CDNOW Interview: Backstreet's Back

Back - Index - Submissions - - What is RSS? Date: Mar 11, 2000 Source: CDNOW Submitted By: Amy Bonaria Almost a year after the release of Millennium, the Backstreet Boys are more popular than ever. By Gary Graff When Millennium was released in May of 1999, the Backstreet Boys camp held its collective breath. After all, its predecessor -- 1997's Backstreet Boys -- had steamrolled its way to sales of more than 27 million worldwide and helped launch, along with the Spice Girls and Hanson, the new teen pop movement that's dominated the pop scene ever since. But the success of Millennium was deemed crucial to the Boys and to the genre, and only another massive success would confirm that both had legs. They needn't have worried; at 30 million and counting, Millennium has provided a solid argument that Backstreet's back. It was the biggest selling album of last year, and the Boys' Into the Millennium world tour has been a sold-out rite of high-pitched pandemonium. They may not have won any of the Grammys they were nominated for, but Elton John -- who the Boys backed for a performance of "Philadelphia Freedom" during this year's telecast -- confirmed that they can "sing their asses off" and declared his "ultimate respect" for the quintet. The fans even seem willing, from the bottom of their broken hearts (whoops, wrong act ...), to wish cousins Brian Littrell and Kevin Richardson the best in their recently announced engagements. Brian, Kevin, Nick, Howie, and A.J. aren't planning to rest on their laurels, though; a new album is expected for the fall of 2000, while the Boys will be part of a new online comic book series from Spiderman's creator, Stan Lee. This particular brand of bubble gum, it seems, has yet to lose its flavor. CDNOW: You've sold a lot -- a huge amount -- of records, but you still take a certain amount of flack for being "pop'' and a "boy band.'' What do you feel the Backstreet Boys still have to prove? Kevin Richardson: You know, something I came to realize in the past year -- which initially bothered me, but now I've accepted it -- is the fact that you just can't please everybody. Everybody is not gonna like our music. Everyone is not gonna like us. There are going to be some people who absolutely hate us or want to make fun of us. That's fine; if you see yourselves in a tabloid, then you've approached a level of success that people know who you are, and now they want to make fun of you. We just want people to know that everything they hear on the album is real. It's us. It's our voices singing. It's us coming up with the treatments for our videos and the ideas for our tours, the stage show, putting it together. We're just not guys who are told what to do or where to be. "Everybody is not gonna like our music … There are going to be some people who absolutely hate us or want to make fun of us." So do you just shake off the criticism? Critics are critics, and you can't let things like that bother you. It's frustrating, but what can you do? We think the album has beautiful melodies and beautiful songs on it. We're not trying to be, like, the Joni Mitchell of our time. We're not trying to be the Jimi Hendrix of our time. We're just trying to make good music and make people happy, and forget about their problems. We're not trying to send a message. We're happy with what we're putting out. What kind of pressure did you feel in making Millennium? Well, we set ourselves up pretty good for a sophomore slump by selling 10 million in the U.S. on a debut album. But, actually, we'd already made it through the sophomore slump because [this] is our third album everywhere else in the world, and our second album only in the U.S. But we put the pressure on ourselves, really, just to make better music. We're not really looking at the sales. If you make good music and keep trying to outdo your last album as far as quality of music, the sales will come. Sales weren't the goal; we wanted to make better music and music that we felt our fans would like. It seemed like the five of you were more involved with Millennium than your first album. Definitely. I mean, Brian wrote a song on the last album called "That's What She Said,'' but we all want to get involved and write more. At the same time, we realize that it's a growing process; we don't want to just jump into it and say, "OK, we're going to write this whole album ourselves.'' The producers we've been working with, we've learned a lot from them the past three, four, five years we've been recording. We felt we had some songs that were definitely of the caliber to be included on our album. But as a group, with our record label, we worked together and picked the songs out. Howie wrote a couple of songs. A.J. wrote some. And from the songs we'd all written, the songs Brian wrote and the song I wrote were of the caliber needed to be on the album. You wrote a song on Millennium, "Back to Your Heart.'' What's it about? It comes from a real personal perspective. It's about a guy who thinks the grass is greener on the other side but finds out that it's not. That's basically what it's about, a guy who finally realizes what he has. It can be about a lot of things -- the business, a relationship, a love life. You need to find a balance. So from your vantage point now, what are the best aspects of your success? I'll give you a perfect example. We did a satellite radio broadcast all over the United States. Before we did that, we had a little girl come in from the Make a Wish Foundation. She said she was going to come in dressed as a little princess because she thought we were her princes. She was adorable, and she has a terminal disease. It breaks your heart; I lost my father to cancer. So it's stuff like that, moments like that that make you thankful you can make somebody happy and forget about their problems and put a smile on somebody's face. I enjoy creating in the studio, too. I enjoyed writing and getting to work with Shania [Twain], Elton. The art is the great thing about it. The bad thing is the business, but that comes with it. You can't have one without the other. What's your view of all the groups that followed in your wake – 'NSync, 98 Degrees, LFO? Is imitation really the sincerest form of flattery? I think it's kind of flattering. At the same time, it really lets the public know just how record companies think. As soon as one label gets something successful, others want something that's just like that. That's pointing finger at the record companies; seeing the success of what we've done; now they want to capitalize on that. They're finding groups, creating groups that are just like us -- which is frustrating but, at the same time, it's flattering. As long as everybody's making good music, it's all good. "We're not trying to be the Jimi Hendrix of our time. We're just trying to make good music and make people happy, and forget about their problems." Do you feel that there's a rivalry with any of those groups? There's been a lot of stuff in the press between us and 'NSync, saying that we're rivals, and we're fighting and competing, but a lot of that is media hype. We don't have anything against those guys personally at all. We think they're good guys. We think they're good singers. It was just that our management kept the fact from us that they were involved with 'NSync, too. They surprised us with it, dropped it on us. We thought it was a conflict, having two of the same thing. But as far as our feelings towards the other groups, personally, we have nothing against them. They're trying to pursue their dreams like we're trying to pursue ours. We're just concerned about what we're doing, not everybody else. What's Backstreet going to sound like on the next album, and in years to come? We feel like we've grown [on the new record]. It's deeper lyrically, but it's not over our young fans' heads. We're just trying to keep with the times in order to stay in the pop music scene. "Pop'' is just short for "popular," so we're just trying to keep evolving with the times, just like Madonna did, just like Janet and Michael [Jackson], so we'll have a long career. Comment on this item. Recent Comments Submitted by: cheap oem software PRc6oX The topic is pretty complicated for a beginner!... Submitted by: geroin9l Submitted by: ppionerka Submitted by: utilizera Submitted by: John Submitted by: William Submitted by: David Submitted by: Halz Submitted by: Greg Guepy Submitted by: Kevin Shen Comment on this item. Next Item: Show Follows Creation of Boy Band Prev Item: Want to date Backstreet Boys?