Backstreet Boys hope to restore fading fortunes

By Jill Menze

NEW YORK (Billboard) - AJ McLean remembers the conversation well. Kevin Richardson was having doubts about his future in the Backstreet Boys, and one night in the dressing room after a 2005 show, he told his friends in the mega-selling boy band how he was feeling.

"There's some things I need to do first, for me," McLean recalled Richardson saying.

The group had been discussing "when we wanted to start recording again," McLean said. "Everyone was ready, but that was the first time Kevin put it out in the atmosphere that he wasn't."

The Boys needed some time to digest Richardson's news. In June 2006, he made the official statement that he was moving on to "pursue other interests." Although all were supportive of Richardson's decision, remaining Backstreet Boys McLean, Nick Carter, Howie Dorough and Brian Littrell were still left one man down. But according to McLean, replacing Richardson was never even an option. They turned down an offer to star in a reality show to find a new member, and opted against changing the group name to Backstreet. "This is a new band, but this is a brand, and it's the Backstreet Boys," McLean said.

Instead, the group resolved to make a new album as a quartet, and the result is "Unbreakable," due October 30 via Jive. It's a return to form of sorts for the band, with 13 songs of unmistakable Backstreet Boys-style group harmonies, upbeat dance numbers and hearts-on-their-sleeve midtempo ballads.

But how do the Backstreet Boys, the first, if not best, of the all-male pop groups to dominate the latter half of the '90s and early '00s, fit in among the roster of current hitmakers? The niche the group helped pioneer is slim, if not altogether nonexistent. Can they remain relevant to a new generation of consumers as well as to one-time fans who might have moved on?

"There are definitely some challenges, just because of some people who, especially in America, may look at the band" as just a boy band, said the group's current manager, Jeff Kwatinetz. "But I think that some of (the boy band) characterizations are wrong. They're singers, performers, songwriters."

TRANSITION GAME

This particular transition began for the Backstreet Boys with the 2005 album "Never Gone," released five years on from their chart-dominating pop glory days.

By that time, their boy band contemporaries had faded from the limelight, and their second acts were meeting with mixed results. Justin Timberlake found great solo success outside of 'N Sync, but 98 Degrees fizzled as group member Nick Lachey hawked his solo album on an MTV reality show and became tabloid fodder for his marriage to Jessica Simpson.

The Backstreet Boys had also been mired in management changes, legal battles with longtime label Jive and various personal issues, from McLean's drug addiction to Carter's flop solo debut.

So the group went a new route for "Never Gone," stepping away from slickly produced dance pop and taking a stab at the adult contemporary market with help from writers and producers like Max Martin, Mark Taylor, Billy Mann and John Shanks. First single "Incomplete" hit No. 13 on the Billboard Hot 100, but despite first-week U.S. sales of 291,000, according to Nielsen SoundScan, "Never Gone" stalled. Sales to date are at 748,000 units, the lowest of the band's career.

Carter feels the disjointed sound of "Never Gone" was the result of working with different collaborators on virtually every track. "(The album) was just like an experimental, get-back-into-the-game type of album," he said, adding that a lot of the songs "just slacked."

This relative lack of success stood in stark contrast to the Backstreet Boys' track record.

Initially managed by Lou Pearlman (who helped spawn 'N Sync but is now embroiled in embezzlement charges and allegations that he was a sexual predator) and Johnny Wright, the group first met phenomenal success overseas. Its 1996 self-titled debut sold more than 7.5 million copies internationally, and the 1997 follow-up, "Backstreet's Back," shifted 10.2 million units worldwide.