Me, Mom and the Backstreet Boys

Back - Index - Submissions - - What is RSS? Date: Mar 17, 2000 Source: The National Post (Canada) Submitted By: dooks@sprint.ca Parents love boy bands as much as their kids do, especially since there's none of that 'kill your parents' stuff Mitchel Raphael National Post Behind every mass of screaming, concert-going teenagers stands a platoon of parents. But not too far behind. These days, Mom and Dad are not just chaperoning their kids, they're getting right into the action. Like her 14-year-old daughter, Ellen Kelly, 38, of Oshawa, Ont., is a big fan of the teenage boy band The Moffatts. She and her daughter have been following the band since they were singing country. "We started out driving down to Nashville, Tenn., in June, 1994, and we have been stuck to them ever since. I have taken my daughter to 52 concerts, all of them being mostly in the United States. The farthest we have driven to a concert was Silver Springs, Fla." Kelly says she really likes her daughter's music: "It seems everything she listens to is what I would listen to. The beat is even different. It's a softer kind of music." Kelly was brought up on Supertramp and Pink Floyd. When she tried to expose her daughter to her own music, the response was: "I can't believe you like this stuff." "It's better for her that I like the same music as her," says Kelly, "because I'll wanna go to the concert." Mom is also more likely to pay for the tickets. It didn't seem that long ago that parental approval of a teen's choice in music would be the kiss of death. But not, apparently, when it comes to the Backstreet Boys. You know, the band with Nick (the blond one), A.J. (the bleached blond one), Kevin (the Boy who looks like a man), Howie (the ponytail guy) and Brian (the very blue-eyed one). Tuesday night at the Backstreet Boys' Millennium concert at Copps Coliseum in Hamilton, Ont., the audience was filled with teenage girls and a noticeable number of singalong parents. Some held up their kids -- a few of whom couldn't have been more than four or five years old -- amid a sea of green and blue glowsticks and signs that included "A.J. I'm legal." April Hatten, 14, said her parents didn't like the Backstreet Boys enough to come to the concert, so she went with her 70-year-old grandmother, Kay Cooper, who has the Millennium CD at home. Does she know the songs? "I should know them off by heart. I try," says Cooper, who adds that the Backstreet Boys "make me feel good and young." What about the earplugs she's holding? "I'm not going to plug my ears when the Backstreet Boys sing. It's when the fans scream." Not everyone in Hamilton is so gung-ho on the one-big-happy-family approach to music. As three skateboarders, more into the beats of the Wu-Tang Clan, approached the hysteria near Copps Coliseum, 16-year-old A.J. Blackwood said that if his parents were into the Backstreet Boys, "I wouldn't talk to them." His friend Mike Giglione seconds that. "I'd throw my parents out of the house." Mike's cousin, Anthony Giglione, adds that if his parents ever liked what he listened to, "I'd change my music." None of which makes the slightest difference to true Backstreet Boys fans. This past Sunday, MuchMusic held the "Perfect Fan" Backstreet Boys contest. The winner, Amanda Nicholson, 21, was flown from Halifax to Hamilton for the concert. The big hook was that the prize included bringing one of your parents. Amanda's mother, Nancy, 47, was ecstatic. "Most bands, mothers would refuse to go," says Nancy. "Who wants to see a half-naked person swearing onstage?" MuchMusic's Randy Mauskopf, manager of client marketing services, says, "In the case of a lot of other bands the whole message is 'I'm not listening to the same things as my parents, this is my stuff.' Youth want something they can own. The interesting thing about the Backstreet Boys is it's just the opposite. That would make them a parent-friendly band." Nancy doesn't just approve of her children's taste in music, she's also a huge Backstreet Boys fan: "I'm one of those women who does their housework dancing around with the vacuum. I turn on the music. We do the jive in the middle of the kitchen floor while doing dishes." The only time Mom gets "a lecture on behaving herself" is if her daughters have friends over. They'll ask her, "Please don't sing out loud and don't dance." Were Nancy's parents as supportive of her music when she was a kid? "No. It was turn that racket off." Nancy says she is not alone in her passion for today's hottest boy bands: "A lot of parents I know enjoy the Backstreet Boys. I've heard other parents my age and older singing along with the radio." Two years ago in Halifax, Nancy's daughter, Amanda, recalls how when she was waiting in line to buy Backstreet Boys tickets many of the parents were in line without their kids. "A lot of parents encourage their kids to listen to the Backstreet Boys and Spice Girls because they don't have a negative message," says Amanda. "It's not that down stuff -- kill your mother, kill your father, kill your family. I think that's why parents get into that stuff." Nancy agrees that the Backstreet Boys' clean, wholesome, parent-friendly image means she is more likely to buy concert tickets for her daughters and perhaps purchase Backstreet Boys merchandise. (At Copps Coliseum, it was $35 T-shirts, $15 button packs and $10 glowsticks -- OK, well, the glowstick did say Millennium.) Nancy feels parents would not be happily pulling out their credit card for, say, shock rockers like Marilyn Manson or Rob Zombie. "Society has changed quite a bit since her time," says Amanda of her mother. "Her parents weren't into [a similar kind of] music." Amanda's mother was a fan of the Beatles and Elvis, so she was used to pop rock, while her grandparents listened to country. Rock for them was a bit of a shock. At the Backstreet Boys concert, which opened with a sensational Star Wars-themed entrance and closed with a way-too-long band and dancer intro (get more hits to fill time!), the mother-daughter connection was part of the show. "Where are the moms out there?" Kevin called out, the intro, naturally, for their song The Perfect Fan. It was in fact the chorus to The Perfect Fan that inspired the MuchMusic contest: "You showed me/When I was young just how to grow/You showed me/Everything that I should know/You showed me/Just how to walk without your hands/'Cause Mom you always were the perfect fan." As MuchMusic contest winners Amanda and Nancy were brought onstage with four other mother-and-child couples for the song, each Backstreet Boy took a kid's hand and walked with them around the stage. Mothers sat onstage looking on. Children were then returned to their parents. When Kevin got on his knees to serenade Nancy and Amanda, daughter turned to mother and the audience saw her mouth: "I love you." There were sighs even in the jaded media section. Comment on this item. 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