Backstreet Boys

With their first album of new material since 2000's Black & Blue, the Backstreet Boys attempt to update their sound with some gently crunching guitars and a few somewhat rock-oriented melodies. The good news is that it works and, more important, those otherworldly harmonies did not get lost in the shuffle.

Under the teen-pop beats and r&b-trained harmonies, Bon Jovi-style bombast has often
lurked beneath the Backstreet Boys' surface. Now that boy-band dance grooves have
vanished from radio airwaves, the urge to rock out in a superslick power ballad kinda way
dominates Never Gone, the first album in five years from Kevin Richardson, Brian Littrell,
Howie Dorough, A.J. McLean and Nick Carter. Never Gone never attains the dizz... More >

Lest you doubted it, this is grotesque, and not just because stardom ruined Nick Carter like so many young people before him. It's more that nobody loves a man group. Blue-balled yearning becomes AJ-said-you-swallowed whining, which wasn't the formal challenge their Swedish Svengalis signed on for. Maybe they could learn their instruments and call themselves a man band, which rhymes. An album of Four Lads covers is also a thought. (Grade - C)