Boy Bands, Young Single Artists and their Influence on Todays Generation: The Backstreet Boys

As a young teenage girl, your first love is always the music heartthrob of the time. For me, it was The Backstreet Boys. Like many other girls, I listened to them nonstop. All my school supplies and room were decked out in The Backstreet Boys. When you went to any grocery store or the mall, there would be pictures of them everywhere. The Backstreet Boys were “acknowledged leaders” and “sweep[ed] popularity of teen pop” (Lamb). Let’s just say, they were kind of a big deal.

The Backstreet Boys started as a trio with Nick Carter, A.J. McLean, and Howie Dorough. Later after meeting Kevin Richardson in Orlando, they added him and his cousin Brian Littrell to make a quintet. They got their name from an Orlando flea market. Their first major concert was performed at Orlando’s Sea World and everything got better from there.

The Backstreet Boys weren’t famous overnight here in America. They actually were extremely famous in Europe and Canada first. Singles that topped the charts overseas barely made a dent on the US charts. They “combined their international singles with new tracks” to make an American version of their music that “proved to be popular singles” (Starpulse).

The group definitely had their setbacks though. In 1998, Littrell went through surgery to fix a congenital heart defect. Also that year, they got entangled in a lawsuit with Louis Pearlman and the rest of their management. They fired everyone, but Pearlman remained their manager. They then proceeded to “work on their follow-up album” (Starpulse). Millennium came out in 1999 and went straight to number one. The Backstreet Boys were becoming more popular than ever. They kept the popularity going when they released Black & Blue in 2000. After seven years of recording and touring though, the group decided they needed a break. Four years later, they reformed and created three new albums; Never Gone, Unbreakable, and lastly This Is Us in 2009.
Their success and cuteness drove teenage girls crazy. Young girls would “stake out their hotels and chase their tour bus[es]”. Girls believed every little word The Backstreet Boys sang; that boys are “sensitive, sweet, and romantic” (Weisel). Teenage girls would go to their computer and find everything they could about The Backstreet Boys. In 1998, The Backstreet Boys were more frequently searched on the Internet than any other musical act besides the Spice Girls. They had girls head over heels in love with them and their music. With being such a huge part in every young girl’s life, boy bands of our childhood influenced us greatly. The music we listened to scoped us into who we are today. Any problems we had in our lives, we looked to music to help us get through it. The Backstreet Boys helped girls with heartbreak and falling in love.

Here are some of their most famous songs in order of release date: