Back when he was married to pop superstar Jessica Simpson, Nick Lachey was a reality
TV star with a solo music career on the way.
However, things have changed a lot since then.
Here's a helpful list of reminders why the singer sadly isn't that famous anymore.
Nick Lachey and wife Jessica Simpson were the Barbie and Ken of the late '90s pop music
scene, with a mutual popularity that only grew thanks to their reality TV series Newlyweds:
Nick & Jessica.
Simpson famously didn't know the difference between chicken and tuna...
"Is this chicken, what I have, or is this fish?
I know it's tuna, but it says chicken."
...and Lachey was desperately trying to launch a solo career, but despite their fumbles,
fans thought the crooning couple was destined to last forever.
Nonetheless, just three brief years after tying the knot, Lachey and Simpson called
it quits in 2005.
Now, here's where it gets interesting.
According to The Washington Post, Simpson was the more financially successful of the
pair at the time of their split, and not by just a little.
The difference was huge: She was worth about $35 million, and thanks to Lachey's lack of
solo success, his fortune was apparently just $5 million when they broke up.
And according to Simpson, her divorce from Lachey cost her a lot.
"Biggest money mistakes?
Hm, I don't know.
For some reason, I thought of my first marriage."
Of course, Simpson has since created a billion-dollar retail business and is said to have a personal
net worth of around $200 million.
Lachey hasn't achieved quite that level of success just yet.
However, Lachey found happiness when he got married in July 2011 to wife Vanessa Lachey.
98 Degrees might have been the third wheel in the fan war between *NSYNC and the Backstreet
Boys, but there's no denying they had some hits, including "The Hardest Thing," and of
course the iconic marriage anthem, "I Do."
In addition to these songs, Nick Lachey also made music with then-girlfriend, Jessica Simpson,
including the duet, "Where You Are."
Lachey married Simpson in 2002, but unfortunately, the couple's popularity didn't encourage fans
to buy Lachey's debut album, SoulO.
The album peaked at Number 51 on the Billboard 200 chart.
However, the album he released in the immediate aftermath of his divorce, What's Left Of Me,
performed much better.
It rose to Number 2 on the Billboard 200 chart, and was certified gold by the RIAA.
The success didn't continue though, and in 2013 he released an album of children's lullabies.
For his subsequent release, 2014's Soundtrack of My Life, Lachey recorded cover versions
of famous movie songs, such as Aerosmith's "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing" and Bruce Springstreen's
"Streets of Philadelphia," but nonetheless the record failed to set the charts alight.
It's safe to say that Nick Lachey's music career just isn't what it was.
It's unfortunate that 98 Degrees never hit the heights that other '90s boy bands achieved.
In 2013, Lachey's boy band finally returned with their comeback album 2.0.
Unfortunately, it was a flop, and only managed to sell roughly 7,400 copies during its first
week.
Despite the failure, everyone seemed to have a good time.
Of the band's comeback, Lachey told The Washington Post,
"We had a new album out and what we realized is that we're out there performing, you're
looking out and seeing all these familiar faces, fans that we've known for the better
part of 15 years now.
They're there with their kids, some of them, and I'm thinking, 'This is really cool.'"
Back in 1999, 98 Degrees had major success with their festive record, This Christmas,
so in 2017, they decided to release another holiday album called Let It Snow.
Unfortunately, it didn't have nearly the same amount of success, and it certainly didn't
chart.
However, Lachey told People,
"We thought, 'Why not do a second version of that?' and try to create the same type
of timeless classic sound that we thought we accomplished in the first one...It just
made the most sense.
We loved the first record and we're loving the second record, too."
At least someone had fun.
Though he has a storied career as a reality star, Nick Lachey's 2017 stint on Dancing
with the Stars didn't go so well.
You'd think the boy band veteran would completely nail a dancing competition, but apparently
it was pretty awkward.
Of the experience, Lachey told Us Weekly, he was glad he could check it off his list
of accomplishments, adding,
"I can look back and say I have no regrets.
But it was not one of the fonder moments of my life."
Despite claiming to not have any regrets, Lachey got real about his time on the show
and also told Us Weekly,
"If you enjoy dancing, it's a great time...But for me it was just like, man, I never felt
more uncomfortable in my life than being out there being judged at doing something that
I don't even [like] doing.
So it was a hard process."
Nick Lachey is no stranger to reality TV, and he managed to keep himself in the spotlight
post-98 Degrees when he landed a hosting gig on NBC's new reality TV singing competition,
The Sing-Off.
The show, which premiered in 2009, did give the world Pentatonix, but by the end of Season
3, the ratings situation was so dire that a 98 Degrees reunion couldn't even generate
much public interest.
Nick, alongside younger brother Drew Lachey, moved onto a reality TV docu series about
a bar they opened in Cincinnati, Ohio, called Lachey's Bar.
Think Wahlburgers, but without New Kids on the Block or superstar Mark Wahlberg.
Unfortunately, A&E never renewed the show for a second season.
And according to Billboard, the bar ended up closing its doors in 2018.
Since then, Lachey has only landed a few one-off TV gigs.
Notably, he competed in an episode of The $100,000 Pyramid and hosted the Miss USA 2018
pageant, which has been suffering from falling ratings for years, according to Variety, so
we can't place the blame solely on Jessica Simpson's ex-husband.
