By Leslie Gray Streeter
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Friday night, at the Sound Advice Ampitheatre, 17-year-old Lindsey Collins realized a dream she'd had since fourth grade.
"I didn't get to see the Backstreet Boys. My dad promised me and promised me that he'd get tickets, and when the day came, he said 'I'm sorry,' " the Boynton Beach resident recalled. "I cried for three days."
But Friday night, as the once-premier boy band began its comeback tour, the only tears were the kind you cry when there's a really cute boy on stage and it's so awesome that you just can't take it. Popular wisdom, and the Billboard charts, would bear that the world's tastes have changed from when Backstreet Boys, NSYNC and other harmonizing, highly choreographed lads ruled the roost.
So the question becomes: Who is attending a Backstreet Boys show in 2005? And the answer is: The same girls who were at the Backstreet Boys show in 1998. Even though their tastes have grown to include the harder sounds of Green Day and All-American Rejects, BSB still occupies a place in their hearts, and their CD collections.
"It was funny," said Alejandra Madrigal, 19, of Miami, who saw the group's brief set at the Y-100.7 Summer Splash concert at Office Depot Center in May. "It was like I went back to five years ago. We were singing all the parts. . . . I'm into rock bands now. But I still love them."
Never Gone, the group's first full-length album in five years, has not met quite the success of their previous albums — it's the first since 1997 not to be released at No. 1 on the Billboard album chart. But it, and the first single Incomplete, have both been certified platinum, and the tickets sales for Friday's show were similarly positive, said Joe Neiman, general manager of Sound Advice . Most of the seats in the pavilion were sold out, and the lawn seats were selling as well, he said.
He said that many groups begin their tours in West Palm Beach because it's at the bottom of their route.
Tom Neiger, director of marketing for Clear Channel, which owns the venue, correctly predicted that most of the fans would be "the same ones that were around the last time. There's going to be a lot of young women there."
And he was right. The Boys, the oldest of whom, Kevin Richardson, is now 33, took the stage to hysterical screaming and pitch-perfect singing-along, after a retrospective video. The faces were older, but the voices and synchronized dancing remained, as did the fans' enthusiasm. And for those fans, the Boys fit nicely into their current musical collection.
"People said to me 'You're going to see who?' " said Melanie Alvarez, 19, of Miami. "I don't care. They've matured. I'm older. And I'll love them until death."