC and The Backstreet Boys before them. There were two major factors that contributed to this: one was the waning appeal and popularity of the teen pop movement around 2001/02. The other was a lawsuit filed in early 2002, as four of the members and their parents (McCartney, Raposo, Ballinger, and Gallasso) filed suit against Louis Baldonieri and Brian Lukow to revoke their prior approval of their initial production agreement. The New York Supreme Court denied the request. The group officially disbanded, with only Chris Trousdale staying with the production team of Baldonieri and Lukow. After completing post-production and releasing The Biggest Fan, Baldonieri and Lukow tried to get Trousdale to lead a new Dream Street lineup, but he eventually declined, as he was ready to be a solo artist and didn't want to have a new lineup further complicate his relations with his former bandmates.
Despite Dream Street's brief career as a band, they still held a special place in the hearts of the young fans that listened to their music. That same fanbase continued to follow all five members as each of them began following different entertainment paths. Greg Raposo came out as an independent artist, recording and releasing a self-titled debut album in 2003. His first single "Take Me Back Home" was a staple on Radio Disney. Frankie Galasso also became a solo artist and even ventured into film and theatre, and he got to perform in a touring production of Jersey Boys. Matt Ballinger bounced around between indie bands before finding his groove in analytics and pharmaceutical sales and got married to a Dream Street fan that once interviewed him for a school newspaper, Jesse McCartney struck gold almost immediately, as he experienced major success as an actor, solo artist and songwriter, and Chris Trousdale died on June 2, 2020 in Burbank, California, due to complications from COVID-19, at the age of 34. On June 11, 2020, which would have been his 35th birthday, his former Dream Street bandmates reunited online for a virtual acoustic performance of their hit song "It Happens Every Time" in Trousdale's memory.
Biography text from Last.fm, available under CC BY-SA.