The story of Backstreet Boys

An ad in the Orlando Sentinel

The Backstreet Boys began with a newspaper ad and a man who owned blimps. In 1992 an Orlando businessman named Lou Pearlman, who ran an airship company and dreamed of the music business, watched New Kids on the Block earn hundreds of millions of dollars and decided he wanted a group of his own. He placed an ad in the Orlando Sentinel looking for young singers. The idea, as the band later described it, was a group with the look of New Kids on the Block and the sound of Boyz II Men. Pearlman was a cousin of Art Garfunkel, and he had watched Simon and Garfunkel's fame up close as a boy. Now he wanted to build his own stars from scratch, and he was willing to pay for it.[1] [2] [3]

The first boy through the door was Alexander James McLean, known to everyone as AJ. He was only fourteen, younger than the ad asked for, but he had been performing almost since he could walk, with years of ballet, tap and jazz, catalogue modelling and children's theatre behind him. AJ auditioned in Pearlman's living room and became the group's first member. He already knew another Orlando hopeful, Howie Dorough, a few years older, whom he had met through a shared vocal coach at a Latin festival in 1989. A blond kid from the Tampa area, Nick Carter, kept turning up at the same auditions. The three began singing harmonies together and realised they sounded like a group.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Howie had been chasing the spotlight since he was small. An acting agent gave him the stage name Tony Donetti, and he picked up small parts in films. He had auditioned for the Latin boy band Menudo and not made it. When he tried out for Pearlman's group, the organisers lost his headshot and his phone number, and it took about six months to find him again. Nick Carter was only twelve. He faced a real choice, a reported fifty thousand dollar contract with Disney's Mickey Mouse Club, or this untested vocal group. He picked the group. Nick later said performing had been his escape from a turbulent home where his parents fought all the time.[1] [2] [3]

The two oldest members were first cousins from Lexington, Kentucky, raised singing in church. Kevin Richardson had moved to Orlando in 1990 and worked at Walt Disney World, playing characters by day and singing in dinner theatre at night. In 1991 he went home when his father, Jerald, was dying of colon cancer. His father died that August, when Kevin was nineteen. Back in Florida in 1993, Kevin heard about three guys who sang a cappella all the time, auditioned, and got in. They still needed a fifth voice, so Kevin phoned his cousin Brian Littrell, a church choir tenor who was called out of an American history class to take the call. Brian flew down the very next day.[1] [2] [3]

Brian joined on the twentieth of April 1993, and the band still counts that day as its birthday. Pearlman named them after the Backstreet Market, an outdoor flea market near International Drive that had opened in 1991 and become a teenage hangout. Their first show came on the eighth of May 1993, at SeaWorld Orlando. The line up had not always been these five. An early member, Sam Licata, who later called himself Phoenix Stone, and the group's first managers, Sybil Hall and Jeanne Tanzy Williams, were soon gone. Their exits echoed through the courts for years. A later lawsuit by the band said Pearlman had them sign papers that cut the departing people out of future earnings.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Big in Germany first

That autumn, under new management, the group hit the road in the least glamorous way possible. They toured American schools, singing at assemblies, in shopping malls and at theme parks, opening for acts like REO Speedwagon and the Village People, and singing a cappella in any record company lobby that would let them in. Mercury Records came close to signing them in 1993, but the deal collapsed at the last minute. The break came in February 1994, when two executives from the Zomba group and its Jive label saw the Backstreet Boys perform at a high school in Cleveland and signed them to their first record deal.[1] [2] [3]

Jive's owner, the South African executive Clive Calder, had a secret weapon in Stockholm. Cheiron Studios, run by a DJ and producer called Denniz Pop, had turned Swedish pop into an export business with hits for Ace of Base and Dr. Alban. At the end of December 1994 the Backstreet Boys flew to Sweden to record with Denniz Pop and his young protege Max Martin, a former heavy metal singer whom the studio had renamed. They cut the upbeat We've Got It Goin' On, which became their first single in the autumn of 1995. In America it limped to number sixty nine. Nick later blamed the timing, saying rap and grunge ruled and they were at the wrong end of the cycle.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Their manager Johnny Wright, a former road manager for New Kids on the Block, had a plan. If America would not listen, go where pop never went out of style. The single reached the top five in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, France and the Netherlands, and a Montreal radio station, Mix 96, started playing it after hearing it in Europe. The debut album, Backstreet Boys, came out on the sixth of May 1996 everywhere except the United States. German fans voted them the top international group of the year. For two years they toured almost without a break. Brian later remembered leaving European airports with two thousand fans screaming, then landing at home to the sound of crickets.[1] [2] [3] [4]

