The Backstreet boys
Aug. 21 at Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre By Timothy Finn
August 25, 2005
The Star
Kansas city

Six years ago the Backstreet Boys were more popular than Eminem and Beyoncé Knowles combined.

Album sales exceeded 10 million each, they sold out venues like Kemper Arena in a matter of minutes, and their live shows were spectacles that included a 10-piece backup band, extravagant wardrobe changes and an aerial show in which the Boys soared and descended acrobatically upon a monstrous stage that half-filled the arenas’ floors. For a long shining moment, they were larger than life.

These days the Boys aren’t flying so high. In fact they’re navigating shallow and uncertain waters, the kind that run aground so many careers launched on the tastes of customers who were in early puberty.

Six years is a long time, something the Boys aren’t yet willing to concede. So they’ve called their new album “Never Gone” (a hope), and they end their current live show with the old hit “Everybody (Backstreet’s Back)” (a prayer). If only the truth were somewhere in between.

Sunday night the “Never Gone” tour came to the music colossus in Bonner Springs named after a huge wireless corporation. If the proof is in the attendance, the verdict over “Never Gone” is unambiguous: About 4,500 fans showed up, leaving empty seats all over the main section and a lawn so wide open and emerald green it looked like the fairways at Augusta on a Tuesday night. Quite literally, the person in the east parking lot giving away lawn-seat vouchers could not give them away.

The crowd this evening was predominantly (almost exclusively) female. Most of the males in the place looked like guys in a department store watching their wives, girlfriends or mothers shop for bedding or shoes.

The math on this one wasn’t favorable from the start: Many of the girls who were 14 years old in 1999 are now busy decorating their dorm rooms; many of the girls who were 20 years old are now decorating baby nurseries or office cubicles; many of the girls who were 5 back then are more interested in Simple Plan or Fall Out Boy or Green Day. Or a hot young band like the Click Five that, initially, was supposed to be on this bill but who jumped off the tour a few stops ago, much to the chagrin of the four or five girls wearing T-shirts with this disclaimer: “We’re here to see the Click Five.”

On the other hand the Boys had at least one thing going for them: They recorded a lot of catchy and durable radio material in the late 1990s. Good thing because they needed it all Sunday night. They brought just a four-piece band and a modest stage setting that included not much more than a bank of brightly lighted stairs and a large video screen that aired footage of the Boys, some of it going back to the early ’90s.

A chunk of the audience seemed familiar with material from the new album, but the biggest responses came for the old stuff, which is still good stuff. Give the Boys and their management due credit: They picked great songwriters, especially Max Martin, a Swede who understands old-school American soul and R&B better than some of the slickest and best-paid producers/songwriters on the charts today.

So the Boys did their foamy R&B/soul nuggets like “As Long As You Love Me,” “I Want It That Way,” “Quit Playing Games (With My Heart)” and “Show Me the Meaning of Being Lonely” and the irresistible pop-funk hits like “Larger Than Life” and “We’ve Got It Goin’ On.” One of the most entertaining parts of the show involved their new single, “Just Want You to Know,” a power ballad that’s as hard, catchy and cheesy as any of Def Leppard’s better moments. As the Boys performed it, the screen behind them aired the accompanying video, which is a decadent spoof of ’80s hair-metal bands (the Boys are the fictitious band Sphynkter) and is funny and self-effacing.

The show lasted nearly two hours and comprised nearly two dozen songs, and for a group that went away for a long time, they can still whip up some clean, crisp harmonies. They still dance, too, though the choreography isn’t as slick and dynamic as it used to be.

They broke from the pseudo-Temptations shtick a few times, like when Nick Carter played guitar and when Kevin Richardson played piano. Otherwise they were left to sit on stools or the steps or wave their arms and spin and boogie with some uncertainty, like dancers not sure of their feet. Admittedly choreography wasn’t exactly the point this evening. More than a revival or a return, this event had the aura of a reunion — a chance to reconnect with fans who care more about the songs and the memories they evoke than what’s fashionable. Given the size of the crowd, however, it seems likely that any future get-togethers will take place in halls or auditoriums that should make everyone on both sides of the stage seem even more life-size and lifelike.