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Chart Watch: Backstreet Boys Smash Sales Records
Source: Wall Of Sound, sent in by Terri

That sad sound you hear is Garth Brooks crying over his broken record. Set late last year, Brooks became the first artist to sell more than one million records in the first week of sale. But now the country superstar's Double Live has been eclipsed by five young men from Florida - the Backstreet Boys, naturally. Their Millennium sold 1,133,505 copies in its first week in release, making it the most albums sold in a week - ever - since SoundScan began recording sales figures. The Boys knocked Ricky Martin from his perch at No. 1, but the pop star's self-titled album still sold a respectable 458,000 copies, pushing it well past the platinum mark. Britney Spears' ?Baby One More Time climbed up to No. 3, selling 141,000 copies, followed by TLC's Fan Mail, with another 134,000 copies sold. The opening of Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace gave the soundtrack a healthy bump, pushing it up to No. 5 with 114,000 copies sold. Shania Twain, whose Come on Over doesn't need a bump, was close behind, moving another 113,000 copies.

Snoop Dogg's Top Dogg never made it to the top, but still puts in a Top 10 appearance at No. 7, cresting in at 108,000 copies. The latest from Jimmy Buffett, Beach House on the Moon, debuts at No. 8, selling just shy of 200,000 copies, followed by the Ruff Ryders' Ryde or Die, in at No. 9 with more than 99,000 copies sold. At No. 10 was another new album, Vol. 1 - In Our Time, from Eightball & M.J.G., which sold more than 94,000 copies.

Notable debuts: The compilation Soundbombing II bows at No. 30 with 37,000 copies sold, while the soundtrack to Tarzan swings in at No. 45, selling almost 26,000 copies. Dwight Yoakam's Greatest Hits set shows up at No. 80 (15,000 copies), and the latest Lilith releases, Vol. 2 and Vol. 3, come in at No. 87 and No. 98, respectively.

Movin' on up: Look for Kid Rock's Devil Without a Cause to crack the Top 10 in coming weeks. Up to No. 13 this week with 78,000 sold, his sales are up over 15,000 copies from last week. Brandy's Never Say Never has bounced from No. 48 to No. 25 in the last two weeks, while Lit's Place in the Sun, at No. 70 two weeks ago, appears at No. 42 this time around. In at No. 50 is Collective Soul's Dosage, up 23 notches from two weeks prior. Not surprisingly, the Backstreet Boys' self-titled album jumped up several spots to land at No. 24.

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Backstreet's Back...All Right!
by Joal Ryan
May 26, 1999, 2:05 p.m. PT
Source: E! Online, sent in by Terri

The Backstreet Boys are so not over.

The teeny-bopper group's sophomore collection, Millennium, moved a whopping 1.13 million copies in its debut week, breaking a sales record posted by uber-star Garth Brooks.

The much-hyped, 12-song CD, which has spawned the hit, "I Want It That Way," easily topped the pop-album charts for the week ended Sunday, bumping the equally hyped Ricky Martin down to No. 2.

Millennium bowed last Tuesday--virtually blowing out of stores and selling some 500,000 copies on that first day alone. Its overall 1.13 million mark tops the 1.08 million standard for a new release established by Garth Brooks' Double Live last November.

In other chart action, Ricky Martin's, uh, Ricky Martin stayed relatively hot, moving some 450,000 more albums. Britney Spears' ...Baby One More Time bounced its way back up the charts to No. 3 (from No. 6), TLC's FanMail wrote a ticket to No. 4 (from No. 3) and the Phantom Menace soundtrack flew up to the fifth spot (from No. 8).

The Backstreet Boys, meanwhile, are touting Millennium as a bid to augment their popular appeal with critical appeal, too.

"We're not really looking at sales," member Kevin Richardson told Reuters last week. "If you make good music and keep trying to outdo your last album as far as quality of music, the sales will come."

Sales were not a problem for the Boys' self-titled 1997 debut, which tapped out piggy banks the world over to the tune of 10 million-plus copies sold.

The group launches its summer tour June 2 in Belgium. And the Disney Channel announced today that it has the Boys booked for a concert special to air July 10.

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Backstreet Boys break U.S. sales record
By JOHN SAKAMOTO
Executive Producer, JAM!
Source: JAM Showbiz, sent in by Terri

Any doubt that "Backstreet's back" has been officially eliminated. The Backstreet Boys' third album, "Millennium", smashed the record for first-week sales in the U.S., selling an astonishing 1,134,000 copies south of the border, and wracking up a hefty 192,000 copies in Canada.

