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Date: Nov 21, 2000 The Orlando Boys Have It Going On Again. Long before Nsync, Westlife and A1, there was the Backstreet Boys. The fivesome from Orlando, Florida started off making little ripples in the music scene, with their self-titled debut album in 1996. This produced hit singles such as We’ve Got It Going On, Get Down, I’ll Never Break Your Heart and Anywhere For You. Before you could say “quit playing games with my heart”, Brian Littrell, Kevin Richardson, AJ McLean, Howie Dorough and Nick Carter became household names all over Europe and Asia. Worldwide domination was only a few hit single away and it was only going to be a matter of time before the U S of A caught on too. This started off slowly, with the success of Quit Playing Games With My Heart. But it was only when they released their second album, Backstreet’s Back, that people stood up and took notice of them, with the success of Everybody (Backstreet’s Back). Perhaps the big budget music video had a lot to do with the amount of attention the song received, but no one could deny that these guys had talent. And they constantly proved this vocal superiority at ‘live’ shows, winning over many news fans each time. Next up was the immensely successful Millennium. Grown men were heard humming along to I Want It That Way and it was no longer embarassing to admit that you like the Backstreet Boys. But that’s exactly the thing about the Backstreet Boys – their appeal stretches over age limits, a feat that not many so-called boy bands can claim. With the reflux of various new bands onto the music scene in the last two years, everyone was waiting with bated breath to see it the Backstreet Boys could hold on to their success and knock off competition. The result is the new album, Black & Blue. So, what’s this album all about then? “The thing that I like about this album is that a lot of the songs and a lot of concepts of the songs are very unique,” says Nick. “They’re not like normal songs and that’s what’s really good, cause you can only sing a certain concept, an ‘I love you’ song, for God knows how long, you know. So that’s why it’s nice to have different concepts.” “The songs are more or less a little bit real,” adds AJ. “People do cheat, guys and girls both mess up in their relationships. It’s like what Nick said, its not your typical campy love songs that are always talking about the rainbow and this is happy and this is all great and love is perfect and beautiful, but it’s really not. There are hardships, there are problems and then there’s the bad side of love.” “This album doesn’t focus so much on one subject, it focus on a whole bunch of different things, which is really cool about it, which is what makes it different.” And, before you start wondering if the guys have been bruised and battered quite a bit in the past year, fret not, cause the album’s title has nothing to do with then being physically hit. “We wrecked our brains for several weeks to try to figure out a title that would best suit the genre of the music that we have,” explains Brian. “We happened to be at a photo shoot and I saw everybody standing in black and had a blue background. And I was an instant genius and I thought ‘Black & Blue’ would work, it just got pick up by everybody.” “We thought it could be a little older, a little more artsy, a little harder. We don’t feel like we necessarily have to put a picture of our faces on the cover in order to have a successful album. We want to let the music speak for itself.” “Also, Black & Blue is kinda gonna be our new symbol,” adds Nick. “You know how nations all have their own flags? That’s our flag. When you see black and blue, you know we’re coming!” With the immense success that they have received so far, it’s hard not to be humble about the expectations of this new album. But the guys are realistic about their goals for Black & Blue, “[Our goals are] are just to get more music out there for our fans,” reveals Kevin. ”Just to try and make good music each time we come out. We’re not trying to shatter any records, that’s just an added bonus. We feel that if we make good music, the sales will come. It’s more important to continue with our career and our growth as artistes.” Having travelled the world a few times over in the past few years, it’ been hard for them not to absorb all the various influences that they’ve been exposed to and to include them on the album too. “On The Call, we have a little bit of Spanish acoustic guitar going on,” says Kevin. “We have a little bit of an R&B flavour with working with Babyface (On Time and Yes I Will). I feel like the album has nice variety of sounds. I think each song has its own kind of identity. I don’t feel like we’re repetitive, you’re not hearing the same thing over and over again, each song has its own identity.” Working as a group for so many years has obviously led to them knowing each other’s vocal styles, which makes it easier for them to decide ho sings which part on the songs. “We just feel it out,” explains Nick. “I mean, we pretty much know our voices. We might sound good on something or we might not. And sometimes, we just go in there and we sing. We just go in there and see whose vibe is more on the song, who’s feeling it more. I mean, it’s really all a feel thing.” Speaking of feeling, the guys have gotten used to the feeling of hearing their songs all around the world, which is a great for a bunch of guys who started out singing in the school gymnasium. “It’s unbelievable, when you think of where we came from, when we started, to where our success has grown to now,” admits Howie. “We’ve been blessed by God. And it’s good