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Backstreet Boys Lead The Way As U.S. Goes Ga-Ga For Pop
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Date: May 27, 2099 Contributing Editor Christopher O'Connor reports The U.S. is mad for teen pop. And it's not simply about good looks, a gimmick and sugar-sweet melodies anymore. It's about empathy, say experts and industry professionals. A new era of lean, mean and clean music that taps into the spirit of today's youth seems to be drawing attention from even once-cutting-edge cities such as Seattle, and radio stations known for offering an alternative to top-40. The Backstreet Boys, an Orlando, Fla., quintet of handsome pop singers, sold 1.13 million copies of their newest album, Millennium, in its first week. The mark broke the SoundScan-era record forsingle-week sales, surpassing releases by rock band Pearl Jam and country singer Garth Brooks. Puerto Rican pop singer Ricky Martin, 27, accomplished that feat in two weeks with Ricky Martin, a hefty mark in its own right. Seventeen-year-old Britney Spears is the top-selling popular music artist of 1999, with sales of more than 3 million for ... Baby One More Time, an album of dance-pop songs about love lost and love gained that has yet to fall below 100,000 copies in weekly sales since its mid-January debut. The three albums sit atop the newest Billboard 200 albums chart this week. The U.S. has become a teen-pop nation. The success of and fervor for the music, according to sales figures and industry professionals, extend beyond the much-hyped Spice Girls/Hanson period of summer 1997. The Backstreet Boys even emerge as the top-seller at a Tower Records in Seattle these days, according to a manager there. "It's gone full-cycle," said Wayne Roy, program director of KQKQ-FM, a top-40 station in Omaha, Neb. "We've gotten away from grunge. Melodies are back. There's so much nastiness on TV and in the world right now, to be able to listen to a song and to sing a song you can learn all the words to, it's almost a step back [to earlier times] in that way." The deluge of interest in such teen affirmations comes as the population of young people and the number of kids purchasing music in the U.S. are on the rise, experts say. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates the number of Americans between the ages of five and 19 rose from 53 million in July 1990 to 58.8 million in November 1998, an 11 percent increase. As the age group expands, so does its propensity to buy music. The Recording Industry Association of America reports that the share of record purchases by kids ages 10 to 14, a primary target audience for light pop music, rose from 7.9 percent in 1996 to 9.1 percent last year. The Backstreet Boys' success this week, fueled by the hit "I Want It That Way (RealAudio excerpt), may also be the culmination of sustained sales for Millennium's predecessors. SoundScan, a private company that tracks album sales, reports that five of the most popular teen-oriented albums of the late 1990s -- the Backstreet Boys' Backstreet Boys, 'N Sync's 'N Sync, ... Baby One More Time, the Spice Girls' Spice World, and Hanson's Middle of Nowhere -- have sold a combined 19 million copies since Jan. 1, 1998. The Backstreet Boys and 'N Sync alone sold nearly 13 million of those copies. Experts offer a number of theories to explain teen-oriented pop's rise to financial enormity. "It's been mostly like advertising," said Tiffany Neal, manager of a Camelot Music store in Milwaukee. "A lot of the kids that age are already familiar with them. Lots of parents say our kids already have this one or that one." "That's how we break an artist like [new pop singer] Billie," Neal added. "We say, 'Oh yeah, she sounds like Britney Spears.' " The scenes on MTV before Millennium's release -- screaming teenagers gushing at the chance to meet the group -- were reminiscent of the embrace of Michael Jackson in late 1983, when his Thriller album shipped nearly 1 million copies to record stores in a week, according to a source at Sony Music. Thriller went on to sell 25 million copies in the U.S. Bari Nan Cohen, entertainment editor for YM magazine, a publication tailored for young women, said she feels the growth in teen pop is partly a numbers game. Now that the youth population is so large, she said, there are a lot of teens looking for artists they can identify with. "The Backstreet Boys are right there with the girls saying, 'I'll Never Break Your Heart,' " Cohen said. Mark Hilsenrath, research director for WPLJ-FM, a New York adult-contemporary radio station that plays Backstreet Boys and Ricky Martin, said the music plays well with the station's primary 25-34 female audience as well. Its rise, he said, probably lies in young America's impatience for old music and styles. "From hair bands to grunge to pop, they're the most fickle group," Hilsenrath said. "What they like now they're not going to like in five years. This has shelf life because folks grow with the music." The Backstreet Boys' previous self-titled record has sold nearly 28 million records worldwide, with more than 9 million in the United States. Group member Howie Dorough, 25, said the group is not sure what to expect with Millennium. "If we come anywhere close to that [in sales figures], I think we'll be content," he said. "Hopefully, this year we'd like to see an American Music Award or a Grammy Award. ... I don't think there will ever be a time where we say, 'OK, this is exactly where we want to be.' We can always strive to do bigger and better. If we're content within ourselves, we'll be all right." Desmond Child, who co-wrote the single "Livin' la Vida Loca" (RealAudio excerpt) for Martin, said culture is not necessarily the driving force, refuting ideas that trends for pop music or Latin music are that strong. "This is not style-driven. This is about a star," Child said. "There was Bon Jovi and there [were] legions of hair bands. And now they're all gone, and there's still ... Jon Bon Jovi." In a way, Cohen agreed with Child's assessment, noting the magazine's readership also fell hard for grunge around the time of its peak in 1993. Empathy, she said, is what young people crave in their music. Not all teens, apparently, are on the poppy-go-lucky bandwagon. Alexandra Walsh, a spokesperson for the RIAA, said the buying share of people ages 15-19 actually went down a percentage point from 1997 to 1998 to 15.8 percent. Their tastes, she said, are more geared toward alternative rock, which did not enjoy as successful a year in 1998 as in others. Besides, she added, the association's research shows the older kids consider themselves too old for the music of Hanson. Older teens and young adults, by way of rights of passage and cultural acceptance, also enjoy more freedom in selecting their music. Neal said she suspects parents have a lot of control over what their younger kids listen to. She said many parents are buying Millennium at her store without their children present. "The newer release by the known artists pretty much sell themselves," she said. Millennium, with sales of 1,133,505 copies, broke the previous record held by Garth Brooks' Double Live, which sold 1,085,373 in its first week of release in December.
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