NEW YORK — The Backstreet Boys finished a four-day, six-continent promotional jaunt for their just-released third album on Tuesday (November 21) with a frenzy of activity in Times Square, including live performances, an in-store appearance and a press conference announcing their 2001 world tour. Several thousand fans gathered in Times Square to see the group, and a few hundred were invited into the press conference at the Hudson Theatre, where they cheered for just about everything — including the tour itinerary, shown on a video screen before the Backstreet Boys' arrival.

"It'll be mostly all the new stuff from the new album, Black & Blue, plus the greatest hits from the other albums," Backstreet member Howie Dorough said of the tour, which is expected to kick off January 22 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. From there, the Backstreet Boys will play arena dates in North America until March, moving to South America in April and Europe in June. The group will return to the U.S. for stadium dates in the summer, before ending the tour with fall shows in Japan, Australia and New Zealand.

The group's publicists released only a preliminary list of cities the tour will reach, and said they will announce a full list of tour dates and venues on Monday. In a nod to the album's title, the five band members wore black and blue outfits at the press conference, while Backstreet heartthrob Nick Carter went a step further, with a patch of his blond hair dyed bright blue.

The Backstreet Boys began the event with an a cappella performance of their new single, the ballad "Shape of My Heart," replacing the recorded version's slick production with finger snaps and doo-wop backing vocals. Member Kevin Richardson then quieted the ecstatic fans in the theater's balcony as the group took questions from the press.

The group said they were buoyed by fan reaction at similar events in the past four days in Sweden, Japan, Australia, South Africa and Brazil. "The actual circumference of the earth is 26,000 miles, and we covered that in four days," A.J. McLean said. "We now have the Black & Blue army just like Kiss have the Kiss Army."

The Backstreet Boys also addressed the touchy issue of whether they expected Black & Blue, released Tuesday, to top the record for first-week album sales. That record — 2.4 million copies — is held by rival vocal group 'NSYNC's No Strings Attached, which earlier this year broke the Backstreet Boys' own record of 1.13 million. McLean recently told Teen People that he expected to "break 'NSYNC's record and our record combined the first week out," but the group backed away from that prediction in the press conference.

"Way to go, bonehead," member Brian Littrell said, laughing. Still, McLean reiterated his hopes of breaking the record. "Obviously, it's going to be based on your fans ... [but] materialistically, it'd be nice to break new records and start a whole new trend again," he said.

After the press conference, the Backstreet Boys headed to a nearby Virgin Megastore to meet fans, and then went on to MTV's studios.

The preliminary Backstreet Boys tour itinerary:

Fort Lauderdale, FL

Charlotte, NC

Atlanta, GA

Philadelphia, PA

Washington, D.C.

East Rutherford, NJ

Uniondale, NY

Toronto, ON

Pittsburgh, PA

Chicago, IL

Pontiac, MI

Minneapolis, MN

Grand Forks, NC

Denver, CO

Vancouver, BC

Tacoma, WA

Portland, OR

Oakland, CA

Sacramento, CA

Las Vegas, NV

Phoenix, AZ

San Diego, CA

Los Angeles, CA