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Boy bands break up for any number of reasons. Jealousy. Changes in the public’s taste. The lure of solo stardom. Fights over girls. Creative differences. Just spending too much time together. But the fact of life is that they do break up — and usually before long. Once the first hit comes, the clock is ticking.
New Kids on the Block hit the charts with “Please Don’t Go Girl” in 1988 and had split by 1994. ’NSync broke out with “I Want You Back” in 1998 and was done by 2002, Justin Timberlake on his way to solo superstar status. One Direction released its first album in 2011 and was on “hiatus” within four years.
The Backstreet Boys, then, are quite the outlier.
Assembled in Orlando in 1993, they became stars overseas in 1996 and broke the American market in 1997 with “Quit Playing Games (With My Heart).” They’ve kept rolling since, persevering through legal problems, vocal distress and addiction issues. One member — Kevin Richardson — did leave for a few years, but they’ve been back at full power since his return in 2012.
The Backstreet Boys make their Hawaii debut in the coming days, in a run that quickly extended from one show at Blaisdell Arena to four.
STAYING TOGETHER 26 years has helped the Backstreet Boys become the biggest-selling boy band in history, with 40 million albums sold in the U.S. and more than 100 million worldwide.
Their DNA World Tour comes to Hawaii following a seven-country Asian leg. After a break for the holidays it resumes in Mexico in February, kicking off a traipse through seven Latin American countries before winding up for good Down Under.
The 107-show sojourn kicked off in Europe, which is fitting given that that’s where their rise started in the ’90s, after the group got the cold shoulder from the U.S. recording industry.
“We went to several labels and sang a cappella in their lobbies,” Brian Littrell told Billboard in 2017. (Band members did not respond to a Star-Advertiser interview request.) “They were like, ‘Wow you guys are talented,” but they wouldn’t necessarily sign us, because at the time it was right after New Kids on the Block had been huge and there was a bit of a backlash. So the record labels weren’t very willing to take a risk.”
Instead of giving up, the group headed to Europe, where boy bands never seem to go out of style, with Take That and Boyzone among those thriving at the time.
Once America was ready for the Backstreet Boys, the floodgates opened for a plethora of boy bands — ’Nsync, 98 Degrees, O-Town, LFO, B2K and more — many of whom were managed by Lou Pearlman, a svengali who turned out to be a con man bilking his groups of millions of dollars
“We all loved him and admired him and looked up to him as a businessman,” Richardson, Littrell’s first cousin, told CBS last month, “but then when the curtain was pulled back and it was revealed that he was ripping us off and taking advantage of us, it broke our hearts.”
Before his deceit was discovered, Pearlman gave them an early look at how the industry was first and foremost a business. When Pearlman created ‘NSync, the Backstreet Boys viewed the upstart group as an imitation that would benefit from the barriers BSB had felled.
“It’s like the world was handed to (them), … so, for us, it was tough,” Littrell told women’s lifestyle website Refinery29 in 2015. “Same management, same label, same promoters, same writers, same producers, same everything. Seriously a carbon copy.
“That’s when we kind of realized that this is a business. People really don’t care. You’ve got five guys that really honestly care about what they do, and then you realize everybody around you doesn’t.”
Ultimately, the depth of the vocal talent in the Backstreet Boys is what separated them from ’NSync and others. Where ’NSync leaned heavily on Timberlake, JC Chasez and high-energy dance moves, the Backstreet Boys spread the leads around to all five members, and focused more on the sound than the choreography.
Sure, Littrell and Nick Carter were the group’s fair-haired children‚ literally and figuratively, garnering a greater share of vocal leads, but Richardson, AJ McLean and Howie Dorough have always had ample opportunity to show their talents as well.
The enigmatic 1999 hit “I Want It That Way” — seriously, the post on Genius’ crowdsourced song meanings page may as well be the “shoulder shrug” emoji — is a great example of the band’s inclusive approach. All five members get a chance to take the lead on what has become the most enduring song of that boy band era.
“From the beginning, the five of us and even our very first manager at the time, we were like ‘We want people to focus on your voices,’ ” Littrell told Billboard. “That’s been something that we have taken pride in. …
“We’re vocalists, No. 1, first and foremost. The band stops playing, turn the lights off, give us five mics and we’ll sing for you in harmony.”
A DEVOTION to blended voices endures into the Backstreet Boys’ current work.
This year saw the release of their first new material in more than five years, the album “DNA,” which manages to bring the band into the present without sounding like an attempt to ride the coattails of the latest musical trends.
Their voices, as smooth as ever, step to the forefront. The overproduction that plagued some of the hits of their heyday — “Everybody (Backstreet’s Back)” and “Show Me the Meaning of Being Lonely” come to mind — is gone, a more organic sound taking its place.
Among the highlights is “Passionate” — co-written by “Honey, I’m Good” singer Andy Grammer, and with production by The Stereotypes, who oversaw “That’s What I Like” for Hawaii’s Bruno Mars and have worked with countless K-pop groups.
Carter and Grammer met when they competed on Season 21 of “Dancing with the Stars,” on which Carter finished second to Bindi Irwin.
“(Grammer) just cranks out songs,” Carter told Billboard in April, “and I knew he had something in there, and we all are huge fans of his. And when he brought this song ‘Passionate’ to the table, I played it for the guys and they all fell in love with it.”
The new album has also given the quintet a chance to show off how they are now men, despite the name of their group: The video for “No Place” shows each of them getting in some quality time with their families.
They now range in age from 39 (Carter) to 48 (Richardson) and are all married and have kids (eight among them).
The video “just shows that we’re not trying to be anything that we’re not, we’re comfortable in our skin, and we’re happy to be doing what we’re doing, still, so many years later,” Littrell told NPR in January.
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BACKSTREET BOYS THE DNA WORLD TOUR
>> Where: Blaisdell Arena
>> When: Nov. 2-3, 5-6
>> Cost: $62.50-$259.50
>> Info: ticketmaster.com or 800-745-3000
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