One song from that first Swedish trip would change everything. Quit Playing Games with My Heart, written by Max Martin and Herbie Crichlow, was cut in Stockholm straight after the first single. Nick, then fourteen, could not sing on it because his voice was breaking, so Brian sang both verses on the original version. In August 1996 Max Martin flew to London to record a new second verse with Nick. The video was shot in Orlando on the first of July 1996, on an empty basketball court in fake rain, and the shirts famously came off. Nick was miming to Brian's voice in that video, because he had not yet recorded his own part.[1] [2]

Breaking America, and a brutal year

In 1997 Jive planned to relaunch the group in America with a song called If You Want It to Be Good Girl, Get Yourself a Bad Boy. The band pushed back and asked for Quit Playing Games instead. The label gave in, and the song reached American radio in April 1997. It climbed to number two on the Billboard Hot 100, still their highest placing there, and sold about two million copies in the United States. MTV was nervous about the shirtless rain video at first, but came round once fans demanded it. Years later AJ called the song Jive had wanted the group's most hated recording, and said they have never performed it live and never will.[1] [2] [3]

On the eleventh of August 1997 their second international album, Backstreet's Back, came out around the world. A day later, America finally got a Backstreet Boys album of its own, a self titled mix of songs from both records. It entered the chart at number twenty nine, took until January 1998 to reach number four, and simply kept selling. It was eventually certified fourteen times platinum in the United States. Jive's president, Barry Weiss, had resisted adding Everybody, Backstreet's Back to an American debut, since it seemed odd to announce a comeback nobody had seen. The band argued it could simply mean they were back home. When Canadian and border stations began playing it, the song was added.[1] [2] [3]

The Everybody video became one of the defining clips of the decade. Director Joseph Kahn, who mostly made hip hop videos, was pitched the group as a white Jodeci. He built a haunted house story inspired by Michael Jackson's Thriller and gave each member a movie monster. Brian became a werewolf and Howie a vampire. AJ was the Phantom of the Opera, Kevin was half Jekyll and half Hyde, and Nick was a mummy, filmed last after thirty six hours without sleep. Antonio Fargas, Huggy Bear from Starsky and Hutch, played the bus driver because the band were fans. The shoot cost over a million dollars, and when the label balked, the band paid with their own money and fought to be reimbursed.[1] [2]

Behind the success, 1998 was brutal. In November 1997 doctors found that a hole in Brian's heart, a condition he was born with, had enlarged dangerously. As a baby he had been diagnosed with a heart murmur, and at five he spent two months in hospital with an infection. Now he needed open heart surgery, and he postponed it twice to keep touring. He finally had the operation on the eighth of May 1998, in the middle of the Backstreet's Back tour. Eight weeks later he was back onstage, with oxygen tanks waiting in the wings. He later said the saddest thing was that he had scheduled heart surgery around his work.[1] [2] [3]

More grief followed. On the thirtieth of August 1998 Denniz Pop, the Swedish producer who had shaped their sound, died of cancer at thirty five. In September Howie's sister Caroline died of lupus, and he later set up a foundation in her name to fund research. Kevin said 1998 was the band's most successful year and the hardest of his life. There were brighter moments at home. In March they headlined a benefit concert for victims of the deadly tornadoes that tore through central Florida, raising about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. On the seventh of October 1998 the mayor of Orlando gave them the keys to the city and declared Backstreet Boys Day.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Suing Big Poppa

Money was the other wound. Pearlman had played the generous father figure, paying for tours, housing and clothes and asking the boys to call him Big Poppa. But Brian could not understand why the band saw so little from nonstop touring and huge European sales, so he hired a lawyer. The numbers were startling. The band's lawsuit said that between 1993 and 1997 Pearlman and his company had taken around ten million dollars, while the five singers received about three hundred thousand in total. It also emerged that Pearlman was paid as if he were a sixth member of the band. Brian filed first, and Kevin, AJ and Howie joined him. The band told Rolling Stone they had felt like indentured servants.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Then came a shock. The band discovered that Pearlman had quietly assembled a second Orlando boy band, NSYNC, featuring Justin Timberlake and JC Chasez, and that he and Johnny Wright were steering it along the same road map, breaking in Europe before America. Kevin said it hurt their feelings, because Pearlman had always told them they were family, and suddenly it was just business. Pearlman liked to call himself the sixth Backstreet Boy. On the eighteenth of September 1998 the group left Wright's management company and moved to The Firm, which also looked after the metal bands Korn and Limp Bizkit.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

