The One: The Backstreet Boys Residency in Las Vegas

At TRL, 2000 for the Backstreet Boys
(c) PipPepPop

  Some people go to a concert once a year. Some go to a concert a couple of times a year. Other people get in the car and drive somewhere  to see their favorite band. I hopped a plane to Las Vegas to see The Backstreet Boys, and I'm so glad I did it! I came, I saw, and I rocked my body right at the Axis at Planet Hollywood on St. Patrick's Day. Today is BSB's 24th anniversary, according to the timeline on their website and social media channels. On this day, Brian officially had joined the band and cemented their place in history.

 

(c) PipPepPop

     I began my BSB journey back in 1998. I was a 4th grader and I was obsessed with the song Quit Playing Games with My Heart. I still may be obsessed because that song rocked at the concert. While the audience was in no danger of getting carded, the crowd around me swayed and screamed like a bunch of teenagers. My friend gave me a shrug when the girl next to us yelled "The Call! That's my JAM! That's my song!" **

     The BSB has been a part of the cultural zeitgeist for well over 20 years now. They ruled the pop charts and MTV's video-heavy Total Request Live countdown show. In a related note, live shows like this are getting new life later this year. I want it that way is consistently on the top song lists. Rolling Stone's list of top boy band songs of all time (including acts like the Jackson 5 and the Monkees) ranked the 1999 classic, I Want it That Way, as its 5th entry. While they're never taken home the coveted Grammy award (7 time nominees), they have won countless fan awards such as MTV Video Music Awards, Billboard Awards, Kids Choice Awards and Teen Choice Awards. They're also left us pondering what exactly it means to "want it that way" or why the "loneliness is tragical." As of early April, BSB proved they still have it. They were back, taking the stage at the ACM Awards  with friends Florida Georgia Line. The septet performed their new single, God, Your Mama and Me and everyone enjoyed it. Then they music changed and all 7 guys launched into Everybody (Backstreet's Back) complete with dance moves. I have never seen Tim McGraw so into a performance before. He and his wife Faith were like a young Taylor Swift, dancing and singing in the front row.

A Vegas Take on Suits. (c) PipPepPop

     The concert was filled with memories. Nearly all of the songs from the self-titled Backstreet Boys album were played, even forgotten favorites like Darlin' (with Kevin's sexy talking intro) and uplifting ballad, Anywhere for You. We were dancing in our seats during the Euro-pop hit, Get Down, which lends itself to AJ's bad-ass rap portion. There was a heavy amount of dancing in the show, and it was more impressive than all the other BSB concerts I've seen combined (6 or 7), with the possible exception of NKOTBSB. The "chair dance" from As Long as You Love Me was perfection.  There were fedoras present during the mid-tempo ballad, All I Have to Give. The songs from Millennium and Black and Blue were represented, bringing the boys and their 10 dancers together for driving dance tunes like Larger Than Life, The Call and the not heard enough Get Another Boyfriend. , and subduing the crowd with sweet songs like Drowning and Incomplete. The only song from the non-Kevin years performed was the heartbreaking and haunting song, Undone. I have been listening to this non-stop. The show concluded with Everybody (Backstreet's Back), which you can find following the below link to you Youtube channel. We made some new memories that night and I will not soon forget this show.

At the show, 2017
(c) PipPepPop

** The reason I found this comment to be disturbing is that The Call is a song about cheating, and she screamed this directly in her boyfriend's face.

Read more reviews of the show on Ticketmaster. Mine is in there somewhere.
Read the Billboard.com review of the show.
See more of my concert footage on Youtube.

The ACM Awards: Like the High School of Country Music

Imgur GIF from "Not Another Teen Movie" 

   Sometimes the adult world feels a lot like high school. Award shows are no exception to this rule. Tonight we're exploring the stars of the Academy of Country Music Awards (ACMs) and comparing them to characters from teen shows and movies. Get those tropes ready, we're going to see them in full force. Consult the below dictionary for you favorite country star. * These titles are all bestowed with Love!


Brett Eldredge
A true showman who, will run rhoguh the audience and serenade showgirls during his song.  Brett has the soulful eyes of a heart breaker and the deep emotions of a guy that will do anything for love. Character: Patrick  (Heath Ledger) from 10 Things I Hate About You

Brothers Osborne
I love brothers Osborne. They have a great album of songs that are great for chilling, like Rum. They have a great band energy as well because they're brothers. I'm bestowing on them a double teen movie honor: best bad comprised of the same guys in multiple movies. In Can't Hardly Wait, both Breckin Meyer and Donald Faison are in the band playing at the big party. In Josie and the Pussycats, the same two are in the boy band DuJour, along with CHW cast member Seth Green. I love that there is an unofficial band reunion for these guys in multiple movies!

