Catch the boys at their spoofy best
By Paige Gilbert
September 08, 2005
The Times of India

Backstreet Boys is going for an image makeover.

They have been known for their goody goody chocolate boy image and are responsible for the whole boy band look which dominated the 90s.

What with their flowing locks and cute dimples they were the 'ohhh sooo' cute boys of the music industry. Gone was the glam rock image of the 80s with long hair and frayed jeans.

But this time around The Boys themselves have done a reinvention act. With their new album Nevermind, not only did they change their sound from the bubblegum pop to an acoustic soft rock; with their newest video, they have gone for a complete image makeover.

Gone is the good boy image and in place of that we have Brain, Kevin, Keith Nick and AJ doing a virtual Kiss act what with eye shadows, garish face paint and hair that would put Rapunzel to shame!

So why this change? Are the boys tired of their image? Said Kevin in an exclusive interview to CT, "With Just Want You to Know, we wanted to go back in time a bit to the good old 80s and create a good video based on that."

But was it a marketing strategy on part of the music label or was it something that was their inherent choice? Kevin said, "It was our choice completely.

We wrote the treatment to the video ourselves and then got in touch with the director who then made it happen."

But one does feel that it was a bit of tiredness on part of the Boys which made them go for this drastic image makeover.

Once you get typecast, you somehow get trapped in a space. As Kevin reaffirmed, "We'd done the pretty boy image, we'd done the good boy image.

We'd also done the bad boys image but not anything vastly different. We felt that we had done many types of videos, but we hadn't done a spoofy one."

And what do the other Boys feel about it? Said Brian, "We are absolutely ecstatic that we did this video. It is something we are really proud of."

A little more expressive was AJ who said, "The concept for this video came from the Heavy Metal Parking Lot phenomenon.

In the 80s people would just get crazy before a concert, go to the parking lot and just be totally crazy. We wanted to capture that phenomenon and the 80s all at once."

Even Nick seems pretty excited, "It was great fun working on this video. The concept was something close to us and we are really stoked about the way the look has come up."

But what about rumours doing the rounds that they have lost all interest in having Mallika Sherawat featuring in their video? This time over, there was no response.

Repeated attempts at getting an answer to this drew a blank. Perhaps, the band played it safe by refusing to make any comments on whether they longer feel enthused to back a Mallika!