The fight was settled in stages from late 1998, and the terms were kept private. In broad strokes, the band won cash and its freedom, while Pearlman kept a share of future revenue. A later lawsuit by the band says that in one of those settlements they paid Pearlman twenty nine and a half million dollars. The fallout rippled for years, because the group's first managers and early member Sam Licata sued as well, and the band ended up paying them too. In October 1999 the Backstreet Boys declared their Jive contract void, then signed a new deal with the label reported to be worth sixty million dollars, one of the largest record contracts ever.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Millennium

The album that made them the biggest band in the world started with a sketch. Jive's founder, Clive Calder, was leaving Stockholm for the airport when Max Martin played him a rough idea that had only a chorus. According to Barry Weiss, Calder declared it the first single on the spot. Max took it to songwriter Andreas Carlsson, who lived in the same building. The two had only discovered they were neighbours while sharing a taxi home one night. Carlsson helped finish the verses and the bridge, and has said the acoustic guitar figure was inspired by Metallica's Nothing Else Matters. When the band came to Stockholm in November 1998, they finished their vocals in two days.[1] [2] [3]

The plan had been to lead with Larger than Life, an upbeat thank you to the fans that Brian had started writing. But once the group heard the finished I Want It That Way, they pushed for the mid tempo song, and label executives had to be persuaded. Wayne Isham shot the video at Los Angeles International Airport on the first and second of April 1999, with fans who had won a radio contest screaming in a hangar. The song topped the charts in more than twenty five countries, including Britain, where it was their only number one. In America it stalled at number six, largely because no commercial single was on sale at its peak.[1] [2] [3]

Millennium came out on the eighteenth of May 1999, the day of a mobbed appearance on MTV's Total Request Live. It sold nearly half a million copies in America on its first day and one million, one hundred and thirty four thousand in its first week, a new record. It spent ten weeks at number one, became America's best selling album of 1999, and has sold around twenty four million copies worldwide. It earned five Grammy nominations. At the Billboard Music Awards that December, Nick used his speech to thank the new wave of pop acts, naming Britney Spears and NSYNC. Some of the NSYNC members, with whom there had been bad blood, thanked him back.[1] [2] [3]

The Into the Millennium tour began in Europe on the second of June 1999. When the North American leg went on sale on the fourteenth of August, the whole run sold out in a single morning, around seven hundred and sixty five thousand tickets priced at twenty eight fifty and thirty eight fifty. The show was staged in the round. The five made their entrance to the Star Wars theme on hovering surfboards held up by wires, and later flew over the crowd throwing stuffed animals. Their concert at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta became the most attended show by a pop act in American history at the time. The first American dates had to be moved when Hurricane Floyd approached Florida.[1] [2] [3]

The third single, Show Me the Meaning of Being Lonely, carried the year's grief. Its mostly black and white video, shot in December 1999, gave each member a private loss. Brian watched doctors fight for his own life on an operating table. Kevin watched old film of his father. Howie saw a woman in red who stood for his late sister Caroline. AJ rode a bus marked Denniz Street, driven by an actor who resembled Denniz Pop, and the video opens with a dedication to him. For the fourth single, fans voted on TRL. Don't Want You Back was in front until Nick himself phoned in a vote for The One, and his fans followed.[1] [2] [3]

Black and Blue, and a band coming apart

The follow up came fast. The group wrote in the Bahamas in May 2000 and recorded in Stockholm that summer, and the members wrote or helped write seven of the songs, more than ever before. Black and Blue arrived on the twenty first of November 2000 and sold more than five million copies worldwide in its first week, a record. In America it sold about one point six million, making them the first act of the SoundScan era to open back to back albums above a million. To promote it they flew around the world in one hundred hours, from Stockholm to Tokyo, Sydney, Cape Town, Rio de Janeiro and New York. The lead single, Shape of My Heart, became their last American top ten hit.[1] [2] [3]

On the twenty eighth of January 2001 they sang The Star Spangled Banner at Super Bowl thirty five in Tampa, and the Black and Blue tour, sponsored by Burger King, Kellogg's and Polaroid, crossed five continents. But AJ was falling apart. He later said he first used cocaine on the set of the video for The Call in 2000, and he was drinking heavily and battling depression. The death of the grandmother who had helped raise him in 2001 made it worse. In July 2001 Kevin confronted him in a Boston hotel. AJ threatened to quit, then broke down and agreed to go to rehab. The tour stopped, and the band went on MTV to explain why.[1] [2] [3]

