For the better half of the ’90s, boy bands were the moment. I couldn’t escape hearing about them throughout my adolescence. At school, I was surrounded by a particularly impassioned crowd of tweens who regularly quarreled whether Backstreet Boys, NSYNC or 98 Degrees reigned supreme. It didn’t stop there. During a particular spicy evening at home, one of my siblings duked it out with a naysayer in an AOL chat room who dared to say NSYNC wasn’t worth their salt. But those were petty disagreements. Everyone knew that the true testament of stardom was based on MTV’s epic show “Total Request Live.”

I was around 10 years old in 1998 when “Because of You” aired on “TRL,” and while I can’t recall where the video landed on the show's top 10 ranking, I’ll never forget the feeling I had when I watched it for the first time. “Because of You” was the perfect mix of upbeat, catchy lyrics that weren’t overly romantic coupled with a group of talented guys who gallivanted around town in tank tops and khakis. But they weren’t just wandering throughout any city — they were meandering by San Francisco landmarks.

It wasn’t until a recent rewatch of the music video, some 24 years later, that I realized San Francisco was the backdrop to the 98 Degrees hit. The opening to “Because of You” had the makings of most ’90s music videos: There’s the love interest, the handsome guys, and a montage of scenes shot in funky, bold color. The video opens with a young woman seemingly unaware of the musical band’s fascination with her, given they never interact. Instead, the band manages to appear at random taxi cab light boxes near Saints Peter and Paul Church and billboards adjacent to Da Flora restaurant in North Beach. At the video’s pivotal scene, the band is captured serenading their muse from atop the Golden Gate Bridge.

Naturally, I had questions. Did the group actually scale the Golden Gate Bridge? Were they really hanging out on one of the bridge towers? Surely, the scenes could have been recreated using a green screen like other fragments of the video but, judging by the quality, something told me the panorama shot was entirely authentic. As it turns out, it was.

In an interview with Architecture Digest, music video director Wayne Isham shed light on his experience shooting “Because of You” from nearly 750 feet above water.

“It was the first time that they ever let anyone film up there,” Isham told the publication. “It was incredible. It was breathtaking. It was also windy as hell and everyone was hanging on. I told them, ‘I’m going to go back down and I’m going to get in a helicopter and come back and film.’ It was just them and the sound guy with a walkie-talkie. It was fun — and that’s what filmmaking is about.”

Isham was the brains behind over-the-top stunts featured in music videos throughout the ’90s and early aughts. Band members Joey Fatone and Chris Kirkpatrick of NSYNC were notably filmed running on top of an active train in their 2000 music video “Bye, Bye, Bye.” According to Isham, Fatone and Kirkpatrick performed the act without safeties on. When 98 Degrees filmed “Because of You” two years earlier, they likewise shared it was done without harness straps.

While promoting their album, “98° and Rising,” the band confirmed that they had in fact recorded from the iconic bridge and gave insights from the set. In one interview with MTV, lead singer Nick Lachey spoke about filming the scene during the summer months while the rest of the group teased band mate Jeff Timmons, as he enjoyed the experience the least.

“San Francisco in the summertime isn’t exactly warm,” Lachey said. “It was probably 40 degrees up there and you know, 50 [mph] winds and for someone who’s already scared of heights, Jeff wasn’t having too much fun with that.”

“It’s pretty scary,” Timmons coyly added. “... If you’re afraid to fly, if you’re afraid of heights, if you’re afraid of roller coasters, if you’re afraid to ride the escalator — it’s a little bit scary up there.”

Paolo Cosulich-Schwartz, spokesperson for the Golden Gate Bridge Highway and Transportation District, wasn’t around during the production of the 1998 hit, when filming was more flexible. He told SFGATE that after 9/11/2001, rules about filming on the landmark became more limited. Since then, film crews have been allowed to shoot within public areas of the bridge, while restricted areas, like the towers, are no longer accessible. Once a production crew is granted a permit by the agency, they must abide by strict requirements.

For instance, if a crew films on the sidewalk, they must ensure that the public right of way isn’t blocked to locals or tourists. Likewise, traffic breaks are no longer an option, and thus filming a car scene must be done within the scope of the vehicle. That means cameras mounted on a vehicle are a no-go.

“Since it is a major travel and commute corridor ... we want to make sure all filming is done safely and that we don't present any potential hazards for people who are driving across the bridge,” Cosulich-Schwartz said.

But what of the 98 Degree music video? How safe was it to film from a tower, I wondered? Contrary to Isham’s claim that 98 Degrees solely filmed alongside a sound guy, Cosulich-Schwartz says that the band would have been escorted by an official Golden Gate Bridge employee, both for access and for security. Cosulich-Schwartz was tight-lipped about the band’s access to the towers themselves for obvious security reasons but said that their arrival would have been through the bridge, not by a dramatic helicopter drop-off as I naively thought. He upheld that a video like “Because of You” would never exist today without special effects.

Over the years, the Golden Gate Bridge has served as the backdrop for other major films and TV shows, including the likes of “Full House” and a theatrical blimp scene in the 1985 James Bond film, “A View to a Kill” (which was mostly shot on a set, anyway). But when it comes to music videos, Cosulich-Schwartz says he isn’t sure whether other bands have scaled the bridge’s towers. And that makes “Because of You” an outlier among other boy band videos. Decades later, 98 Degrees reminisced about the ’90s and shared that “Because of You” was among one of their most thrilling projects. Despite his initial fear of heights, Timmons looked back fondly on the filming of the video as a pillar of his career.

“Those were always really fun,” Timmons told ABC Audio last summer. “And it was like almost filming a movie, I mean, on top of the Golden Gate Bridge or in Chichen Itza and the pyramids and all the fun stuff that we had the opportunity to do that you don’t really get anymore because those budgets aren’t there anymore for those types of things.”

I look back at the video with nostalgia, too. As relics of the ’90s become the cultural focal point, what I miss most are the over-the-top music videos. Years later I can’t help but wonder, could “Because of You” have been a love song about San Francisco all along? I’ll never know for sure. If you ever hear “You’re my sunshine after the rain …” blasting through loudspeakers on the Golden Gate Bridge, it’ll likely be me, reminiscing about the boy band of my youth as I daydream of simpler times when boy bands were on top of the world.

98” & Rising 962 Feet

Guerrero, Susana. "This '90s boy band was the last group to scale San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge." MSN. SF Gate, 24 Mar 2022. Web. 24 Mar 2022. <http://www.msn.com/en-us/music/news/this-90s-boy-band-was-the-last-group-to-scale-san-franciscos-golden-gate-bridge/ar-AAVrOAT?ocid=chromentp>.