Carrie Underwood
Carrie is one of America's literal idols. She sings sweetly, but if you get on her bad side, she's going to bash in your car (Before He Cheats) or possible murder you with poison (Church Bells). Part of me really wanted to bring Carrie together with vengeance demon Anya (Emma Caufield) from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I considered it again, and Anya starts out as a villain and becomes endearing to the audience (fear of bunnies and all). But Carrie is on another level, so I have selected Rebecca Bunch from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. Rachel Bloom's Rebecca charms us with every song she sings, even if she's plotting unspeakable revenge. She says, "She's just a girl in love and can't be held responsible for her actions, (faking a pregnancy, faking a break-in, faking a relationship)  and the creepy Josh drawer that played The Entertainer.

Darius Rucker
I feel like Darius Rucker is the cool teacher in this scenario for a variety of reasons. He already had his first career as a touring pop band vocalist, then reinvented himself as a country star. Since then, he has won Grammys and become one of the most active members of the Grand Old Opry. His teacher spirit would be like Mr. Turner (Anthony Tyler Quinn) on Boy Meets World.

Dierks Bentley
He's always up for helping out a buddy. Dierks performed his own song, sang with Cole Swindell and co-hosted the show with Luke Bryan. When does this guy sleep? When he's not getting Drunk on a Plane, Bentley is serenading his wife Katie in the sultry song Black. Dierks is a lot like Lucas Scott in One Tree Hill, a jack of all trades. Chad Michael Murray's Lucas plays varsity basketball, writes a novel, helps his mom run a cafe and later also a music venue, and manages to be everyone's best friend before gradating Tree Hill High.

Faith Hill and Tim McGraw
They just put a new duet out this week, and they've been been married for 21 years. The McGraw-Hill group's (publishing joke) idea of a good family adventure is going out on tour for a year together. These two are just like Ferris Bueller (Matthew Broderick) and Sloane Peterson (Mia Sara) from Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

Kelsea Ballerini
The girl next door that's starting to show her true feelings. Ballerini is the female vocalist of the year! Her cute and flirty songs like Dibs and  Yeah Boy reminds me of  Joey Potter ( Katie Holmes) singing All By Myself, knowing that she has feelings for Pacey on Dawson's Creek.

Jason Aldean
He's quite the opposite on stage from the persona in his party anthems. Aldean is a sensitive soul buried under a scowl and a wounded soul. He is the essence of the Friday Night Lights troubled footballer Tim Riggins (Taylor Kitsch), who falls in love with his paralyzed best friend's girlfriend.

Keith Urban 
As an Aussie, I would love to put Urban in the "cool foreign guy" category, but I would probably have to go back to Saved by the Bell to find a cool foreign guy. Scratch that, Screech once pretended to be a Russian chess player, so this category is not going to work. I think Urban is best suited as the cool actor guy, like Josh Duhmael's Tad in Win a Date with Tad Hamilton. As soon as he shows up in a small town, all the girls are falling over him.

Kacey Musgraves
Mentioned for her nomination, but not shown during the show, Kacey is no stranger to being an outcast. She last won an ACM in 2014 for best album, The also nabbed countless wards and a Best New artist Grammy. Musgraves has lost a lot of radio support for just being herself. I love her desire not to be part of The Old Boy's Club and she has earned the title of Veronica Mars. Kristen Bell's likable loner was misunderstood by her peers, but she solved more mysteries than the town sheriff's department and she always got the last laugh.

Florida Georgia Line
FGL 's Tyler and Brian represent the bro-iest bros around. But they're definitely the little brother  in this situation looking for some camaraderie with their older brothers. FGL and the Backstreet Boys united together for their new single God, Your Mama and Me, then brought down the house with Backstreet's Back. Stay tuned this week for my review of #BSBVegas, because it was epic. I'm going to honor this southern brotherhood with the Brothers of Kappa Tau (honorable mention to Scott Michael Foster as leader Cappie) on the show Greek.

Little Big Town
This band represents the  rock-solid couple from freshman year. They are as sweet to each other as they are to everyone around them. They even show up in coordinated outfits, which looks great in their Group of the Year winner photo. I'm going to give them Murray (Donald Faison) and Dionne (Stacey Dash) from Clueless, minus the fighting.

