Backstreet Boys
The Backstreet Boys (often abbreviated as BSB) are an American vocal group consisting of Nick Carter, Howie Dorough, AJ McLean, and cousins Brian Littrell and Kevin Richardson. The group was formed in 1993 in Orlando, Florida.
The group rose to fame with their debut international album, Backstreet Boys (1996). In the following year, they released their second international album Backstreet’s Back (1997) along with their self-titled U.S. debut album, Backstreet Boys (1997), which continued the group’s success worldwide.
They rose to superstardom with their third studio album Millennium (1999) and its follow-up album, Black & Blue (2000). They also released a greatest hits album, The Hits — Chapter One (2001), with a new single, “Drowning”. After a two-year hiatus, they regrouped and released a comeback album Never Gone (2005).
After the conclusion of the Never Gone Tour in 2006, Richardson left the group to pursue other interests.The group then released two albums as a quartet: Unbreakable (2007) and This Is Us (2009).
Richardson permanently rejoined the group in 2012. In the following year, they celebrated their 20th anniversary and released their first independent album, In a World Like This. Their follow-up album DNA (2019) debuted at number one, more than two decades after the group formed, and 19 years after they last topped in 2000. They also became the first boy band to top the U.S. album charts in three different decades.
The Backstreet Boys have sold over 100 million records worldwide, making them the best-selling boy band of all time, and one of the world’s best-selling music artists. They are the first group since Led Zeppelin to have their first ten albums reach the top 10 on the Billboard 200, and the only boy band to do so. The albums Backstreet Boys and Millennium were both certified diamond by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), making them one of the few bands to have multiple diamond albums.
The group received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on April 22, 2013. They also released their first documentary movie, titled Backstreet Boys: Show ’Em What You’re Made Of in January 2015. In March 2017, the group began a residency in Las Vegas that lasted two years, titled Backstreet Boys: Larger Than Life.
The Backstreet Boys have always prided themselves as a vocal harmony group and not a boy band. In order to fight the boy band stereotype and the backlash from New Kids on the Block’s lip-sync scandal in the beginning, they would sing a cappella every chance they could get.
The ad they answered in 1993 was for a singing group with “New Kids on the Block look with a Boyz II Men sound”, and they aimed to have a white version of Boyz II Men. “We were fans of New Kids, but were we really modeled after them? No. We looked at ourselves as Shai, Jodeci, Boyz II Men, the true vocal groups. That’s who we listened to and who we really wanted to be like,” Littrell stated in 2011.
The Backstreet Boys often employ polyphonic harmony, which sets them apart from many other singing groups. In choruses, Littrell, Carter, and McLean usually sing the melody with Dorough harmonizing above the melody and Richardson covering the bass parts.
During Richardson’s absence, McLean and Carter together covered his part in choruses while Dorough took his solo parts, although McLean sang Richardson’s verse in “Drowning”.