The Heartbreaking Tragedy Surrounding Pop Group LFO

Three out of four members of LFO, the group behind the 1999 hit “Summer Girls,” have died young.

When LFO stopped by in the summer of 1999, they dropped an extremely catchy hit.

“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. Limpet, ruby slippers, Macaulay Culkin and Paul Revere?—went to No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 and announced the arrival of another “boy band” to watch.

Abercrombie & 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. “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.

By 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.

Now, Fischetti officially has that distinction.

“Every story is made up of chapters,” the now 47-year-old musician, who started LFO with Cronin and Gillis in 1995, wrote on Instagram a day after Gillis’ passing. “Some develop naturally. Some you have to cut up in your mind. The first two chapters of the LFO story lost a main character yesterday.”

Admittedly “struggling” with the news, he wrote, “I’ve said it before and I will continue to say it; the LFO Story is a tragedy. If you know what I’ve been doing, you know I’m trying to bring light into the darkness. Trying find redemption in pain and suffering. Trying to honor the legacy.”

Before 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.

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. Cronin, who wrote “Summer Girls” and “Girl on TV” (inspired by then-girlfriend Jennifer Love Hewitt) never pursued legal action.

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.

“I had to go through lots of therapy,” Cronin said on The Howard Stern Show in 2009 about his dealings with their former manager. “I went crazy. I mean, I wrote some big songs.”

“The guy was awful,” he continued. “But besides all this money stuff, he was really a creepy guy.”

Fischetti recalled to The Cut in 2021 that “the synchronized dancing and the three-part harmonies” so characteristic of Pearlman’s creations wasn’t really their bag, “but we did some of that early on because that’s what you’re expected to do.”

Gillis had already left the group in 1998. Cronin, Fischetti and Lima followed their 1999 debut with sophomore effort Life Is Good in 2001—but, also like NSYNC, LFO went on hiatus in 2002 and its members pursued other projects.

“We didn’t really end on good terms, to be honest,” Fischetti told WaldenPonders in 209. “When we walked out of that room in 2002, it was like a weight was lifted off of our shoulders.”

“When you live and work so closely with people, you’re bound to develop boundaries and barriers,” he explained, “and if you don’t break ’em down, if you don’t work on ’em, they just continue to grow. Before you know it, the only time you’re actually corresponding with each other is for the 45 minutes you’re on stage, and that’s pretty much where it got to.”

But Fischetti and Lima were quick to check in with their former bandmate when Cronin was diagnosed with acute myelogenous leukemia in 2005.

“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. 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. But I never thought much of it, because I had always been a pretty healthy guy.”

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.

“The doctor told me, ‘You have one-third of the blood [you need] 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.'”

When his doctor told him he had leukemia, Cronin said, “it was like a train had barreled through the room.”

On a good note, he shared, he had received a flood of support from Lima, Fischetti and other artists from the pop music world—and Cronin credited Fischetti with helping him sort out issues with his health insurance.

“In two weeks, this has completely changed my life and my perspective on it,” Cronin said. “The first thing you want to do once you hear the news is run, but you can’t, because it’s inside of you. You have no choice but to face it.”

He had been working on a solo album, he added, and planned to donate the proceeds to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. “It is a nightmare of a situation to be in,” he said, “but I really want to make something positive out of this.”

Cronin 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 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.

“I told my doctors, ‘I have to do it,’ and they weren’t too pleased,” Cronin told MTV News in March 2007. “But I don’t care, man. I just want to live my life. 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. For something like this to come around, it’s like it’s not going to come again. That’s why I don’t really care if people are making fun of me. I’m having a blast.”

He also eventually finished his solo album, 2008’s Billion Dollar Sound a recognizably Croninesque effort full of cheeky shout-outs (song titles included “Holiday Inn” and “Tara Reid”) and nostalgia-laced personal storytelling.

And in 2009, against all odds, LFO decided to get the band back together.

“I certainly never thought it would happen,” Fischetti, who started the label 111 Records in his post-LFO days, told WaldenPonders. “I think I got to a point where I spent so many hours trying to break these baby bands and then at some point I sat down and thought, ‘Wow, I’ve got a name already built.’ We spent a lot of time building that name, and it just seemed like a complete waste for us to let it go.”

During their years apart, he explained, “We’ve all grown a lot as people and artists…and I think that the opportunity is here now for us to actually be stronger than we ever were, not only as a group, but as friends. I didn’t think there would be much more to it than just a couple reunion tours, a few new songs, then everybody moves on. After spending time rehearsing, it seems like this is actually the start of something new.”

