Local Voices Chime In On Singer's Latest Song (Lexington Herald-Leader)

By Heather Svokos

HERALD-LEADER POP CULTURE WRITER

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

Littrell was in town directing 45 local choral students who will sing 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 agian," 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 on day.

When Littrell bounded onto the stage yesturday 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."

Source: Lexington, KY Herald-Leader Newspaper (March 2, 1999)