THE BACKSTREETBOYS: Neither Original Nor The Only One

Backstreet’s back and it’s not all right. The group is still in teeny-bopper form.

Despite
the gradual increase in the maturity level of both the lyrics and music
over their past few albums, the Backstreet Boys are back to their old
ways with the release of yet another teenage pop-based record: This is
Us, their seventh album.

And “this” is undeniably mostly
30-something-year-old men who refuse to leave their cheesy lyrics and
computer-altered music behind in exchange for a sound appropriate for
their age group.

The group, which formed in 1993, was one of the
most popular acts in the mid-to-late ’90s. No wonder they have sold
more than 100 million albums, given that catchy hit singles from that
era include “Quit Playing Games With My Heart,” “I Want It That Way”
and “Everybody (Backstreet’s Back).”

And even after its brief
hiatus from 2002 to 2004 and the loss of band member Kevin Richardson
in 2005, the band was still able to churn out successful songs such as
“Inconsolable” and “Something That I Already Know” from 2007’s
Unbreakable.

In addition to exhibiting the stronger voices of
the Backstreet Boys, these new tracks also revealed more adult-oriented
themes and lyrics, which are clearly lacking on their latest effort.

From
the very first track, “Straight Through My Heart,” the listeners are
made well aware that if an album filled with deeply meaningful songs is
what they desire, they will have to look elsewhere. Although the song
is radio friendly, much like the group’s pre-hiatus music, it features
empty words for the sole purpose of creating rhymes. Lyrics such as
“Thought I moved more than on/ Thought I could fool her charm/ I really
wanna go/ But I can’t leave her alone” sound pretty shallow.

However,
this single seems like a gem compared to the ridiculous tracks that
follow it. Lyrics range from slightly illogical in “Masquerade” (“One’s
a tiger/ One’s a lynx/ One’s a king that’s suffering/ Moving high,
moving low,”) to flat-out creepy in “PDA” (“Meet me at the club, the
restaurant, the grocery store, or the movies/ Kissing and touching with
my hand all over your booty”).

And not even the presence of the
popular hip-hop and R&B artist T-Pain can save the track“She’s a
Dream,” which annoyingly overuses the word “shorty.”

If this
album had been released 15 years ago in the wake of the boy-band
explosion, it probably would have been extremely successful. The
Backstreet Boys should revisit the quality styles they harbored on
2005’s Never Gone and 2007’s Unbreakable in order to have any success
comparable to the amount they experienced in their prime.

cfarrel1@umd.edu

RATING: 1 out of 5 stars

Source: DiamondBackOnline.Com