The tour resumed in August. On the tenth of September 2001 the band played Boston. The next morning, Brian's wife Leighanne had been booked on American Airlines Flight 11 to Los Angeles, but she had cancelled the night before to spend more time with her husband. Daniel Lee, a member of the band's crew, was on that flight. He was among the ninety two people killed on board when hijackers flew it into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. The following night in Toronto, Brian spoke about Lee and led the crowd in a moment of silence. A few weeks later came their first hits collection, The Hits, Chapter One, with a new ballad, Drowning.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Then the machine stopped. In 2002 the others wanted to leave The Firm, but Nick chose to stay with the company, which was running his solo career, and the other four began recording without him. The group then sued Zomba, Jive's parent company, for between seventy five and one hundred million dollars, claiming the label had pushed Nick's solo album, Now or Never, at the band's expense. That album went gold, but relations with the label and with the youngest member were badly strained. Nick had his own troubles. In January 2002 he was arrested at a Tampa nightclub and charged with resisting an officer without violence. The charge was dropped after he did community service.[1] [2]

During the break Brian signed a deal to make Christian music, Kevin played the slick lawyer Billy Flynn in Chicago on Broadway and in London, and Howie explored real estate. AJ went back to rehab in 2002. In November 2003 he appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show to talk publicly for the first time about his addiction to alcohol and drugs. The rest of the band walked out to surprise him. It was the first time all five had been seen together in public in almost two years, and it sparked a reconciliation. Soon they were back with Johnny Wright, the manager they had left in 1998, and planning a comeback album.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Never Gone, and down to four

Recording began in January 2004 and did not go smoothly. Early sessions chasing current R&B and rap trends felt wrong to the band. Eventually BMG's Clive Davis heard a Max Martin demo called Climbing the Walls and thought it was perfect for them, and the partnership was back on. Never Gone, released on the fourteenth of June 2005, swapped synthesisers for live instruments and aimed at grown up radio. Howie described the sound as the Backstreet Boys meeting Matchbox Twenty, Maroon 5 and Coldplay. Critics were mostly unkind, but the ballad Incomplete reached the top ten in thirteen countries and became their only number one in Australia. The album opened at number three in America.[1] [2] [3]

Nick's personal life was in trouble. In March 2005 he was arrested for drunk driving in Huntington Beach, California. He pleaded guilty and was fined and put on probation. He has since said he struggled with drink and drugs for years, and that he finally changed course after doctors diagnosed him with cardiomyopathy, a disease of the heart muscle, and he realised it could kill him. He credits Kevin with helping him turn his life around by handing him a book about positive thinking. Then, on the twenty third of June 2006, the band announced that Kevin himself was leaving. After thirteen years, he said, it was time to move on to the next chapter of his life.[1] [2] [3]

Kevin left on good terms, calling the others his little brothers, and the band said the door would always be open. They turned down an offer to find a replacement through a reality show and went back into the studio two days later. In late 2006 Nick and his four siblings starred in House of Carters, an E network reality show about the Carter children trying to live under one roof in Los Angeles. It lasted one season. Unbreakable, their first album as a quartet, came out in October 2007 and spent two weeks at number one in Japan. On the tour that followed, planned shows in South Africa were cancelled after Howie's father, Hoke, died.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Meanwhile the man who created them was exposed. In 2006 investigators found that Lou Pearlman had run one of the longest running Ponzi schemes in American history, luring investors into savings accounts tied to an airline that barely existed outside his brochures. More than three hundred million dollars was missing. Pearlman fled. He appeared at a German awards show in February 2007, then vanished, until a German tourist couple recognised him at a hotel in Bali. He was arrested there on the fourteenth of June 2007. In May 2008 a federal judge sentenced him to twenty five years in prison for conspiracy, money laundering and making false statements in bankruptcy proceedings.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The four pressed on. This Is Us, released in the autumn of 2009, reunited them with Max Martin and brought in producers like RedOne. The day before it came out, Brian came down with swine flu and promotion was cancelled. Around this time the group left Jive, the label that had been their home since 1994, and for the first time said they had complete creative control. AJ checked into rehab for a third time in January 2011, wanting to be healthy for what came next. That year they teamed up with the band that had inspired Pearlman in the first place. The joint NKOTBSB tour with New Kids on the Block ran to eighty shows, and Kevin kept dropping in onstage.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Five again

The year 2012 began with loss. On the thirty first of January, Nick's younger sister Leslie, a singer who once had a record deal of her own, was found unresponsive at their father's home in upstate New York. She was twenty five and had a baby daughter. Police reports described an overdose involving prescription medication. Nick did not attend her funeral. He said his family blamed him for her death and did not want him there. The band pushed back its recording plans so he could grieve. Then came good news. On the twenty ninth of April 2012, at a show in London, the Backstreet Boys announced that Kevin was back for good.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Kevin said he had left because he needed to feel inspired, and that a small holiday show in Los Angeles had reminded him how much he missed singing. In July 2012 the five moved into a London house together, without wives or children, to write with producer Martin Terefe. They wanted songs drawn from their own lives. By then Howie, Brian and Kevin were fathers, and AJ was about to become one. The album, In a World Like This, came out on the thirtieth of July 2013 on their own label, K BAHN, and debuted at number five in America. Earlier, on the twenty second of April 2013, they had received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.[1] [2] [3]

