Backstreet Boys: Back in Black and Blue

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Date: Nov 24, 2000
Source: MTV
Submitted By: Smiiley112@aol.com

Somewhere in the 796,320-odd minutes that passed between the release of the Backstreet Boys' Millennium and the just-issued Black & Blue, the group went through a lot of changes.

The lineup hasn't been altered a bit, of course, and there's been a wealth of personal growth among the guys — new business and artistic ventures and walks down the wedding aisle. No, these changes won't be apparent 'til you check out the new album for yourself.

MTVi News' Brian Hiatt and Robert Mancini had the good fortune to chat with A.J. McLean about those changes, such as the guys writing their own songs and pumping up the tempo and increasing the funk. All-around forays into uncharted BSB musical territory, like songs that have "a Latin/urban feel with this drill march behind it" — oh, you'll just have to hear A.J. explain it himself.

So pull up a chair and let Mr. McLean guide you through Black & Blue, from the guys' first baby steps into songwriting to choosing the album title to speculation about which track will be the next single. Enjoy.

MTVi News: You've introduced Black & Blue with "Shape of My Heart," which is doing incredibly well. Did you consider releasing something more up-tempo initially, or was there a conscious decision to go with something slower?

A.J. McLean: [When] we released our very first single, "We Got It Going On," back in 1995 in the U.S., it only peaked at the charts at #69. Granted, the whole music scene then was all grunge, hip-hop, gangsta rap and stuff like that, so we kind of got thrown into a frying pan and got French fried, basically. So [for Backstreet Boys] we went with "Quit Playing Games (With My Heart)" [as the first single]. When we came out with our last album, Millennium, we did "I Want It That Way" first.

["Shape of My Heart"] is a good bridge for us to go into the next album, Black & Blue. It's the Backstreet Boys motif that seems to work, which is coming out with a mid-tempo that's radio-friendly. It's very highly commercial. It can cover more than just pop radio; it can also cover AC [adult-contemporary] radio, sometimes even country radio, and once in a great while, maybe even urban radio. We had talked about releasing a up-tempo just to come out of the starting gate — just totally blow everyone away with a great up-tempo song for the end of the summer, for all the kids going back to school — but we had a pretty good record with the whole mid-tempo [vibe]. I think it was our best choice off our new album.

MTV: The single is definitely more adult sounding, at least in terms of the vibe of it. What were your goals for the album this time around?

A.J.: Well, we definitely wanted to have growth and kind of grow with our fans and grow with the music scene, and not stay so much in that "bubblegum pop" realm that people have kind of put us in. We didn't want to go too far and pull a complete 360 and go alternative or go totally off the deep end.

I think this album definitely shows a step up from Millennium and two or three steps up from Backstreet Boys, just by the musical content, some of the lyrical content, and some of the ideas behind some of the songs. Every song on the album doesn't sound like the next one. Each track kind of has its own identity, which is also a very unique quality about this record. I think that with this record, our fans, who have been with us since the first record — which are now as old as us — want to hear something a little bit more mature, in a sense. And it's also given us something to show our fans' moms and dads, that they can have something to listen to as well.

MTV: But there are strong dance songs on the album, too.

A.J.: Oh yeah, sure. There are actually more up-tempos on this record than have been on any of our other records in the past, whether it was Backstreet Boys, Millennium, or our first European album.

MTV: What's really new on the album? What will surprise people?

A.J.: I think the main thing that's going to surprise our fans, especially, and the people in the media and, hopefully, other artists is the fact that we wrote seven songs on this album, two of which were written by all five of us, as a group. "Time" and "The Answer to Our Life" were both written in the Bahamas when we took our writing trip together. I wrote a track on the album called "Yes I Will" which is a little bit more R&B, more like an old-school R. Kelly kind of jam. Howie [Dorough] wrote two songs on the album: "What Makes You Different Makes You Beautiful" and "How Did I Fall In Love With You." And then the rest of the guys kind of co-wrote on a couple of other songs that we did with Max Martin and Rodney Jerkins and Babyface.

