This week marked the return of the ’90s pop icons, as tabloid sensation Britney Spears and now-quartet Backstreet Boys both released new albums Tuesday. Backstreet’s Unbreakable is an attempt at musical maturity — or at least as much as can be expected from an aging boy band. The album features a few different musical styles but is mostly comprised of generic piano-driven power ballads.
Almost every song on the record sounds the same: like a B-side from earlier albums. Unbreakable lacks the grinding pop beats of 1997’s Backstreet Boys , the record-breaking hit quality of 1999’s Millenium and the edginess of 2000’s Black and Blue. Unfortunately, it is even weaker than 2005’s Never Gone. The boys’ tenacity and perservance is admirable, but their newest album fails to deliver hits.
Formed in 1993 by boy-band monopolizer Lou Pearlman, the Backstreet Boys have been performing and recording for almost 15 years. Though they seem like a typical boy band, their dedication sets them apart; together they have faced several record-company lawsuits and chart battles with ‘N SYNC. In 2006, five became four as oldest member Kevin Richardson left the group. And though record sales are down, the Backstreet Boys are not giving up — even though maybe they should.
Unbreakable opens with a short “Intro,” in which the boys show off their vocal harmonies, and the heavily synthesized “Everything but mine.”
The album’s first single, “Inconsolable,” is, not surprisingly, a piano-driven power ballad that sounds suspiciously similar to the group’s 2005 single, “Incomplete.” The most redeeming of the ballads is “Something that I already know,” which shows a continued improvement in their vocal harmonies, or at least their producers’ ability to fix them.
The Backstreet Boys have lost any edge they ever had — forget the sweet but independent bad boy image that was once their claim to fame. As evidenced by songs like “Trouble Is,” and “Helpless When She Smiles,” the Backstreet Boys have become sappy, groveling men (Sample lyric: “I’m a house of cards in a hurricane/ A reckless ride in the pouring rain/ She cuts me and the pain is all I wanna feel”).
The first song co-written by the boys themselves, “One in a Million,” has a groovy R&B beat, but its lyrics seem questionably familiar. Perhaps the best song on the album is the guitar-driven dance tune “Panic,” which was also co-written by all four Backstreet Boys. They at least deserve props for writing songs slightly better than those given to them by their writers. Can the professionals really not muster up any creativity, though? Or do they assume the album will sell the modest number of records the label expects anyway, so why bother?
Unbreakable ends on a low note; its closing songs, “Unmistakable,” and “Unsuspecting Sunday Afternoon,” might as well be titled “Unremarkable” and “Unsatisfying Sunday Nap.”
Ten years after the Backstreet Boys became a phenomenon with boy band crazed middle schoolers, a few songs are catchy, and their harmonies are perfectly intact. But the group is clearly lacking new material; many of the new songs evoke earlier Backstreet tunes, and they seem to be recycling titles, ideas and lyrics. These songs are cloying even by boy-band standards. Unbreakable could be considered an acceptable pop album with the adult crowd, but Backstreet fans from back in the day (at least those who still willing to buy an album) are sure to be disappointed.
2 stars out of 5
