Posted By CORINA MILIC, THE SAULT STAR
Updated 4 days ago
Backstreet's back on tour with a new album and one less band member but the boys don't seem to know the meaning of being lonely, and according to Nick Carter, are on track to once again becoming larger than life. The foursome will hit Sault Ste. Marie with their smooth harmonies and upbeat stage show Wednesday to promote their latest album, Unbreakable. Tagging along are little sister band, Girlicious.
It is the Backstreet Boys first offering - and tour -without Kevin Richardson, who left the group on amicable terms in June 2006 to pursue other interests.
"We closed that gap and tightened our moves up and created a show that is the building blocks to the next phase of Backstreet Boys," said Carter, from a concert stop in Bloomington, Ill. Friday.
Unbreakable and their previous album, Never Gone (2005), recorded after a three-year hiatus, got less than stellar reviews in the United States. The new sound has been labeled "adult contemporary" - the ultimate snub for international pop stars used to filling venues like Toronto's Rogers Centre to the brim with hormone-crazed preteen girls.
Carter, at 28 the youngest member and once dubbed CosmoGirl's Sexiest Man in the World, said the screaming girls are still around, but so are their mothers.
"Our fans are like 12 to frickin' 80. I'm looking into the audience and I'm like, 'Is that a grandma and is that her little granddaughter?'" he said. "It's just phenomenal to see they're still as excited as they were before."
No matter how big their BSB collages, or ardent their devotion to the 15-year-old group, Carter said fans have never gone too far.
"I've seen so much in my life that I like them to try and outdo themselves now," he laughed.
The craziest thing a fan has done?
"We signed their back, all five of us one time, and they tattooed the signatures on their back."
Despite fan loyalty, the band's popularity has dropped since they released Unbreakable, with singles like Inconsolable and Helpless When She Smiles never reaching the top of U. S. music charts.
The Boys' new sound has fared better in Japan, where I Still . . . debuted at number 1 - the first international single to do so in Japanese history.
Carter likened the experience to BSB's early days, when the band toured Europe and Asia before breaking into the American music scene.
"We had two or three albums out before we hit our first peak, which was Millennium(1999) and Black and Blue(2000) and now we're rebuilding again and we expect to hit another peak with another album in the future."
Carter said he thinks North America is ready "to be happy again."
They want, apparently, pop music.
The Backstreet Boys are not the only ones ready to provide it. The 1980's "original" boy band, New Kids on the Block, has recently attempted a comeback.
Fans can stop their hopeful shrieking; no mega-boy band tour is in the works. BSB offered to tour with the group that largely inspired them, but the New Kids weren't interested, said Carter.
It doesn't seem to bother him too much.
"(North Americans) want pop music back and heck, we are the poster boys for pop music," he said.
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