The first time I ever heard the Backstreet Boys, I was 10 years old and riding passenger on the way to the hospital with a fractured wrist. The song was "Quit Playing Games (With My Heart)," and boy, did those dreamboats have me hooked. Amid my pain and my hatred for Ralph Green — the boy responsible for my broken arm — I still remember thinking, "Man, this is going to be my new favorite band. These guys are going to be huge."
And huge they were, with me and just about every other eight- to seventeen-year-old girl in 1997, after the release of their self-titled debut CD. The hits kept coming with songs like "Everybody (Backstreet's Back)," "I Want It That Way" (from 1999's Millennium) and "Shape of My Heart" (from 2000's Black & Blue). Yup, these singing and dancing machines were unstoppable.
Until they stopped. The backstreets were hushed until 2005 when the band released Never Gone and failed to re-establish their presence on the pop scene. Another attempt in 2007 brought the release of Unbreakable, which still failed to put the boys back at the top of the charts. It seemed as if the era of boy bands as I'd known it — with acts like 'NSYNC, LFO, and 98 Degrees following the Backstreet Boys' lead — was over.
This article appears in Oct 8-14, 2009.