Their twentieth anniversary brought some unexpected cool. In the 2013 comedy This Is the End they played themselves, performing Everybody in the film's finale, and won Best Musical Moment at the MTV Movie Awards. In January 2015 came the documentary Show 'Em What You're Made Of, directed by Stephen Kijak, which followed the five back to their hometowns. Nick broke down at his old dance school, remembering how performing had been his escape from his parents' fighting. Brian revealed a diagnosis of muscle tension dysphonia, a vocal disorder he still works to manage. In one haunting scene they walked through Pearlman's mansion, stripped bare after his fall.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The money, though, was mostly gone. In October 2014 the band reached a final settlement with Pearlman's bankruptcy estate. They had sought three point four five million dollars and received ninety nine thousand, plus boxes of their own old tapes, and ownership of the master recording of I'll Never Break Your Heart. Their lawyer called it pennies on the dollar, and a net loss. Pearlman never got out. He suffered a stroke in prison in 2010, and on the nineteenth of August 2016 he died in federal custody in Miami from an infection of the lining of the heart. He was sixty two. His investors recovered only about three cents on each dollar.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Larger than life in Las Vegas

The new era began badly for Nick. In January 2016 he was arrested in Key West, Florida, and charged with misdemeanour battery after a scuffle with bar bouncers. The band, meanwhile, signed with Live Nation for what started as a nine show test run in Las Vegas. Backstreet Boys, Larger Than Life opened at Planet Hollywood on the first of March 2017. It was reported to be the fastest selling residency in the city's history, and the venue opened its balcony for the first time, making the room two thousand seats bigger than it had been for Jennifer Lopez or Britney Spears. Nine shows became eighty, running until April 2019.[1] [2] [3]

In late 2017 the past caught up with Nick. Radar Online published a 2006 police report from Wisconsin in which a twenty year old fan accused Nick and a friend of sexual assault at a house party. She did not press charges and the case was closed that year. In November 2017 Melissa Schuman, a former member of the girl group Dream, said publicly that Nick had raped her in 2003, when they were working together on a TV horror film. Nick denied it. In 2018 Los Angeles prosecutors declined to bring charges because the statute of limitations had run out. The allegations would return, much louder, a few years later.[1] [2] [3]

Musically, the comeback was real. The single Don't Go Breaking My Heart earned a Grammy nomination, and on the twenty fifth of January 2019 the band released DNA, which debuted at number one on the Billboard 200. It was their first chart topper since Black and Blue, and it made them the first group since Led Zeppelin whose first ten charting albums all reached the top ten. The DNA World Tour, their biggest in eighteen years, opened in Lisbon in May 2019. Just before it, the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles opened an exhibit of their costumes and keepsakes, including the rain soaked outfits from the Quit Playing Games video, long since dry.[1] [2] [3]

Family trouble was never far away. Nick's younger brother Aaron had been a child star, opening for the Backstreet Boys at nine and selling millions of records, but he had struggled for years with drugs and mental illness. In September 2019 Nick and their sister Angel obtained restraining orders against Aaron, after Nick said Aaron had confessed to thoughts of killing Nick's pregnant wife, Lauren. Aaron denied threatening anyone. He went on to accuse Nick of abuse, allegations Nick's lawyers denied, and he also accused their late sister Leslie. The feud played out in public on social media. Their father, Bob, had died in 2017.[1] [2] [3] [4]

In March 2020 the pandemic halted the DNA tour. AJ admitted that year that he had relapsed at the end of 2019, and he later said he got sober for the last time toward the end of the DNA tour. The band began recording its first Christmas album in 2021, but it missed its deadline and a planned holiday residency in Las Vegas was cancelled. In January 2022 Kevin's mother, Ann, died. The group went back on the road that April and finally finished the DNA tour in South Africa in May 2023. Along the way, a virtual concert for Lincoln, streamed on WeChat, drew a reported forty four million viewers, mostly in China.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Crisis, and back into the Millennium

