The Jonas Brothers recently snagged their first No. 1 hit with the comeback single, “Sucker,” and they opened up about their split and reunion for Billboard’s latest cover story.
The trio parted ways in 2013 after finding success as teens in the late 2000s. “We all wanted to create something on our own and were just trying to force it into what was going on,” Joe Jonas said about the group’s split. “We were going through the motions, without the heart of it… The way we communicated to each other wasn’t healthy anymore.”
The group ended and began anew with youngest member Nick Jonas, who initiated both the hiatus and the reunion. “There’s a different magic when we’re together that I wasn’t experiencing,” he told the magazine. “So I started sprinkling some Jonas Brothers songs into my set, but always thought, ‘This would be a lot better with the other Jonas Brothers.’"
A reunion also presented an opportunity to recharge public interest in the group. Notably, individual releases from both Nick and Joe’s band, DNCE, started to fall off the Hot 100 after 2016. It’s a gamble that paid off as the newly reunited Jonas Brothers didn’t only make it to the chart–they debuted at No. 1 for the first time. Their biggest pre-split hit, “Burnin’ Up,” peaked at No. 5 back in 2008.
The reformed siblings had to work on their relationships with each other to pull off the reunion. They headed out to Australia last June for a therapy session where they discussed bottled up feelings for hours. As Billboard tells it, this session took the form of a drinking game where they dropped questions for each other in a bowl. They ended up talking “about the pressure they put on themselves, their changing priorities, how they dealt with conflict.”
“Kevin had a few skirt-arounds,” Nick said, “so he had a few longer sips than Joe and I.”
The brothers also have a documentary in the works–which will cover the events surrounding their reunion. It will premiere on Amazon later in 2019. “I watched the teaser trailer and was crying like a baby,” Joe said.
“The idea of having my girls see me onstage with my brothers and experience that side of my life,” said Kevin, who has two daughters.
The group will release their fifth studio album, Happiness Begins, on June 7.
Catch up on all of the lyrics to the Jonas Brothers’ biggest hits on Genius now.