I think the fact that the songs on this record, especially two of the up-tempos, are not your typical party, 'get up and dance' club songs. They actually have plots behind them and musically, they're definitely different. They're not like anything anyone has ever heard, or heard from us especially. One has a great potential to be the follow-up single is "The Call," is one of my favorites. It's got a Latin/urban feel with this drill march behind it, and this real ambient, in-your-face kind of vibe. It's basically talking about cheating, whether it's a guy cheating on his girlfriend or a girlfriend cheating on her boyfriend. It's stuff that happens every day. It kind of discusses trust and honesty in a relationship. It's not like your typical love song, which is 'Hey, I did you wrong, but now I love you and we're back together again' and all that crap that people put in songs, but granted, it does work because everyone wants to hear a good, quality love song.

MTV: But "The Call" is a little more real, a little grittier.

A.J.: Yeah. This is an up-tempo love song with some cajones, which is really different, I think.

MTV: A few months back when you were writing the album, you had said there might be a bit more rock and hip-hop and maybe even country influences. Did that end up turning out?

A.J.: There was kind of a rock/hip-hop jam that me and Nick [Carter] wrote in the Bahamas that we are going to save for a soundtrack, or possibly even save it and bring it back to life when we do the next album. There is definitely an acoustic, Savage Garden kind of vibe on the album; there's a little bit of a straight-up hip-hop, straight-up R&B. There's a couple of dance records, a couple of adult contemporary records, one that could be potentially sounding a little bit country. This is the most diverse album we've ever done. I think we'll definitely cover a lot more ground, because your heavy R&B fans will love "Shining Star" and "Yes I Will," and the typical dance music-type fans will like "The Call" and "Get Another Boyfriend" and "Not for Me." We have a song on the album about our fans called "Everyone"; it's like the second coming of "Larger Than Life."

I'm very happy with this record, and I think this is our best work yet. But it'll all come down to the 21st of November to see what everybody likes. It's kind of nerve-racking, but we'll see what happens with it. Trying to follow up Millennium is going to be tough.

MTV: Why did you choose Black & Blue as the title?

A.J.: Well, it's kind of a funny short story. We were in a photo shoot still trying to pick what we were going to call the album. We went through everything from Frozen Air to Deliverance, which was an idea that Fred Durst told me when I was hanging out with him in L.A. He's like, "A.J. I got this great idea, why don't you call it BSB: Deliverance." And I thought it was cool, but I was like "You know, I got to ask the rest of the fellas first."

So we were standing on the photo shoot set, and we were standing on a blue background, all wearing black, and Brian [Littrell] just turned to us and said, "Fellas, what if we called the album Black & Blue?" We all looked at him like he was on crack. We were like, "Dude, Black & Blue? What the heck? That's kind of boring." And he's like, "Think about it. Black & Blue - the first thing you think about is being beat up."

Honestly, the media has tried to bring us down numerous times. Even other artists have made fun of us or dissed us in their songs, made fun of us in their videos. It's kind of like, we've been taking all of these punches here and there. We're still here standing strong, because all that we care about, really, is putting out good, quality music for our fans, and it's always going to be like that. There's always going to be that rock and roll journalist that's going to do an interview with a pop band and is going to trash you, or there's going to be the Blink-182s that do a video based on making fun of groups like us. It's going to happen, and we can take the punches and keep on going and not even worry about it, which is kind of what we're doing. We've stuck together as a group and as a team and as a family. We've taken these blows and just kept on coming.

MTV: And there's no picture of the band on the album cover.

A.J.: There is a picture of us on the back of the album. It's a very strong picture. It's very "Reservoir Dogs"-ish, kind of apocalyptic, end-of-the-world. It's definitely something that I think has got a meaning, like the Beatles' [self-titled] "White Album" or Metallica's [self-titled] "Black Album." We don't want anyone to take [the title] negatively, like we're a bunch of wusses and we've been getting our asses kicked, 'cause that's not the case. It's kind of like a subliminal message, basically pointing fingers back at people that were trying to bring us down.

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