Backstreet’s back, all right.
Five years since the release of their last album, the Backstreet Boys released “Never Gone” on June 14.
The new album shows that the Boys seem to be holding on to the idea that they are a boy band, with their target audience being young tweens and teens. This is slightly disturbing. They are not boys anymore; they are men.
While I was as excited as the next girl back in the ’90s when the Backstreet Boys danced around in their trendy clothes and overly-styled hair, the time of the boy band has come and gone.
Maybe Backstreet is trying to start a new era – that of the “man band.” However, five grown men executing a perfectly-choreographed routine in front of thousands of screaming 13-year-olds is kind of creepy.
Sure, they can still harmonize like nobody’s business, but that doesn’t mean that they should have produced a reunion album. The Boys probably should have quit at the end of their “Black and Blue” tour, when AJ McLean was anything but sober, Nick Carter had outgrown his cute boy-next-door image, and Brian Littrell was ready to start a family.
The band kept making promises to return to the studio after a year apart, then after two years, and so forth. They toyed with their fans’ emotions constantly, until many had likely given up any hope of a return.
Thanks to Oprah, the Boys reunited and recorded “Never Gone.”
“It shows growth, it shows maturity. It’s not over the top. It’s not over your head. It’s not too complex. It’s just us growing up,” McLean said in an interview with MTV news.
Growing up should have meant moving on for the fab five, which it looked like a few members might just do. Carter began a solo career that ended about as quickly as it started and dated Paris Hilton which crushed his chances of being taken seriously. McLean sobered up, relapsed, and sobered up again. Littrell had a kid. Kevin Richardson and Howie Dorough seemed to disappear off the face of the earth.
Someone must have shown them the meaning of being lonely without each other, because Backstreet came back together to take care of some unfinished business. They began recording and gave their music all they had to give.
It wasn’t enough.
While they once bragged in a song of being the one, this claim no longer holds true.
Past fans may be startled by the apparent aging of the group members when they see the ridiculous-looking rain-soaked Boys in the “Incomplete” video. They look more like drowned rats than sexy boys and it is precarious to consider them serious musicians. Maybe a change of name would make people take the group more serious. The “Backstreet Men” just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
The return of this boy band to mainstream music brings up the question of who will be next? N’SYNC or 98 Degrees? N’SYNC seems more likely, although Justin Timberlake has had success in his solo career, hopefully this does not happen. Boy bands had their day. It is time to move on.
The Backstreet Boys should have quit while they were ahead instead of greedily coming back for more.
But, like a bad fashion trend that worked its way back through the popularity cycle, the Boys came back and quit playing games with their diehard fans’ hearts.
Trisha Barker is a senior in journalism who thinks the Backstreet Boys are no longer “larger than life,” but still admits to owning the first two albums the band released. Confessions of Backstreet obsessions or other comments can be sent to [email protected].