"Millennium" squeaked past the previous U.S. high, held by Garth Brooks' heavily marketed "Double Live" album, which moved 1,085,000 copies upon release last November.

The Boys' tally in Canada -- the first country in the world to turn the group into platinum-selling superstars -- was more than triple the sales of its nearest runner-up (Ricky Martin) but still fell far short of the Canadian record. That honour, like so many others, is held by Celine Dion, whose "Let's Talk About Love" rang up 230,000 in sales in its first week of release in November 1997.

During a press conference in Toronto last week, the band's label, BMG/Jive Music, presented three members of the group with five-times platinum awards for "Millennium", signifying 500,000 copies shipped to retailers across Canada.

The rest of the SoundScan Canada Top 5: Ricky Martin, the dance compilation "Groove Station", TLC, and Shania Twain.

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Favorable Signs
Source: sent in by Special Agent Terri

It's a recent Saturday afternoon in New York City, and the Backstreet Boys - save Howie Dorough, who's rehearsing for his skit on Saturday Night Live - are trying on clothes. Not just any duds, mind you; these are the Tour Costumes, the threads that that will brighten whatever venue the Backstreet Boys happen to be playing that night.

Yes, the Boys are back - with Millennium, the newly released follow-up to 1997's Backstreet Boys, a 27-million worldwide seller that made the world safe again for boy bands and Tiger Beat subscribers. It also comes after a year of rather mixed fortunes for the Boys. On the plus side were hit singles - "Quit Playing Games (With My Heart)," "Everybody (Backstreet's Back)," and "As Long As You Love Me," - adoration, and world travel. But there were plenty of downsides, too. Dorough's older sister died of lupus, and band member Brian Littrell underwent heart surgery. There was a nasty lawsuit to extricate the band from former manager Lou Pearlman and his company, and some of the most horrible reviews you'll ever read this side of, oh, New Kids on the Block. And then there were the bevy of wannabes that rode the wake of the Boys' success, cluttering the market and generating more noise for Millennium to push itself over.

But give the Boys some credit. The Orlando, Fla.-based quintet - Dorough, Littrell, Kevin Richardson, A.J. McLean, and chief heartthrob Nick Carter - hunkered down and worked on a follow-up of all-new material. Though Millennium hardly goes where no boy band has gone before, it does have some perceptibly harder edges and richer arrangements, and the members' own involvement includes three co-writing credits for Littrell and one for Richardson. The Boys aren't taking chances, though; Millennium is coming out with a titanic media blast that includes a tongue-in-cheek he-man ad campaign and appearances from Nickelodeon to Rosie, Disney to Letterman. And there's the standard European tour next month before hitting North America in September.

The signs so far are favorable: you can't have a radio on for very long without hearing the first single, "I Want It That Way;" and record stores - as one retailer put it - are "selling the s---" out of Millennium to fans who are taking the time to scoop it up on their way to see The Phantom Menace. Still, there's a lot at stake, and the oldest of the Boys - 27-year-old Kevin Richardson - seemed like the best man to tackle the situation.

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Sure, Ricky Martin is the man of the moment, but are the Backstreet Boys about to become a group for the ages? The heartthrob squad's sophomore album, "Millennium," is a lock to debut at No. 1 this week, knocking Martin out of the album chart's top spot after a brief reign. In fact, early sales projections indicate that the first-week sales of "Millennium" could eclipse the single-week record held by Garth Brooks, whose "Double Live" sold 1.08 million copies in a single week last November. "Millennium" mania has not only been stoked by an intense hype campaign (which continues with the B-Boys' performance tonight on "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno"), but may also have gotten help from a less obvious force: "The 'Star Wars' movie," said Scott Levin, an executive with the Musicland chain. "It has a lot of people in the malls with theaters, and while they're there they say, 'Let's buy that Backstreet Boys album'.

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DETROIT (Reuters) - The flurry of histrionic squeals you may hear emanating from record stores these days is the sound of Backstreet Boys fans -- most of them adolescent girls -- picking up copies of the group's anxiously awaited CD, ``Millennium.''

The new release, a follow-up to the 1997 self-titled album that sold 27 million copies worldwide, ranks as one of the hottest pop-culture sensations this side of ``Phantom Menace.''

With a media blitz encompassing a ``Saturday Night Live'' appearance, a Disney Channel concert special and an ambitious advertising campaign, the message is being delivered: Backstreet's back, and all the little girls are saying, ``All right!''

