Boys And Their Bands Battle On
Source: PageSix.com
June 3, 2000
By RICHARD JOHNSON
with Paula Froelich and Chris Wilson
The battle of the boy bands is so competitive, the Backstreet Boys had to shelve a single because it sounded too similar to a hit by their reviled rivals, *NSYNC.
The Backstreeters, we hear, wanted to release "Don't Want You Back" as the third single off "Millennium," but scrambled to pick a new tune once *NSYNC's soundalike smash "Bye, Bye, Bye" started ruling the airwaves.
Instead, the Boys cooked up a scheme with MTV to let their fans pick their latest single, "The One," which is now burning up the charts, say sources.
The single snafu is the latest wrinkle in a long-running feud between the platinum-selling pin-up groups, who were hatched by the same Orlando teen-pop svengali, Lou Pearlman, share the same hitmaking Swedish producers, and record for the same label, Jive.
The glaring similarities have caused members of the Backstreet Boys, who hit it big before *NSYNC, to grumble that their labelmates have copied their style and siphoned off their fans.
"They hate each other," one record company executive told us. "The Backstreet Boys are working on a new album they'll release in October, and they are doing everything they can to break *NSYNC's record sales. That's what their focus is now."
Geronimo, a deejay and music director for the city's top dance station, WKTU, confirmed there is a long-standing loathing between the two groups.
"They don't like to talk about it, but it's true," he told us. "A lot of their songs sound similar and they were created by the same guy. I know that the Backstreet Boys really want their album to sell after *NSYNC's ["No Strings Attached"] did so well."
It's a safe bet that if *NSYNC smashed records with their latest CD, Backstreet will follow suit. Both groups rely heavily on producers at Stockholm's Cherein Studios, Max Martin, Andreas Carlsson and Kristian Lundin.
Jive Records execs are caught in the middle. Both Backstreet and *NSYNC privately complain that the other is getting better label support and promotion, say sources. But a Jive spokesperson says that the groups merely have "a friendly little rivalry."
"The rivalry between the Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC has been blown out of proportion by the media," she said. "Jive looks forward to the release of the new Backstreet Boys album in October."