On the fifth of November 2022, Aaron Carter was found dead in the bathtub of his home in Lancaster, California. He was thirty four. The coroner found he had inhaled difluoroethane, a gas used in computer cleaning sprays, and had taken the anti anxiety drug alprazolam, known as Xanax, and ruled his death an accidental drowning. Nick, estranged from his brother at the end, said he found it hard to go onstage afterward. He released a song in Aaron's memory and, with their sister Angel, raised money for a children's mental health charity. Aaron's toddler son later sued doctors and pharmacies over his prescriptions. Their eldest sister, Bobbie Jean, died the following year.[1] [2] [3]

The group's first Christmas album, A Very Backstreet Christmas, had arrived in October 2022. It topped Billboard's holiday chart, and their cover of Wham's Last Christmas became their first number one on adult contemporary radio since I Want It That Way. Then, on the eighth of December 2022, a woman named Shannon Ruth filed a lawsuit alleging that Nick had raped her on the band's tour bus in 2001, when she was a seventeen year old fan. Nick denied it and called the suit a stunt by her lawyers. Within days ABC pulled a planned holiday special, and sponsors and TV bookings fell away. Some fans answered by boycotting the networks.[1] [2] [3]

More accusers followed. Melissa Schuman filed a civil suit in April 2023, and in August 2023 Ashley Repp sued, alleging Nick had drugged and sexually assaulted her in 2003, when she was fifteen. Nick denied every allegation and went on the attack, countersuing his accusers for defamation and accusing them of conspiring to extort him. He said the claims left him with post traumatic stress disorder and cost the band a seven figure deal. In May 2024 his accusers told their stories in the documentary series Fallen Idols. His defamation claim against Repp was thrown out that August. As of 2026 Nick had never been charged with a crime, and the civil cases were still heading to trial.[1] [2] [3]

For Millennium's twenty fifth anniversary, the band went back into space. Into the Millennium opened on the eleventh of July 2025 at Sphere in Las Vegas, making them the first pop act to play the giant immersive venue. The same day they released Millennium 2.0, a remastered edition with demos, live tracks, a new single called Hey, and at last the long bootlegged alternate version of I Want It That Way. Nine announced shows grew to twenty one, then more. On opening night Kevin choked up during The Perfect Fan and AJ said he had cried at least four times. For the big finale the five rose high above the stage on a floating platform, with a support bar added for Brian, who is afraid of heights.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]

As of 2026 the Sphere run had been extended several times, with a summer 2026 season and shows in Germany planned for the autumn. The Backstreet Boys have sold somewhere between one hundred and thirty and one hundred and fifty million records, depending on who is counting, which makes them the best selling boy band ever. Their American debut and Millennium were both certified diamond. Their video director Joseph Kahn once said what set them apart was that they could break into perfect unaccompanied harmony at a moment's notice, and that they were truly brothers. They began as a businessman's scheme, outlasted the man who built them, and after addiction, grief and scandal, they are still five.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

The people around Backstreet Boys

Kevin Richardson and Brian Littrell. First cousins from Lexington, Kentucky, since Kevin's mother and Brian's father are siblings. Kevin was already in the group when he phoned Brian in April 1993, and Brian flew to Orlando the next day. Their engagements were announced together on MTV in February 2000, both married that year, and in 2015 they were inducted into the Kentucky Music Hall of Fame side by side.[1] [2]

Backstreet Boys and Lou Pearlman. Pearlman formed and funded the group, called himself Big Poppa and was paid like a sixth member. The band sued him in the late 1990s after learning they had earned a sliver of the money, then watched him build NSYNC as their rival. Exposed as a Ponzi schemer, he died in prison in 2016, and the band's final settlement with his estate was pennies on the dollar.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Backstreet Boys and Max Martin. The Swedish writer and producer shaped their sound from their first single, wrote Quit Playing Games, As Long as You Love Me and I Want It That Way, and handled much of Millennium. Howie has called him the biggest reason for their success. They drifted apart for Unbreakable, reunited on Never Gone and This Is Us, and worked without him again on DNA.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Backstreet Boys and NSYNC. Two Orlando boy bands built by the same man and, for a while, managed by the same manager. The rivalry defined late nineties pop, and the Cheiron team teased it, once dressing in NSYNC hoodies while recording Backstreet vocals. Time softened it. Nick thanked NSYNC from the stage in 1999, and Joey Fatone and Lance Bass later joined the Backstreet Boys onstage in Las Vegas.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Backstreet Boys and Johnny Wright. A former New Kids on the Block road manager, Wright managed the group from its early days and sent them to Europe to break. The band left him in September 1998, angry that he was also running NSYNC. They returned to him in 2004 for their comeback, and in 2026 he claimed he had once turned all his efforts against them.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Nick Carter and Aaron Carter. Aaron opened for his big brother's band at nine and became a teen star himself. Their relationship turned bitter, with restraining orders in 2019 after Nick said Aaron had threatened his pregnant wife, and public accusations from Aaron that Nick's lawyers denied. Aaron died in 2022 at thirty four, and Nick later released a song in his memory.[1] [2] [3]

