May 21, 1999
Music

Where The Boys Are

Backstreet Boys and C Note offer studio-sweetened confections that are pleasant enough, but sometimes hard to swallow.

Review by Jim Farber

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Current cliche paints today's youth as jaded victims, robbed of their innocence by entertaining cynics. The enabling Jerry Springer, the exploitative Marilyn Manson, and an ever-widening cast of snarling gangsta rappers have allegedly done their share to make kids bitter before their time.

Never mind the fact that hordes of teens have courted outrage as long as people have had pimples; the above scenario hardly tells the whole story--especially now. Two opposing forces tangle on today's charts. In this corner, you've got hardcore hip-hoppers, like DMX, and metal-heads, like Korn. In the other, you've got the boy and girl teen acts, dewy-eyed cuties singing some of the most saccharine and conservative music since the dawn of rock. The last two and a half years have seen just as anxious a reaction to music's bolder statesmen as when Pat Boone rose up to neuter Little Richard.

Backstreet Boys standardized the soft male side early last year when their self-titled debut started selling more than 100,000 copies per week (it's currently at 7.9 million and counting). If Hanson broke through first, Backstreet offered a more imitable sound, directly presaging 'N Sync, 98[degrees], Boyzone, and the latest soundalikes on the block, C Note.

The style Backstreet patented on their debut--and which they eagerly continue on the new Millennium--cleverly merges two genres: slinky American R&B and chirpy Euro-pop. Just as black R&B reached a new chart peak, the Boys came along to whiten it. To help them do so, an army of handlers commissioned songs for the Boys' debut from pop whiz Robert "Mutt" Lange (Shania Twain, Bryan Adams, etc.), '80s R&B act Full Force, and Max Martin, a key writer for Ace of Base.

Martin and Lange return for Millennium, but Full Force have moved on to pen for C Note. In their stead, two B-Boys, Brian Littrell (the short guy who looks like a sprite) and Kevin Richardson (the tall guy with eyebrows like caterpillars) pen several new tracks, the first writing from the group's own ranks. Fans needn't worry about the change affecting the sound. The new album practically xeroxes the debut. Its four upbeat cuts sound like the old "Everybody (Backstreet's Back)," complete with burping hook and retro-'80s rock/R&B arrangement, while "Don't Want You Back" directly samples that song. All the ballads suggest sequels to "As Long as You Love Me."

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Source: Entertainment Weekly