Backstreet Boys Down Under
Source: ChillOut! Sunday Times, Perth - 26th November 2000
By: Cameron Adams
It's the moment of truth for all pop bands, and the uber pop band, Backstreet Boys, have just reached it. Their new album, Black & Blue, has everything their millions of fans have been waiting for: slick modern pop, mushy ballads and layered harmonies.
But one major thing is missing this time around. On the front cover there's no photo of the band, just a dark illustration of the five members in silhouette.
"We wanted to prove to our record company that we could sell records without having our faces on the cover," Kevin Richardson, at 29 the father figure of the Backstreet Boys, says.
Indeed, the band say they tried to take the anonymous option for their last album, Millennium, but were talked out of it.
"That's the (music) business," sighs Brian Littrell. "On our first album, I remember we opened it up and this merchandise catalogue fell out of it. Our record company had just put it in there. You realise you have no say; all you do is put your voice on a record, so you can be taken advantage of.
"It's not like that for us anymore; we have a lot more say. We wanted to make this album more adult, more arts-y. We didn't have to plaster our faces over it to make an impact."
Some fans would buy the album if it had bush pigs on the cover. But when ChillOut! Caught up with the Backstreet Boys in Sydney, it was clear the way they look wasn't exactly unimportant to many of their followers.
We caught a ride with the world's biggest pop band in a double-decker bus just after their private jet, borrowed from a Saudi Arabian politician, had deposited the multi-millionaires in Sydney on their six-continents-in-100-hours tour from hell.
"We didn't want to look back in 10 years and wish we'd done something like this," Richardson says. "It's something The Beatles might have done."
The past few years have been very good to the Backstreet Boys. Fifty-five million album sales in four years means that when they're asked by fans what presents they'd buy their parents, the most common answer is a house. By the beach.
Like their own mansions back home in Florida.
But if their fans have made them seriously rich, the band certainly give back plenty that money can't buy.
Unlike many pop bands not even half as successful, they stopped the bus when leaving Sydney airport to meet hundreds of fans who'd waited in the rain to see them.
It threw their security crew into panic mode and their people into shock because their watertight, 10-hour schedule was already behind time. But Backstreet are boss.
"Stop the bus, they want to meet the fans," said one of their managers, who also looks after Korn and Michael Jackson. And meet them they did. Some of the girls could barely talk, while others just squealed or cried.
Others hired taxi and rode alongside the Backstreet bus, beating the band to each stop on the supposedly secret itinerary, which culminated in a remarkable 8000 fans cramming Pitt Street Mall.
When Richardson and Littrell got married, rather than be heartbroken, many fans sent wedding gifts, especially happy for Littrell, who had just recovered from heart surgery.
"We don't have anything to hide," Littrell says. "We're normal people."
"When we first started," says the tattooed AJ McLean, "our management said it was highly not advisable to say we had girlfriends, as it would have killed our fan base.
"Once we told our fans we did have girlfriends, and now some of us wives, they said they respected us for being honest. Everyone has a personal life outside the business."
Their old management is a sticking point for the Backstreet Boys. Five years ago, the band exploded across Europe and Australia with their first and second albums, but were retail poison in the US.
When Quit Playing Games (With My Heart), As Long As You Love Me and Everybody (Backstreet's Back) finally broke them at home, their management company had a little surprise for them: 'N Sync.
'N Sync had been compiled of boys from Florida and were busy working with Backstreet's Swedish production team Cheiron.
It created a rivalry that is now legendary in the US, heightened last year when 'N Sync, at the urging of friend Britney Spears, left their old management and record label to join Spears (and Backstreet's) label Jive.
And this year 'N Sync's No Strings Attached album sold 2.4 million copies in America in a week, beating the record set the previous year by Backstreet's Millennium, which shipped more than one million copies in seven days. It all proves pop is back in a big way.
Howie Dorough says the rivalry is like that between the New York Yankees and the New York Mets baseball teams. "We're all from the same area, doing the same kind of thing."
McLean says that while the feud is partly media created, it is healthy.
"It's not as much about how many records we sell as it is about the quality of the music. Without good-quality music, we'd be crap. It doesn't matter if you look good or can dance; if you don't have good music, why bother?"
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