The Boys themselves -- Kevin Richardson, Nick Carter, Brian Littrel, A.J. McLean and Howie Dorough -- are aware of how high the stakes are for ``Millennium.''

Coming on the heels of the Spice Girls' success, the Orlando, Fla.-based quintet created a phenomenon that opened the pop-market doors for a slew of similar ``boy groups,'' including 'N Sync, 98 Degrees and C-Note. The Backstreet Boys, however, are the first of these bands to truly test the loyalty of their notoriously fickle audience. Some of the others have exploited their success through the release of quick-hit fodder, such as holiday albums. The pop trio Hanson, for instance, cashed in with a live album and a collection of archival recordings.

But the Boys, who deny rumors of an intense rivalry with other groups of their ilk, are coming out with an album of all-new material. ``We put the pressure on ourselves just to make better music,'' says Kentucky-born Richardson who, at 27, is the senior member of the group. ``We're not really looking at the sales; if you make good music and keep trying to outdo your last album as far as quality of music, the sales will come.

``Everybody is not gonna like our music, or us. But we just want people to know that everything they hear on the album is real, it's us. It's our voices singing. It's us coming up with the treatments for our videos and the ideas for our stage show.''

``We're not just the guys that are told what to do, where to be, what to sing, how to look. ... this is us, not somebody else's idea of us.'' This has been a particularly sensitive issue during the past year, since the Backstreet Boys parted ways with Lou Pearlman, the Orlando-based entrepreneur who put them together.

Pearlman was inspired by the idea -- and tremendous success -- of New Kids on the Block and set out to assemble his own vocal group. He recruited the Boys, beginning with Richardson, from aspiring performers working at theme parks and other venues around the Orlando area.

The group's 1995 debut floundered in the modern rock-infatuated United States but was a big hit in Europe. Two years later ``Backstreet Boys'' cracked the U.S. market and made the Boys pin-ups around the world, launching hits such as ``Quit Playing Games (With My Heart),'' ``As Long As You Love Me'' and ''Everybody (Backstreet's Back).''

But a disagreement over finances led to a schism and lawsuit with Pearlman, who had built a stable of other pop acts, including 'N Sync, and he eventually settled out of court with the Backstreet Boys.

That episode, along with several family deaths and Littrell's open-heart surgery last year, made what should have been a celebratory 1998 ``the hardest of my 27 years on the planet,'' according to Richardson. The Boys bring out ``Millennium,'' then, with a fresh business operation and a new creative charge.

The group retained key players from the last album, particularly songwriter-producer Max Martin (who also scored recently with Britney Spears), but Richardson says the five singers assumed a greater role in creating and overseeing the music.

Richardson co-wrote the song ``Back to Your Heart,'' while Littrell co-wrote three tracks, including the album-closing ''The Perfect Fan,'' a tribute to his mother that features his high school choir.

``We feel like we've grown on this album,'' Richardson says. ''The album's deeper, lyrically, but it's not over our young fans' heads.''

Richardson says the group is acutely aware of the delicate balance between change and delivering on fans' expectations. The song ``I Want it That Way,'' he says, was chosen as the first single because ``it's a nice bridge'' between ``Millennium'' and the group's last album.

Edgier dance tracks like ``Don't Want You Back'' will be introduced once fans have a chance to digest the album a little bit, prior to the group's upcoming world tour, he says. The futuristic in-the-round extravaganza kicks off next month in Europe before moving to North America in September. ``We're just trying to evolve with the times in order to stay in the pop music scene,'' Richardson says, ``just like Madonna's done, just like Janet and Michael (Jackson), so we have a long career.''

And the Boys still don't expect any help from the critics, who as a rule pay little heed to this brand of aim-to-please pop. Prior to the interview, in fact, Richardson read an Entertainment Weekly review that gave ``Millennium'' a B-minus and dismissed the quintet's vocals as ``the sonic equivalent of warm milk.''

Unfortunately, Richardson notes, these sentiments tend to be the rule rather than the exception. ``Critics are critics,'' he says. ``We're not trying to be the Joni Mitchell of our time, or the Jimi Hendrix of our time. We're just trying to make good music and make people happy and forget about their problems. We're not trying to send a message.''

(Gary Graff is a nationally syndicated journalist who covers the music scene from Detroit. He also is the supervising editor of the award-winning ``MusicHound'' album guide series.)
Reuters/Variety

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Go To MILLENNIUM LYRICS! to read/sing away!