A new album was certainly a possibility, Fischetti said. But mainly, he noted, “I’d like to go out there and play shows, and I’d like people to come out and see us play.”

Asked what concertgoers could expect from LFO, he predicted, “There will certainly be a lot of energy. That’s pretty much what we try for, to really make people happy for a short period of time.”

But the reunion was short-lived: Fischetti and Lima announced in a September 2009 video that they were embarking on a project together and the trio had once again disbanded.

“LFO as you knew it—know it—is over,” Fischetti said as Lima strummed his guitar in the background. “I wouldn’t really even call it a hiatus at this point. I just think it’s over. It’s hard to really describe how that makes us feel…It certainly can be emotional, but at the same time, I guess that’s just the way it needed to be.”

And they never had a chance to reconsider.

Cronin’s health continued to decline and on Sept. 8, 2010, he died at a Boston-area hospital after suffering a stroke. He was 36.

“Rich was an incredible fighter, and every opportunity when his health was in good condition, he was living his life to the fullest, especially in music,” his manager Melissa Holland told the Associated Press. “He just always seemed to bounce back, and this time, it got the best of him.”

Fischetti said that he’d last texted with Cronin about 10 days before he died, and his ailing friend was relaying stories about fans approaching him and asking about “Summer Girls.”

“He said, ‘Listen man, people still care about us,'” Fischetti recalled.

He and Lima pressed pause on future music and respectively carried on with their lives, though they remained close. But they reunited as LFO in 2017 with the release of the summer-ready single “Perfect 10” and plans to tour.

“We miss the presence of our late, great, brother bandmate Rich Cronin,” Fischetti told EW.com. “We will do our best to make him proud, carry on his legacy, and to usher LFO into the future.”

Their hopeful endeavor was cut short, however, when Lima was diagnosed with stage 4 adrenal cancer in October 2017 and had to have a kidney removed.

“It’s devastating news,” Fischetti said in a YouTube video, “but at the same time, there’s nobody I know stronger than Devin Lima. No one has a stronger body, mind, or soul, and if anybody can defeat this, it’s Devin.” He noted that the disease his buddy had was “really rare,” a “one-in-a-million cancer.”

Lima died Nov. 21, 2018, at the age of 41.

“Devin, as the world knows him, was an extraordinary talent, a doting father to his six children, and a loving partner to their mother,” Fischetti said in a statement. “He was a beloved son and brother and a friend to so many.”

He also revealed that, a few days before Lima died, “he said to me, ‘Bro, when it’s over, just tell them I disappeared.’ My friends—Harold ”Devin’ Lima has disappeared.”

The following year, Fischetti hit the road with O-Town, performing LFO’s hits to—as he always puts it on social media—”#honorrich” and “#honordevin”—and continues to perform with fellow boy band alums.

“It’s what I call an ‘unfortunate honor,'” Fischetti told The Cut about being the one left to carry on in LFO’s wake.

The father of five and church music director credited his faith for helping him through “the craziness,” explaining that “if you believe in eternal life, then you can imagine this great reunion when Devin met Rich again. And that puts a big smile on my face.”

Fischetti regularly invokes his late friends, including when his mom, Susie, died last August. Calling her his “biggest fan, long before I was blessed with actual fans,” he concluded his tribute to her with the sentiment, “My heart breaks but I smile just a little bit, imagining her being greeted by Devin and Rich.”

On what would have been Lima’s 46th birthday on March 18, Fischetti wrote that his youngest daughter had just been baptized at the Texas church that had been the site of numerous milestones for both of their families, as well as where they “said goodbye” to Lima.

“Something weird though has been happening,” Fischetti continued. “I still remember you. I don’t even need pictures or videos to recall your smile, your voice, your hugs. But somehow, it’s starting to feel like you never really did exist. That my memories of you are just dreams. Almost as if I conjured you, my best friend, my bandmate, my homeboy.”

Thanking Lima for being his best friend, Fischetti concluded, “I know you and Rich are celebrating big and making some sweet sounds on the night-shift.”

Eleven days later, Gillis died. No cause of death was given.

Fischetti once again took to Instagram to pay tribute to a fallen brother, noting that “if it wasn’t for his hard work and dedication in the early days of LFO, the first two chapters, the LFO you came to know and (hopefully) love would not exist.”

“My relationship with Brian was complex,” he continued. “It contained moments of great tribulation but also of great joy. I learned a lot from him about the business of music and how to put together and rock a show. And it’s those positive aspects of our relationship that I will lean on now and forever…I know that soon or maybe already, Brizz will be greeted by Rich and Devin. And I hope that together, they will make some sweet sounds. I would really like that.”