AJ McLean and Kevin Richardson. The oldest member was often the group's big brother, and in July 2001 he confronted AJ in a Boston hotel about his drinking and drug use. AJ threatened to quit, then broke down and went to rehab. Nick has also credited Kevin with helping him get healthy, by handing him a book on positive thinking.[1] [2] [3]

Brian Littrell and Leighanne Littrell. Brian met model and actress Leighanne Wallace in June 1997 on the set of the As Long as You Love Me video, where she played one of the six women. He proposed on Christmas 1999 and they married in Atlanta in September 2000. A year later she cancelled a seat on the plane that was flown into the World Trade Center. Their son Baylee became a country singer.[1] [2] [3]

Kevin Richardson and Kristin Willits. They met working at Walt Disney World in 1992, and she appeared in the band's first video for I'll Never Break Your Heart. They split in 1996, reunited around 1998 as Kevin wrote Back to Your Heart for her, and married at the Kentucky church camp where he grew up in June 2000. They have two sons and have spoken openly about struggles with fertility.[1] [2] [3]

AJ McLean and Rochelle Karidis. AJ met the makeup artist and model in 2001, and they began dating in 2009. He proposed on his birthday in 2010 and they married at the Beverly Hills Hotel in December 2011, with the rest of the band there. AJ credits her with pushing him toward sobriety. They have two daughters, and in 2024 they announced a separation.[1]

Nick Carter and Justin Timberlake. When readers of Cosmogirl voted Nick the sexiest man in the world in 2002, beating Timberlake, the media spun it into a rivalry between the two boy band heartthrobs. It ended amicably in 2009, when they met on the set of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon and Nick beat Timberlake at arm wrestling.[1]