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CD Now Lists Millennium Tracks
~thanks, Sarah
Here is the song list as published by CDNOW:

• Larger Than Life
• I Want It That Way
• Show Me The Meaning of Being Lonely
• It's Gotta Be You
• I Need You Tonight
• Don't Want You Back
• Don't Wanna Lose You Now
• The One
• Back To Your Heart
• Spanish Eyes
• No One Else Comes Close
• The Perfect Fan

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The First Single
~various sources
MUCH MUSIC as well as other television and radio stations have reported that the new single from the Backstreet Boys forthcoming album, Millenium, will be "I Want It That Way." The single is reported to be released world wide April 12.

Now would be a good time to put your favorite radio station on speed dial to request this new song!!!

4-7-99: Special Agent Sarah heard this song on the radio tonite....so START CALLING! woo hoo!

Wanna here a tidbit of "I Want It That Way?" Come THIS WAY!!

This just in: The new import single for "I WANT IT THAT WAY" will feature the B-sides: "My Heart Stays With You" and "I'll Be There For You. "

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THE NEW ALBUM:
The Backstreet Boys have announced a release date for their forthcoming album, Millennium. The new record, their third worldwide release and their second in the United States, is due May 18 on Jive Records.

This was recorded in the Boys' hometown of Orlando, Florida, as well as in Sweden.

Produced by Max Martin, Mutt Lange, and Steve Lipson, the first single will head to radio in early April.

Tracks on the new album include "That's What She Said," written by Brian, "Back to Your Heart," written by Kevin, and "Perfect Fan."

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Backstreet Boys celebrate Millennium early
By RICHARD JOHN -- JAM! Showbiz
The Backstreet Boys have enlisted an impressive lineup for their new album, Millennium.

The disc, due out May 18 on Jive/BMG will feature contributions from powerhouse producer Steven Lipson. Part of the fabled ZTT stable, together with label guru Trevor Horn, Lipson oversaw, molded, played on and helped produce releases by ZTT stalwarts Art of Noise, Frankie Goes To Hollywood and Propaganda.

According to Launch.Com, his role on the new album will be as producer and writer on several tracks. Other big names behind the scenes include Max Martin (who has worked with Ace of Base) and producer Robert John Mutt Lange.

Previously known for his contributions to heavy metal, by way of AC/DC and Def Leppard, Lange is currently better known as Mr. Shania Twain.

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Local Voices Chime In On Singer's Latest Song (Lexington Herald-Leader)
By Heather Svokos
When Brian Littrell was 16, he sang a duet with his girlfriend in a Tates Creek High School talent show.

Before he was two words into "Another Time, Another Place," girls in the audience started screaming their heads off.

"It blew me away, " Littrell said. "I sat next to them in choir."

His choir teacher, Barry Turner, told him his singing could earn him a living.

That was putting it mildly.

Littrell, a 1994 Tates Creek graduate, went on to become one-fifth of the mega-hit pop band Backstreet Boys. Their current self-titled album has been on Billboard's top album list for 77 weeks.

And yesterday, he got to stand in the shoes of his former teacher.

Littrell was in town directing 45 local choral students who will si ng background vocals for a song on the next Backstreet Boys album, Millennium.

The singer wrote the song, "Perfect Fan," about a year ago. "It called for a choir to sing it," he said during a short rehearsal break. "I always wanted to give back to the shcool, and especially to Mr. Turner. I never really pictured myself to be a singer before that."

Most of the choir members, who performed and recorded at University of Kentucky's Singletary Center for the Arts, are either current or former Tates Creek students. (The choir also includes students from Paul Laurence Dunbar and Henry Clay high schools, and UK.)

They were decidedly more mellow about Littrell's presence than those who screamed before them.

Most students relished the chance to work with a pro and be recorded for a national record.

" It's like the night before Christmas," said Sean Flaherty, a UK senior.

Tates Creek senior Patti Twitty agreed. "It's something I've never done before and will probably never do again," she said.

Twitty said she likes some Backstreet Boys music, "but I'm not a run-and-scream-and-holler-when-I-see-'em fan."

But if Cristin Walter's 21-year-old sister, Angela, had been in the auditorium, there's no telling what would've happened.

Cristin, a Tates Creek senior, proudly pulled out a scrapbook her sister started making when she went to school with Littrell. The book features fliers from choral performances, Backstreet Boys articles and photos, and, most charmingly, a foil gum wrapper that Littrell tossed at Angela one day.

When Littrell bounded onto the stage yesterday in a dark hooded sweatshirt, big blue jeans and boots, he immediately took command of the stage and the choir.

