"Step by Step" was the biggest selling single from New Kids on the Block. Written by Maurice Starr, it was a huge worldwide hit selling over 6.5 million copies worldwide making it one of the biggest selling singles of 1990. It was the first single from the album of the same name, it was released on the 30th of June 1990. The song spent three weeks at #1 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 and was eventually certified platinum, it also spent two weeks at #1 in the Canadian Singles Chart, in total "Step by Step" spent five weeks at #1 in the North American charts. It also peaked at #2 on the UK Singles Chart and was also top 10 hits in the Australian, French, German, Irish and Norweigan charts. "Step by Step" was initially not meant to be recorded by the New Kids on the Block but was meant for one of Maurice Starr's other groups, but once the New Kids heard the song they insisted on making it a record for themselves, which it thus did and became their biggest selling single. It is also one of their signature songs.

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"Step by Step" was voted #4 in a Smash Hits poll of "Best Boyband songs...Ever," #5 in NME's "Top 50 Boyband Records" chart in September 2005 and also made the list of the top 30 Guilty Pleasures on About.com's music site. [3]

The song was voted #7 in a viewer poll of the greatest Boy band/Girl band songs on New Zealand show UChoose40. It was also voted #1 in a viewer poll of the greatest Guilty Pleasures on the same show UChoose40. It beat such songs as the classic hit from Queen "Bohemian Rhapsody" which finished fourth in the poll.

In August 2007, it was confirmed that "Step by Step" would be part of a 30 song track-list in the new edition of the "Singstar" series titled SingStar 90s, a karaoke style game on classic 90s songs. [4]

"Step by Step" has also been covered by other boybands since the band released the song, including Korean boyband DBSK in December 2004, French boyband 2Be3, and Korean group Battle.