Luke Bryan
Bryan is the All-American boy. He can sing, dance, host, cry, laugh, and pose with a Chippendale dancer all in the same night. Luke is well liked, but she is completely approachable. He has a huge heart, looking after his orphaned nieces and nephew. Luke is like Freddie Prinze Jr.'s Zack in She's All That. Everyone loves Zack as the soccer team captain, head of the class and student body president. He can look past the shy girl and see the hotness beneath. As a bonus, Zack's hackey sac performance art reminds me of Bryan's recent soul-bearing Tonight Show song about how to pronounce  the Greek delicacy Gyro.

Maren Morris
This girl's got edge, and I'm not just talking about her Joan Jett-inspired wavy bob and nose ring. He breakout single last year My Church likened Johnny Cash to a spiritual awakening. Her most recent hit 80's Merdeces is light and breezy. I think Morris is best repented by Oscar Winner Emma Stone's Olive in Easy A. She may seem pretty tough on the outside, but she's just a bit misunderstood and she runs with it.

Miranda Lambert
This album of the year winner wrote a double album about her divorce, titled "The Heart" and "The Nerve." She's no stranger to falling apart (Mama's Broken Heart, Vice), and she's trying to dig herself our of a hole from a very messy public divorce from Blake Shelton. She's a dark horse, a Blair Waldorf (Leighton Meester) in Gossip Girl. Stay on her good side, or you might find your house doused in Kerosene.

Old Dominion
Their addictive hit from last spring Break Up with Him was Back to the Future themed! This is just another teen drama fact. I'm going to classify these guys as Josie and the Pussycats (movie version) because they are always checking pop culture and other music in their songs, like in Song for Another Time.

Reba
Reba is the fairy godmother of country music. She looks down on everyone offering motherly advice, and now she sings gospel songs. I'm going to credit Reba as the wise Iona, played by Annie Potts in Pretty in Pink. Iona offered Andie guidance while she tried to work out her feelings for Blaine, although she should have stepped in when Andie created that monstrous pink prom dress.

Sam Hunt
Mr. Hunt has become well known for his sexy sing/talk mix, called "sam hunting" by some radio DJ's. He wrote an album of  breakup songs about a girl, and now they're engaged. Tonight during his Body Like a Back Road, Hunt sat in the audience with his arm around Hanna Lee, serenading her as he described how well he knew her curves. Hunt is totally Dan Humphrey (Penn Bagley, aka Gossip Girl), who pines after Serena van der Woodsen for years. While publicly pursing Serena, Dan  almost destroys the lives of all their friends and family on their way to eventual marriage.

Taylor Swift
She's not at the awards in person tonight, but it's like she almost was there. She's like that girl that moved away to another school that you still think about. Even though she's off in a new scene, she's still sending songs like "Better Man" to Little Big Town, cinching their Group of the Year award win. I would say she is similar to Amy Jo Johnson's character Julie on Felicity. She became friends with Felicity, made the Felicity-Ben-Noel triangle into a rhombus, wrote some songs, and then split before college was over.

Thomas Rhett
This guy doesn't do anything halfway. He set the world record for largest twister game for the release of his 2015 Tangled Up album.  He sings that he would die a happy man just holding his wife Lauren's hand, then he announces his wife is having a baby and they're adopting a child from Africa. This family has been taken to another level! Rhett is the ultimate romantic, which is why he is the boombox guy,  Lloyd Dobbler (John Cusack) from Say Anything.

Boy Bands + Zombies - Music = Dead 7

     I thought it was a joke when I first heard it, but there was going to be a movie starring members of boy bands.  It was going to be on SyFy on April Fools Day, and this is the same network that green-lit the Sharknado trilogy. Even better than that, it was going to be a western... written by Nick Cater from The Backstreet Boys.  It was not the highest of cinematic fare, but I loved seeing the 90's pinups (BSB, N*SYNC, 98 Degrees, O-Town) fighting zombies. There was also the interesting (and somehow perfect casting of bay boy A.J. McLean as the head zombie's crazy henchman. What can I say, I'm easily amused.

Here are 10 important things I learned from watching Dead 7:

Chris Kirkpatrick sans eye
(Photo courtesy of Mashable)

10. Chris Kirkpatrick is still the last one picked. The N*SYNC guy played the town sheriff, not a member of the 7, and he somehow managed to lose an eye to the evil zombie queen, Apocolypta.

9. Jeff Timmons (98 Degrees) still looks dam good covered in dirt. He may be the hottest member of the 98. But what confused me greatly about Jeff's place  in general in this movie is his motive. Something terrible caused a rift between Jeff's character Billy and his brother Jack (Nick Carter) before the zombie apocalypse, and it had to do with "can't make up my mind" Daisy Jane. This was a fairly big plot point that was never explained. More importantly, where are people still getting hair gel after the zombie apocalypse?