At this point, it seems like the multi-platinum singer is hosting competitions a whole lot
more than he's actually singing.
After The Sing-Off stopped making full-sized seasons in 2011, it didn't take long for Lachey
to find another gig.
Unfortunately, his new singing competition, The Winner Is, was also short-lived.
It didn't even manage to make it past one season on NBC.
Of course, someone as experienced as Lachey was able to find hosting work again, it just
wasn't with a major network for adults.
Instead, he went to Nickelodeon to host a children's show called America's Most Musical
Family.
Appearing in yet another singing competition, Lachey was forced to share the spotlight with
a panel of judges that included R&B legend Ciara, '80s icon Debbie Gibson, and YouTube
star David Dobrik, who had virtually no musical experience but millions more subscribers than
Lachey or 98 Degrees.
To add insult to injury, Dobrik suggested that Lachey was old.
In an interview with Z100, Dobrik said,
"Nick pulled me into his dressing room and there was a bunch of adults there that were
having snacks and drinks, and I just felt like a grown-up...I felt like I was at camp
and my [camp] counselor was like 'Come on.'"
Well, it could have been worse.
At least Dobrik didn't call Lachey a boomer.
Nick Lachey isn't just a singer, reality TV star and host.
In 2004, the star got actual recognition for his acting talents with a multi-episode run
on Charmed.
This should have been a huge step forward for Lachey's acting career.
Unfortunately, that didn't really pan out either.
In 2004, it looked like Charmed was going to land Lachey a starring role on his own
TV show.
According to Today, the actor even signed a development deal with 20th Century Fox Television
and Brad Grey TV.
Apparently, the plan was to develop a half-hour or one-hour series specifically for the 98
Degrees singer, but it sadly never came to fruition.
If you check out the singer's IMDb credits, the only recurring acting role he's ever had
since Charmed was a small voice-acting spot in the Netflix animated short Harvey Girls
Forever!
Beyond that, Lachey has had one-episode cameos in shows like Hawaii Five-0.
He also nabbed small roles in a few movies, but his character in Nicole Kidman's Bewitched
didn't even have a name.
Mostly, Lachey hasn't acted in front of a camera in years.
It seems like most of us know Nick Lachey from his 2003 MTV reality series Newlyweds:
Nick & Jessica, especially since, by the time the series aired, 98 Degrees hadn't been on
the Billboard charts for a few years.
You simply can't fight the fact that Lachey and Simpson were one of the first reality
TV couples to have a show that chronicled their lives, yes, even before Britney Spears
and Kevin Federline, or Carmen Electra and Dave Navarro did it.
Although Newlyweds only lasted three seasons, and Lachey and Simpson divorced shortly after
it ended, the star admitted that the series landed him some longtime fans.
During an appearance on Watch What Happens Live in 2019, Lachey said,
"That show gave me a chance to kinda show who I was.
Cause when you're in a band, like, a boy band, nobody really knows who you are as a person...And
got a lot of fans to this day because of the show."
"It does fascinate me though that, you know, it's been fifteen years, I think, and people
still think about it like it was yesterday."
Even though Nick Lachey isn't nearly as famous as he used to be, he's a star to at least
three people, and they're his children.
Lachey's main focus in the last few years appears to have been his family, and it's
not hard to figure out why.
In an Instagram caption, the singer said outright,
"Fatherhood is the greatest job in the world."
He also admitted that his priority was protecting his offspring, which undoubtedly leaves a
lot less time for things like singing in boy bands, being on TV, or releasing solo records.
If you're looking at Lachey's TV credits, there's a notable pause around 2016, and that's
probably not a coincidence.
According to Entertainment Tonight, Lachey and his wife Vanessa welcomed their youngest
son on Christmas Eve that year, but he came 10 weeks premature and needed to spend time
in intensive care.
Of the experience, Lachey wrote on Instagram,
"I felt a vulnerability I had never known before and a fear I wasn’t familiar with.
I can only imagine how many fathers out there felt the same way I did in that moment.
The next 6 weeks in the hospital were the toughest and yet most wonderful weeks of my
life."
Lachey and his wife haven't ruled out adding a fourth child to their brood, but it seems
like their hands are pretty full with what they've got.
Vanessa Lachey told People in 2019,
"We’re very happy as a party of five, but you never know.
The second I say no, I'll probably get pregnant.
And the second I say yes, I probably won't."
Regardless of Nick Lachey's current level of fame, he'll always be a multi-platinum
artist.
Nobody can take that away from him.
Plus, there's always a chance the star will get his second chance, not in singing or as
the focus of a reality TV show, but still in pretty familiar territory: hosting.
In February 2020, the husband and wife team of Nick and Vanessa Lachey hosted the first
season of a new series called Love Is Blind on Netflix.
According to Deadline, the show is described as,
"A less conventional approach to modern dating where they hope to meet the person they want
to spend the rest of their lives with…without ever having seen them."
While hosting is still on the cards for Lachey, starring in another reality show is out of
the question.
The singer told Us Weekly,
"Having been there and done that, I don’t think there’s any chance you'll ever see
that happen again.
You know who I am."
It looks like we'll just have to wait and see what Nick Lachey does next.
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