He tirelessly picked apart the background vocals and demonstrated the four vocal parts beautifully and still found time to occasionally wiggle his rear and motor around the stage like some hybrid of Charlie Chaplin and a high-speed basketball dribbler.

"You know when Mr. Turner told you to open your mouth?" Littrell said to his singers. "I never thought he was right, but it turned out he was right."

"This is the way he was in class," Turner said, smiling. "Crazy, outgoing. He was one of those ones who would always run in just before the bell. But he was always in place, so I didn't say anything.

"Every time I turned my back, something was going on, but I couldn't catch him," said Turner, choir director at Tates Creek and Henry Clay high schools.

Littrell wrote "Perfect Fan" for his mother, Jackie Littrell, who watched yesterday's performance.

She first heard the song last fall, on the way to the second game of the World Series. Brian told her he wanted her to listen to a rough draft of a song. She didn't realize it was about her until she heard one line:

"You showed me just how to walk without your hands."

"I'd always told Brian when he was little that I could hold his hands," she said, "but eventually I would have to turn him loose, and he would have to fall and skin his knees."

By getting to use the choir for a record, Jackie Littrell said, her son "is getting to live a dream."

"He loves Barry Turner. I know he'd do this every day if he could."

Littrell, along with Turner and the song's producer, Eric Foster White, worked the choir hard. Members showed up for rehearsal at 9 a.m. and worked, with a few breaks, through until 5 p.m.

"It's a change operating with someone so professional," said Toeupu Liu, a UK voice performance major. "He goofs off in the process, but he's very serious about what he does."

It's still too soon to know whether "Perfect Fan" will be a single, but if so, it will probably be the fourth or fifth single on Millennium, which is due May 18.

In the last year, the Backstreet Boys--also made up of Littrell's Estill County cousin, Kevin Richardson, A.J. McLean, Nick Carter and Howie Dorough--have become insanely famous.

They were nominated for a Grammy for best new artist, and they have sung on TV with Tony Bennett.

"It's amazing," Littrell said of his success. "It's been a major, major blessing. I thank God every day for the opportunities I've had."

The band formed in Orlando, Fla., about five years ago when Littrell and Richardson joined McLean, Dorough and Carter, who had already formed a group inspired in part by Boyz II Men and Color Me Badd.

Backstreet Boys will probably kick off a world tour in early June, but they won't get to the States until sometime in August.

The Boys have played The Palace and Freedom Hall in Louisville. But the band hasn't done a major show in Lexington.

"We've gotta do Rupp Arena," Littrell said. " It's going to depend on how the album goes. But it's been my dream since I was little to play Rupp Arena."

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Backstreet's Back And More Mature For New 'Millennium'
(3/3/99, 1 a.m. PST) - Six-and-a-half months before the century crossover, the Backstreet Boys' new Jive album, Millennium, will be released on May 18 (LAUNCH, 2/4/99).

"We've worked very hard on this new album and hope that people enjoy the music as much as they have in the past," says Howie Dorough (better known as Howie D). Although no single has been chosen yet, Dorough hinted that the album will have a more adult-contemporary and acoustic feel.

"It's not that we tried to be a more mature Backstreet Boys. We were just trying to set new goals and challenge ourselves musically," he says. "We couldn't make the same album. If it attracts an older audience as well as our younger fans, all the better."

The band starts a world tour June 2 in Ghent, Belgium. U.S dates begin in September. The fivesome shot photos for the album package last weekend at the Paramour, an ex-monastery in Silver Lake, Calif., that was the site of last Wednesday's EMI Grammy bash.

-- Midnight Jones, Los Angeles

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Plausible Track List
These Track Listings were found here and there, and some were emailed to us...
Remember that these may not all be included in the actual album, only some are positive. We'll be sure to post the Final Track List as soon as we get it.

• I'll Be the One
• Show Me the Meaning of Being Lonely
• I Need You Tonight ('scuse me, here at "The Files" we call it HEAVEN IN YOUR EYES!)
• Who Do You Love
• Back To Your Heart (written by Kevin Richardson)
• Perfect Fan (written by Brian Littrell)
• That's What She Said(US only)
• By Your Side
• Say What's In My Heart (written by Babyface)
• My Heart Stays with You
• Treat Me Right (with Denise Rich & Foxy Brown)
• Sacred Trust (w/ Bee Gees)
• If (written by Nick Carter)
• Tender Love (written by AJ McLean)
• I'll Be The One Touch Of Your Hand (written by Brian Littrell)
• untitled (du et w/ Gary Barlow)