8. Joey Fatone (N*SYNC) will never be a mustache guy. He can absolutely be a goatee guy, or  a  5 o'clock shadow guy, but his Yosemite Sam 'stache makes him look like a civil war general.

7. Nobody in the costume department knows what a ninja looks like. Erik-Michael Estrada's (O-Town) character was a ninja with a man bun, a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles shell, two swords, cargo pants, and sneakers.

The Men of Dead 7 (Photo from of Zap2It)
Jeff, Chris, Howie, Nick, A.J., Erik, Joey

6. Faced with too many Latinos in the cast, Howie Dorough (BSB) became The Vaquero and Erik-Michael became the ninja known as Kimodo. Somehow A.J. McLean (BSB) looks like a bloody clown.

5. Zombie henchmen look a lot like... a vampire slayer. Compare A.J. (as Johnny Vermillion, not his early 2000's solo alter ego Johnny Suede) on the left with with the first vampire slayer Sineya (from Buffy the Vampire Slayer). Maybe there was something missing from the very confusing exposition about all of the vampires being wiped off the earth before "the plague"? Maybe A.J. was actually a vampire, or more likely, an insane clown posse fan (a.k.a. Juggalo).

     Both characters talked in a similar manner, mostly growling. Sineya the slayer's words translated to the following:
"I have no speech. No name. I live in the action of death, the blood cry, the penetrating wound. I am destruction. Absolute... Alone." 
     Sounds like a zombie to me. Also important to note, evil zombie queen Apocolypta had a Jamaican accent when she spoke, sometimes. What was that all about?

4. O-Town sticks together. Almost the entire band appeared in the movie. Erik was one of the 7, Jacob Underwood was in a card game with Joey, and Dan Miller was holding it down as a bartender. Even Trevor Penick made a cameo as another more legitimate sheriff than Chris Kirkpatrick. Who was missing? Everyone's favorite teen heartthrob and occasional diva  Ashley Parker Angel. (I once waited three hours at the mall to meet him, only to be told I could take a photo of Ashley but couldn't be in the photo...)

3. Nobody likes the guys that flunked out of O-Town. Yes, during the groundbreaking reality series Making the Band, there were about 8 guys going through training to eventually form O-Town. The guys that were not chosen (and Ikaika Kahoano, who quit for some ridiculous reason) formed a group called LMNT. They were not cool enough to be be involved in this movie. Also important to note, Matthew Morrison (the teacher from Glee) was briefly in this boy band.

2. All the women left in the world are regarded as whores. Literally some of the guys end up in a whorehouse. All of the other women (the zombie queen, caught-between-two-brothers Daisy Jane and tribal priestess and guide Sirene (Lauren Kitt Carter) all are dressed similar to Laura Croft. I take that back, Laura Croft is dresses classier than all of these women as she raids tombs. At least the women were all wearing sensible and flat soled boots when they were running, no stilettos in sight.

1. Zombies are called copperheads????
I've got nothing to offer on this one. I am not sure why they were called copperheads. In conclusion,  SPOILER: Sirene is the only one who survived so my moral of the story is that men should not be left in charge of a post-apocalyptic world. (DROPS MIC).

A Note About The Magic of NKOTBSB

New Kids and BSB are taking the stage together next summer! I am so thrilled. I can't wait to see them on the 21st at the American Music Awards.

Check out my first discussion of the NKOTBSB phenomenon.

A Note About NKOTBSB

Long before I heard the opening strains of the Backstreet Boys singing "Quit Playing Games With My Heart," I was a NKOTB fan. Their heyday kinda passed me by, with their major hits happening when I was born and in my early toddler years. But on my sixth birthday, a much cooler and older friend, she was nine, gave me a New Kids On The Block doll. Joey McIntyre, who wore a different outfit than the one linked here, to this day lives in my basement and enjoyed many happy years singing for my barbies.

Flash forward to middle school , where I was a die-hard (and am still to this day), of Backstreet Boys. The gold records, the VMA performances, AJ's trip to rehab, I know all about it. And I love and embrace it.

I remember all the countless viewings of "All Access," "A Night Out With the Backstreet Boys,"and "Homecoming Live in Orlando" on VHS. I've only seen them in concert two times before (2001-Black and Blue Tour, and 2005- Never Gone Tour) and now this coming August makes a long-awaited third concert.

Now skip forward another ten years. NKOTB are back, and better than ever. Their summer 2009 tour was one of the best shows I've seen. And BSB are back and going strong minus Kevin, and dancing as well, or better, than they did in 1999.

So imagine my delight and surprise when I came across this video from last night's NKOTB concert at Radio City Music Hall. BSB and NKOTB singing "I Want It That Way" together! Beautiful, and kind of a full-circle boy band love.