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Backstreet Boys Online Concert
Set in the 1999 Tokyo drama Tokyo Vice, Jack, an American journalist in Japan, and Sato, a Member of the Tokyo Gang, drive down an elevated road with the song "Backstreet Boys" (BSB) in their car. Sato sang along intoxicatedly, calling BSB the greatest band on earth. Jack looked a little amused, a little contemptuous, with a tolerant expression, and did not comment on the admiration of this young Japanese man.
The BSB of 1999 is probably not the greatest, but it is indeed the most commercially successful band on the planet. This year, the boy band, founded in Orlando in 1993, released Millennium, which sold more than 1 million copies in its first week. "I Want It That Way" gained ground in time, beating "I Want You Back" by "The Jackson 5" and "I Want to Hold Your Hand" by The Beatles twenty years later, becoming the number one in Rolling Stone magazine's "Top 100 Boy Band Songs" list.
1997, London, Backstreet Boys Concert Visual China Infographic
Backstreet Boys was born in the blazing afterglow of the 1990s pop music industry, created by notorious but talented showbiz mogul Poirleman. Lou Erman's more than sixty years of life has woven a thousand holes in Ponzi schemes, and BSB and Super Boy ('N Sync) are the few good things he left behind.
Inspired by the "New Kids on the Block" of the 1980s, Loulman single-handedly built the BSB. After the success of BSB, he began to form a superboy, which is based on the business thinking of "there is McDonald's, there is KFC", rather than letting others build a BSB to make gold, it is better to make all the money for themselves. Loulman understands that the focus of boy bands is on "boys" rather than "bands." Boys will grow old, youth is fleeting, and we must race against the clock to let them light up the sky like fireworks, make girls scream, boys imitate, concoct one golden song after another, and make the feast as grand as possible.
Regarding the definition of "boy band", if the conditions are a little more relaxed, the Beatles can be counted as the ancestors. The members of the boy band need to be young and beautiful, with a harmonic lineage that has been inherited from the "Barber Quartet". Most importantly, they must have the various qualities of the dream lover, several people together, spelled out into a rainbow of dream love.
The BSB is more in line with the "boy band" in today's context. They are the product of the music industry's ingenuity, recruited by entertainment companies rather than spontaneously; Members do not play instruments on stage, rarely write their own songs, and rely heavily on creating their own music industry system.
They look approachable, and their beautiful appearance is not so beautiful that they are out of the ordinary category, which means that you are likely to have such a boy around you. They live between reality and dreams. The personalities of the members are not so distinct that they tear the whole apart, but there is plenty of room for fans to develop their preferences. BSB's long-time songwriter, Max Martin, is instrumental. He wrote a dozen golden songs for them, allowing them to continue to exist for more than twenty years after they walked off the altar.
2004, Beijing, Backstreet Boys China Concert Visual China Infographic
The design mechanism of modern boy bands is similar to that of smartphones, the expected service life is not long, and it is recommended to iteratively update it in three or five years. Although the rules are clear, it is difficult for the parties (whether they are celebrities themselves or fans) to accept them. As everyone knows, falling from a high place is also part of the original design intention. There is no frustration and tears, where is the possibility of changing with time in the future.
After 2000, The Downstreet Boys' Black & Blue sold 24 million copies, and five years later, Never Gone dropped to 10 million copies. The situation got worse when Kevin Richardson left the band unhappy with the poor resources they had received. In 2007, Unbreakable sold 1.7 million copies, and This Is Us (2009) halved.
If you tell someone in your twenties and thirties that the Backstreet Boys have not disbanded as a band and are 29 years old this year, that person will most likely be surprised. Everybody disbanded. No boy band still sings in middle age songs that are shallow and happy, seemingly unsatisfactory, but the emotions transcend semantics and melodies are connected to fragments. Even if the hormones are no longer splashed, the later BSB still got a resident show in Las Vegas (a good home for highly respected "old" artists), and from time to time shared the grand event of the cruise concert with hardcore fans, and also held a return tour in 2018. In 2019, BSB's ninth studio album, DNA, topped the Billboard album rankings, but sales were a fraction of what it had been before.
Two years ago, in March, at the beginning of a world of stagnation and turmoil, members of the Backstreet Boys joined together for an online concert in their respective homes. Five people are framed in different backgrounds, visibly growing into middle age, and the harmony is certainly not too perfect. Five people appear in five frames that are out of reach of each other, showing a deep sense of affection. Although we know that the relationship between the five is more complicated than it seems, the tacit understanding still exists. Only between people who spend countless hours in the same physical space can this tacit understanding that cannot be erased under any circumstances. We can still feel it across the screen, and then the tear glands react first when we are not aware of it, revealing our desire to be with real people. "I'm with you" turns out to have a more urgent meaning than love.
Backstreet Boys Online Concert
A lot of people have a sour nose, especially those who have forgotten this band as adults. They are reminded of their youth and old friends, and the time is not waiting. The world's first online concert of the Chinese special edition of BSB, which just happened, the words and songs are almost equal in weight, and the backstreet boys and the Westlife boys are connected as partners rather than competitors. A full screen of feelings related to youth. As a non-fan who has never bought a single tape, there are more familiar songs than expected. Thanks to the all-pervasive broadcast of streets and alleys, radio and television, collective memories are possible.
Vertical screen five people is a bit difficult, not used to get used to it, what else can not get used to it.
They are in good shape and exude old charm. The main stage with geometric lines is infinitely far-reaching, and the audience seats of carrot glow sticks are empty. When weird things become the norm, at least there are some songs from the good old days that can be directly connected to a simpler era without thinking.
Editor-in-Charge: Chen Shihuai
Proofreader: Yan Zhang