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They're Backstreet Boys with a Park Place budget.
The show the Backstreet Boys mounted Thursday night at the Bradley Center sets a new standard in boy band extravaganzas. Not only is it the most lavishly produced teen dream to ever hit the road, it may well be the brightest and most imaginative.
A lot of the individual components are hardly novel: billowing clouds of fog, towering risers, bursts of glitter confetti, giant projection TV screens, geysers of flame, multiple costume changes, and an acrobatic brigade of dancers.
What was truly striking (and consistently entertaining) was the way in which each individual song became its own unique production. The show opened in epic style to a parade of torches and "Star Wars" fanfare, accompanied by the Boys and a bodyguard of vaguely militaristic dancers marching around the huge in-the-round stage to the fan appreciation anthem "Larger Than Life." That felt like "Starship Troopers: The Musical" - goofy but amusing.
For "Quit Playing Games (With My Heart)" the guys flew out over the crowd in four different directions, doing somersaults 30 feet in the air and showering the fans with flowers and stuffed animals. For "Back to Your Heart," Kevin Richardson played a pure white piano high on the center riser while his mates sang on the stage below, bathed in blue light.
Not all the productions were high-tech. Brian Littrell's singing Mother's Day card, "The Perfect Fan," was simply mounted with each Backstreet Boy bringing a mom and daughter out of the crowd and sitting with them around the stage.
Like all boy bands, Backstreet is as much about romantic fantasy and wish projection as it is about music. In that sense, it helps that each Backstreeter projects a separate and distinct image. Littrell is sort of the Backstreet John-Boy, shy, sensitive and approachable. A.J. McLean is the bad boy, the only Backstreeter with a touch of the streets, not to mention tattoos and three-alarm flaming red hair. Howie Dorough is the Latin lover, crooning Spanish eyes - probably the first teen idol who could plausibly be called suave.
Nick Carter has the floppy, Leonardo blond hair, but he's also the most flirtatious Backstreeter, with a hint of young colt cockiness. Richardson is the most handsome, leanly muscular, dark and chiseled. At 27, he's the one clear Backstreet Man. These days he's also performing with one arm in a sling, a memento of a snowboarding mishap.
We haven't said anything about the music, which in boy band land is often not the first consideration anyway. Actually, the Backstreeters probably deserve their place at the pinnacle of the teen pyramid. They harmonize competently and share the vocal duties more evenly than some of the competition. By far, their biggest asset is the slick production and tuneful songwriting support they've gotten from Max Martin and the late Denniz Pop.
The basic idea (almost the only idea) is to project romantic fantasy in ballad form. That said, "I Want It That Way" may be the catchiest tune ever to find its way into a teen idol's repertoire of charms.
