Why the Jonas Brothers Got Back Together
And, yes, they fully realize that their love lives are driving the press behind their reunion.
If it seems like the Jonas Brothers have been mentioned with increasing frequency over the past couple of years, that’s largely due to their love lives. Along with Joe Jonas and Sophie Turner’s engagement and upcoming wedding, Nick Jonas and Priyanka Chopra dominated much of last year’s news cycle with their seemingly never-ending nuptials. Then, with their heightened profiles, the Jonas Brothers announced a reunion—and now we have a better idea of what brought them back together.
Apparently, it was an upcoming Amazon documentary that inspired their reunion. Even though they were still recovering from their 2013 breakup—having reached a point where “the way [they] communicated to each other wasn’t healthy anymore,” as Nick recently put it to Billboard—the project began their healing process. “The documentary was a way for us to figure out what we wanted to say and who we wanted to be in this new chapter,” Nick said, explaining how they “would’ve imploded” if they hadn’t done the documentary and begun to work through their feelings toward one another.
Nick had tried once before to reunite the group, during Christmas of 2017, but was unsuccessful. He not only broached the possibility of a reunion, he also started playing their songs during his solo shows. “There’s a different magic when we’re together that I wasn’t experiencing,” he said. “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.’”
It wasn’t until they were in Cuba filming the documentary that everyone finally got on board with the idea of a reunion. “We were playing ‘Lovebug’ [from 2008] in this beautiful apartment complex,” Joe recalled. “I was so happy. I looked at the guys and was like, ‘I’m ready. Let’s do this, for real.’” As for the film, its contents are as emotional: “I watched the teaser trailer and was crying like a baby,” Joe said.
That reunion process also apparently involved a form of group therapy combined with a drinking game. “One by one, the brothers pulled out a piece of paper and started talking — about the pressure they put on themselves, their changing priorities, how they dealt with conflict,” writes Taylor Weatherby in Billboard. “With each turn, the other siblings rated the honesty of the response from one to 10, with 10 being the worst, and that score was the number of seconds the answering brother had to drink.”
Even though the documentary was the spark behind their reunion, the Jonas Brothers fully realize that their fame these days is owed as much to their partners, “the J Sisters,” as Chopra, Turner, and Kevin Jonas’s wife, Danielle, call themselves. “It feels like the second bite of the apple is potentially going to be even bigger,” Nick said, “because we’re in a healthy place, we’re enjoying the ride. And I think the music is a reflection of that.” That explains the title of their next album, Happiness Begins—which arrives June 7.
