Boys to men: Backstreet show delights older crowd
You don’t have to be a teenager to scream like one.
Last night an overwhelmingly female audience partied like it was 1999 with the Backstreet Boys, the last boy band standing from an era when today’s 20- and 30-somethings were screaming teens.
“Who saw us for the first time when you were, like, 10?” Brian Littrell asked midway through the 100-minute set. Apparently, pretty much everyone.
From the opening salvo of “Oh my God, were back again!” on “Everybody,” the Boys gave a nearly sold-out crowd exactly what it wanted: All of the biggest hits, and a minimum of lesser-known filler.
The now-foursome changed outfits frequently, appearing in suits, sweats, club-ready street gear and threads that could have landed them as extras in Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” video. For the high-powered “Larger Than Life,” they took it to outer space, and popped and locked as android dancers.
Weaving the all-important element of romance through the set, the Boys made frequent calls of “I see you, baby girl” to admirers in the audience.
For “I’ll Never Break Your Heart,” they pulled up stools and came bearing roses and promises of forever love.
Mid-set, Howie Dorough thanked the audience for actually being there instead of the Celtics [team stats] game. But in reality, many fans probably would have rescheduled their own weddings to attend the show.
It can be weird when teen pop stars become middle-aged men, but the Backstreet Boys seem to be handling the transition pretty well.
Vocally, the group is still, er, in sync. The night’s best songs were ballads, such as the melancholy “Show Me the Meaning of Being Lonely” and midtempo numbers including “Shape of My Heart” and “I Want It That Way,” their first No. 1 hit, which allowed vocal harmonies to shine.
High-powered numbers that demanded extensive choreography seemed off-kilter, as the dancing wasn’t tight enough to justify the compromised vocals. At the beginning of the show, Littrell was frequently a step behind, or forgot the steps altogether.
Some of the song choices suggest that a slight set list revision is in order; supercharged cut “The Call” got a pitifully short one-verse treatment, while the boring “The One” dragged on in its entirety.
The encore’s “Straight Through My Heart,” off their most recent album, “This Is Us,” seemed like an anticlimactic way to end the show.
But the sophisticated, edgy “Undone” off that album was brilliant, and when the Boys broke out “Incomplete,” their wistful hit from 2005, Nick’s scarf waved lazily in the wind, smoke wafted across the stage and it all felt right.
Openers Mindless Behavior were sort of like a co-ed Backstreet-in-training. The Los Angeles foursome combined slick choreography, high-powered pop concoctions and smoke machines in an entertaining mix. No one was actually singing, and there was little effort to conceal the lip syncing, but the tween-teen supergroup proved adorable nonetheless.
At the Bank of America Pavilion, last night.
By Lauren Carter
June 09, 2010
Boston Herald