OVER 90 per cent of the crowd was female, and it appeared 100 per cent of them were ecstatic they were finally going to see The Backstreet Boys perform.

Their trip to Perth had been 17 years in the making for those who were obsessed with the American boy band growing up, but no-one could have predicted just how much nostalgia one evening could bring.

Ricki-Lee Coulter was a fitting opening act. However, she looked a bit amateur with just one guitarist and two back-up singers. Her voice was a bit shrill as she spoke but her singing was decent as she belted out her song Can’t Touch It. It was her cover of Rihanna’s Umbrella that had some cringing. It served as a reminder that Coulter began her career on karaoke-type reality show Australian Idol. She performed Jackson Five’s I Want You Back well but the saving grace for her act was her guitarist and vocalist Glen who beautifully sang Mary J Blige and Bono’s duet One Love with Coulter. It was with a sigh of relief that she exited the stage to make way for The Backstreet Boys.
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If you are a Backstreet Boy, what’s the only thing worse than waking up with a throbbing headache, stuffy nose, sore throat and every other symptom that can be associated with a day-ruining case of the common cold? Having to be interviewed by someone with the exact same condition.

But that’s what happened when I spoke with A.J. McLean, the shades-wearing, hat-donning, sometimes bearded badass of the group. “Oh, I’ve seen better days,” he mumbled over the phone an in almost inaudible tone after I initially asked him how he was doing. As it turned out, he probably wasn’t faking, either. Later that day, wire services blew up with reports that fellow Backstreet Boy Brian Littrell had been diagnosed with H1N1, more commonly known as the Swine Flu. As a result, the group was forced to cancel various promotional appearances throughout New York City that were centered around the release of its new album, This Is Us. It was yet another obstacle on the way back to the top for one of the biggest pop groups of all time. That’s okay, though. It’s not like these boys haven’t been faced with adversity before.
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A.J. McLean is now officially off the market.

While celebrating his 32nd birthday in Las Vegas on Friday night, the Backstreet Boy vocalist proposed to his girlfriend Rochelle Deanna Karidis on the stage of Hard Rock Hotel’s Wasted Space nightclub.

“He got up on stage and the DJ turned the music off. He asked her to come up on stage and he got down on his knee and she squatted down with him,” an eyewitness tells PEOPLE. “He asked her and she said yes and hugged him. He took the ring out of his pocket and put it on her hand.”
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Remember the Backstreet Boys? The baggy trousers, the Kangol hats and those upbeat pop anthems that reverberated throughout the 1990s: I Want It That Way, As Long As You Love Me and Everybody (Backstreet’s Back), among myriad other lyrical gems.

Well, steady yourselves, people, because Backstreet’s back, part two. The quintet is down to a quartet (Kevin Richardson, the oldest member, left on friendly terms in 2006), but the boys are surging through the European leg of their new tour like a musical Hadrian’s army and before arriving for their first-ever Middle East gig in Dubai on December 17.
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“WE’RE not Backstreet Men — we’re Backstreet Boys.” So goes the T-shirt slogan for the current ‘This is Us’ tour, which can be all yours to take home for €30.

This year the O2 arena has already hosted New Kids on the Block and witnessed Boyzone’s last Dublin headliner with Stephen Gately.

In June, Take That dramatically raised the bar for boyband reunions with a dazzling Croke Park date.
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