THE BACKSTREET BOYS shouldn't be so willing to label their latest and seventh album "This Is Us." Why? Because diehard fans — and anyone who remembers BSB from their boy-band dominance during the mid-'90s — will get the wrong idea about who the group is if they were to take this electronica-dominated, slickly synth-pop production at face value.
Back in the day, before N*SYNC challenged the Backstreet Boys for their crowns, Brian Littrell, Nick Carter, Kevin Richardson, Howie Dorough and A.J. McLean were at the top of the world, using their smoothly harmonized R&B and pop jams to capture tweens' hearts. Who cares if group creator Lou Pearlmanwas secretly stealing lots of their dough? The group has been nominated for Grammys, had 13 Top 40 hits and sold more than 100 million albums, securing their spot in pop music's record-books.
And although
Justin Timberlake may have been sexier than any of the Boys and made headlines by dating America's then-pop princess,
Britney Spears, BSB kept it generally wholesome, paying respect to their elders with "
Everybody (Backstreet's Back)" — which had a "
Thriller"-esque music video — and pledging their loyalty to romance with "
I Want It That Way," which reached No. 1 all over the world and become the most popular song ever recorded by a boy band.
So what happened?
Group bad boy A.J. (he of the copious eyeliner) checked himself into rehab in 2001. A few years later, BSB sued record company Zomba Music Group for breach of contract. A three-year hiatus followed until 2005. Kevin left the group in 2006. Their sixth album, "Unbreakable," sold only 81,000 copies its first week in stores in October 2007. It's a series of unfortunate events, but the group's downward spiral — and their effort to continue grasping to fame with the predictable "This Is Us" — is obvious.
From opening track "Straight Through My Heart" to closer "Undone," the album reeks of overused synthesizers, recycled beats and overproduction, and all 11 tracks end up merging together into one bass-heavy barrage of glossy harmonies. All of BSB's favorite themes — love, romance, heartache, the usual — are here, but in an attempt to appeal to the younger set, there's a lot of vaguely inappropriate sexual themes, too, which come off kind of skeezy for dudes who are married with children (Littrell and Dorough), dated Paris Hilton (Carter) or were called out by former girlfriends for their substance abuse issues (McLean).
For example, in "
Bigger," the Boys admit to being cowards and liars but praise the girl who kept "sticking around" while they're "after the crown," while in "
All of Your Life," the foursome urges a girl to "Please don't change the way you are / So you live within my heart." Encouraging words, yes? Sure, until you get to songs like "
Bye Bye Love," in which they shrug off an interested girl ("You say you want me around / But I'm not sure if I want to be down"), or the supremely out-of-character "
PDA," in which the guys talk about the song title's obvious reference ("Kissing and touching / With my hands all over your booty") and drop suggestive innuendos that seem forced and immature ("Good thing we didn't go too deep," "You're the fingers to my instrument").
But it's not just those sexually charged lyrics that seem trite — the group's instrumentation is pretty bad, too. Nearly each and every song — even the ballads — employ a bass- and synth-heavy beat that seems predestined for the club, and bring to mind the same kind of pop-hip-hop hybrid structure that people like
Ne-Yo,
T-Pain and
Colby O'Donis have used for their own ends. Yet BSB's layered harmonies and melodies just don't jive with these throbbing bangers — instead, they become Auto-Tuned out of recognition, such as on "
If I Knew Then," which sounds depressingly generic. And on tracks where the group attempts something different, things end up sounding out-of-date — like "Undone," a rock-tinged ballad whose dalliances into R&B make the song sound like something
Boyz II Men would have rejected years ago.
Though the boys' voices are still in top form (and yes, they can harmonize with the best of them), they never truly commit to either their original identity or the new one they're trying on for this album. As a result, "This Is Us" is an uneven album with poor lyrics (like "Shorty don't know who I am / She don't know I'm a celebrity / But she knows me" on "
She's a Dream"), worse instrumentation (the string-and-piano medley on "
Shattered," for example, sounds far too much like previous single "
Incomplete") and a solid identity crisis.
Who does BSB want to be? We're not quite sure, but in light of this album, we think another makeover should be in order — both for their sake and ours.
Source: http://www.expressnightout.com/content/2009/10/backstreet-boys-this-is-us.php
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