to see people really love our music and that brings happiness to people.” Another part of Backstreet experience that brings happiness to people is watching them ‘live’. With elaborate sets, numerous costume changes and well-choreographed dance moves, you can be sure that you’re getting your money’s worth when you attend a Backstreet Boys gig. And then there’s their amazing vocal harmonies, which send chills down your spine when experience up close. This ‘live’ experience has helped the boys when they got back into the studios. “When you’re singing up-tempos, when you’re in the studio, now that we’ve got a bunch of tours under our belt, you can kinda envision maybe what the fans are gonna be doing while you’re in the booth,” enthuses Kevin. “You can kinda picture that and feel that and use that as your motivation.” “You can hear how excited we are, I think, especially on all the up-tempos, like how excited we are to be back in the studio, to be putting out a new album, that we’re finally ready to come back and do it again,” adds AJ. Unlike many other bands out there at the moment, one advantage that the Backstreet Boys has is that they were good friends long before they became a band, which they admit has helped them in the long run. “It helps a lot because you developed a certain bond together and you learn things about each other, especially three of us being friends and two of us being family,” says AJ. “It’s the perfect combination, you know, instead of coming in from different states, not knowing each other and being put together. We’ve grown up so much together as brothers and as family. Like I was saying, two of us are family and three of us are friends. I’ve known Howie for about 11 years now, you know, it’s just better this way.” “There are many different groups that are coming out now that are being out together, that are being manufactured, they don’t know each other from a hole in the wall. It’s scary to think that groups like that may not be around that long, but groups like us, I think, have the opportunity at hand to stay around as along as we wish to and as long as we want to.” “We’ve seen a lot of groups come and go, just in our history of existence,” continues Brian. “We’ve seen all kinds of people pop out and have a big song and it’s kinda like ‘Woh, where did they go?’ But we’re just trying to make quality music, I think the biggest concern is that we maintain our success and we maintain the quality of the music and it will hopefully stand on its own.” The boys have been keeping themselves occupied aside from the music too. Howie has been keeping himself busy with the lupus fund, which he rises funds regularly, in memory of his sister who he lost to the disease, while AJ performed a strings of shows in Europe under the pseudonym Johnny No Name. And as everyone knows by now, both Brian and Kevin got married recently. As for Nick, well, his contribution involves the whole group too – he was responsible for them being immortalized in a series of Stan Lee comic books. “Nick’s been talking for a long time, that he wanted to develop a comic,” shares Kevin. “I mean, that’s one of his hobbies and doing caricatures of all five of us. And so he finally made one of his dreams come true.” “The whole concept for the comic has been going on for at least four years when we were out touring and it finally came alive with Stan Lee,” adds Nick. The boys also performed with legendary singer Elton John at the Grammy Awards early this year, an ocassion that none of them will forget for a long time. “We’ve done a couple of songs when we were out on the road and his people asked if we wanted to be on the Road To El dorado soundtrack, which not many people knew,” reveals Nick. “We were singing a song called Friends Never Say Goodbye. He wasn’t in the studio, we decide to go into the studio while we were on tour and he called us on the phone and thanked us. Then, his people called us up and said, ‘Hey since you did this, would you like to do the Grammys?’” “It was the first time in 30 years that he had performed, so we were honoured to be on stage with him,” adds a pleased Kevin. It’s obvious when you see the Backstreet Boys together that they have a great bond between the five of them and this has certainly helped them in making good pop music. “I think we fins sanctuary, so to say, with each other, feeding off each other, especially on stage,” admits Brian. “We’ve gotten a lot more emotionally closer, just in dealing with growing up and spending up some of the best years of your life together.” “There’s always ups and downs and rollercoasters and milestones that we’ve accomplished and things that we’ve dealt with in individual lives of losing their family members to having surgeries to everything you can imagine.” “And outside of every camera, outside of every interview, somebody’s trying to get at you. And nobody’s trying to get to us when we are in a circle of five. And that’s kinda represented in the comic book. It’s like we zap away and disappear at any time as long as we want to.” Die-hard fans will be glad to know that the boys just might be zapping to out part of the world sometime next year. “We start [our tour] in the third week of January,” reveals Brian. “And we do eight weeks in the US and then we take a break and then we will head over to Southeast Asia, so that’ll be springtime.” Form and orderly queue girls, you don’t want to be black and blue when you meet the boys! Look out for our exclusive BSB pendants in our teens annual 2001, out in January. Want the lastest news on BSB in Singapore/Asia? Subscribe to BSBMultimedia-subscribe@onelist.com
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