Boy bands have long been considered pre-fabricated according to a simple formula of good-looking members with stereotyped personalities and not necessarily talented. They have been attacked by music critics and parodied by such diverse programs as “The Simpsons” “South Park” and artists like Eminem and Blink 182. Brian Littrell, one of the blondes of the Backstreet Boys, the group that will be performing their hits and songs from their most recent CD, “Unbreakable”, today at the National Auditorium, defends the style that they represent.
“Some people like us and some don’t; they have the right to listen to and buy whom they want to, no one is forcing them to do anything. The boy bands have changed a lot over the years, I think the the most important ones in terms of sales, world tours and hits has been NSync and us. There was an explosion of pop in the 90’s and the first years of this millenium. It made it possible to succeed, although there will always be new groups and styles, the world continues moving and changing,” said the companion of Howie Dorough, Nick Carter and AJ Mclean.
Beginning in 2005 with their CD “Never Gone,” Brian and Nick play instruments live, which was painfully criticized by “Rolling Stone” magazine, which considered it a pseudo-rock look that had nothing to do with boy bands.
“Perhaps Backstreet Boys will someday be a band, but that will not give us more fans, do not we are not doing it to gain credibility. We are not rock band, R&B or hip-hop, we simply do pop music. It is not necessary that we always play instruments, because we made our fame by dancing and singing, now I am 33 years old and I have learned to play the drums, the piano and the guitar, that way we write songs better. We’e been in this business for 16 years in this business and we like to learn new things”, he said emphatically before the concert they offered in Monterrey last Wednesday, in which Nick played electric guitar and drummed a little, and he (Brian) played an acoustic guitar.
The television channel VH1 created the reality show, “Out of Sync”, ( whose name refers to NSync), whose participants were former members of boy bands like Color Me Bad, 98 Degrees, LFO and NSync, and which proposed to give them a final opportunity to become famous again. MTV likewise created “Totally Boyband”, another reality show of the same tipe which was broadcast in Great Britain and whose participants were former members of boy bands intent on returning to fame as part of the group, Upper Street.
“I’ve never watched those shows, but I know they exist; if some channel in the future wants to do a program using our name they would need our approval. I think it would be interesting if they did a reality show about us, people would take note that we are normal types and t”hat we don’t have a sumptuous life style, but in the end, perhaps it wouldn’t work because those programs only are successful if the people (in them) fight and misbehave; that is not the case with us,” he said.
Without a doubt it’s impossible to deny their commercial success; the Backstreet Boys are the best-selling boy band of all time, with sales to date of 100 million copies in their 15-year career, followed by New Kids on the Block wtih 70 millions, NSync with 56 million, Westlife with 47 (million) and Take That with 25 (million)
“I don’t know if we will return to the success that we had in the 90’s and in 2000, although I hate to say it, I think we will never again sell 40 million copies, occurred with our album, “Millenium”, because the music industry has not been doing well. Some people think that our career is in decline because we don’t sell 10 million CDs or more, but I don’t see it that way. As complicated as things are in the industry, if we sell a million I think (”it would appear to me”) that we are on the upswing,” he opined.
The Christian singer who in 2006 launched his solo CD, “Welcome Home,” wants Backstreet Boys music to sell more on the internet.
“What Radiohead did ws a brilliant idea; I think nowadays we should sell more music on the internet, although we shouldn’t give it away because it cost money to make it. People nowadays want to buy songs, not complete CD that have themes that they don’t like; it would be very good to sell Backstreet Boys music on iTunes,” he said.
A fan of music from artists like Norah Jones, Alicia Keys, Rihanna, Chris Brown, Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, he spoke of the prepration of the next Backstreet Boys album.
We want to enter the studio this summer and we hope the the record would be ready at the end of this year or later in 2009. Normally first we make the music, we listen to it in the (tour) bus and we pick our favorite themes. We are thinking of regressing to rhythm and blues or we are discussing perhaps some dance music,” he put forward.
Source: EXonline / translated by Mike
No comments:
Post a Comment