Rare facts about Backstreet Boys

• The band's name comes from a troubled Orlando flea market that opened in 1991 with leaking stalls and no awnings. Pearlman named the group after the Backstreet Market near International Drive. When it opened in July 1991, merchants complained of rain ruining stock, puddles under carts and promised awnings that never arrived.[1] [2]
• AJ McLean was cut from a Nickelodeon sitcom after its pilot because he was too tall. In 1991 AJ landed the role of Skunk in the Nickelodeon comedy Hi Honey, I'm Home! After the pilot he was dropped for being too tall and replaced by another actor.[1]
• Before the band, Howie Dorough acted under the stage name Tony Donetti. An acting agent discovered Howie at fourteen and renamed him Tony Donetti. He landed small parts in films including Parenthood and Cop and a Half, and also auditioned, unsuccessfully, for Menudo.[1]
• Kevin Richardson once played Aladdin, a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, Tigger and Sebastian the Crab at Walt Disney World. Before the band, Kevin worked as a Disney cast member, playing costumed characters and working as a backstage tour guide. He also appeared as an extra in the film My Girl.[1]
• Nick Carter can be glimpsed as a child on a Slip 'N Slide in Tim Burton's Edward Scissorhands. Nick says he was so far in the background that nobody can tell it is him. He is one of the kids Edward sees from a window, sliding on a sheet of wet plastic.[1]
• Brian Littrell was pulled out of an American history class to take the call inviting him to join. His cousin Kevin phoned the school in April 1993. Brian flew to Orlando the next day and finished high school by correspondence, graduating in 1994.[1]
• The band's first single reached only number sixty nine in America, and a Montreal station helped break them in North America. We've Got It Goin' On flopped at home in 1995. Programmers at Mix 96 in Montreal heard it on European radio and began playing it.[1]
• I'll Never Break Your Heart took about two weeks to record because Brian and AJ both had colds. AJ later called it the longest recording of any single in Backstreet history. The original video was shot in Snowbird, Utah, and the band, who had never seen snow, kept falling over on skis.[1]
• Kevin's future wife appears in the first I'll Never Break Your Heart video, and Brian's in As Long as You Love Me. Kristin Willits was an extra in the 1995 ski video. Leighanne Wallace played Donna, one of six women judging the band's audition, in the 1997 As Long as You Love Me clip.[1] [2]
• AJ learned the words to As Long as You Love Me on the day the video was shot. He was meant to sing the bridge but caught strep throat, so Brian sang it on the record instead.[1]
• The Everybody video's bus driver was Antonio Fargas, Huggy Bear from Starsky and Hutch, cast because the band were fans. He returned in Larger than Life as the face of a robot in the opening sequence.[1] [2] [3]
• Andreas Carlsson turned from singer to songwriter after opening for the Backstreet Boys in Sweden in 1996. He replaced Peter Andre as support at short notice, watched fans faint, and decided he could not compete. Cheiron recruited him, and he later cowrote I Want It That Way.[1]
• Andreas Carlsson says the opening guitar figure of I Want It That Way was inspired by Metallica's Nothing Else Matters. The acoustic riff was written at the very end of the recording sessions. The song later modulates up a key near the two and a half minute mark.[1]
• I Want It That Way set a record with one hundred and sixty five radio station adds in its first week. Despite that, it peaked at number six on the Hot 100, because it was not released as a commercial single at the height of its popularity.[1]
• In 2011 China's Ministry of Culture put I Want It That Way on a list of one hundred songs to be removed from the internet. The twelve year old ballad sat alongside songs by Lady Gaga and Katy Perry. Music sites were told to delete them unless they passed official screening.[1] [2]
• Brian's old high school choir from Lexington, Kentucky, sings on The Perfect Fan, and Brian conducted them himself. Producer Eric Foster White recorded the orchestra in Detroit and the choir in Lexington, cut vocals in Orlando and mixed in New York, blending over a hundred tracks.[1]
• Mutt Lange reversed Shania Twain's backing vocals to create a texture under the chorus of I Need You Tonight. Songwriter Andrew Fromm recalls Lange pulling a piece from one of Shania's recordings and playing it backwards beneath Nick's lead vocal on the Millennium track.[1]
• The Larger than Life video is among the most expensive music videos ever made, at over two million dollars. Joseph Kahn shot the space themed clip at Universal Studios in Orlando in August 1999. It also set the record for the longest run at number one on MTV's TRL.[1]
• After a ticket scandal in Denver, the band asked the promoter to donate seventy five thousand dollars to a Columbine scholarship fund. The promoter was accused of reserving tickets for brokers who resold them far above face value. It agreed to donate, but to a Columbine fund of its own choosing.[1]
• Stan Lee helped turn the Backstreet Boys into comic book superheroes called the Cyber Crusaders. Nick, a comics fan, pitched the idea to Lee in 2000. It became a single issue called Backstreet Project, sold at concerts, with a toy in Burger King kids' meals.[1]
• To launch Black and Blue, the band flew around the world in one hundred hours. They visited Stockholm, Tokyo, Sydney, Cape Town, Rio de Janeiro and New York, spending fifty five hours travelling and forty five making appearances.[1]
• Kevin directed the video for The One with Chris Hafner, opening on a time lapse of an arena being turned into their stage. The clip is almost all concert footage from the Into the Millennium tour, starting with a basketball court in Indianapolis becoming their stage.[1]
• AJ once got on the PA of the band's private jet and announced himself as the captain. Radio host JoJo Wright recalled hearing Captain AJ over the speakers during the Black and Blue tour, then feeling the plane jerk. AJ has joked that the crew let him fly it.[1]
• AJ's rock alter ego was first called Johnny Suede, until Miramax threatened to sue. The name belonged to a Brad Pitt film character. AJ switched to Johnny No Name and occasionally played rock clubs in New York under that name.[1]
• Nick Carter's powerboat racing team won a national championship in its first year. He took up powerboat racing in 2002, during the band's hiatus, and started his own team, Nick Carter Racing.[1]
• Kevin played the lawyer Billy Flynn in Chicago on Broadway, in the West End and in Japan. He first took the role in 2003 during the band's break and returned to it several times after leaving the group in 2006.[1]
• Brian won a Dove Award in 2006 for his Christian single In Christ Alone. His solo album Welcome Home debuted at number three on the Christian chart. He later won more Dove Awards for the Glory Revealed projects.[1]
• Pearlman's estate handed the band thirty four tape reels, twenty six CDs and one VHS tape as part of their final settlement. The 2014 deal paid ninety nine thousand dollars against the three point four five million they sought. The tapes included demos and live shows seized from Pearlman's studio.[1]
• AJ McLean won RuPaul's Secret Celebrity Drag Race in 2022 as Poppy Love. The win earned one hundred thousand dollars for the charity Trans Lifeline.[1]
• Their 2019 Super Bowl ad with Chance the Rapper for Doritos was called unwatchable by Rolling Stone. The spot remixed I Want It That Way with Chance rapping over it and the band appearing in person.[1] [2]
• Their cover of Last Christmas was their first adult contemporary number one since I Want It That Way in 1999. It became their third chart topper on that radio ranking, twenty three years after their last.[1]
• Brian is afraid of heights, so the Sphere's flying platform was capped and fitted with a support bar for him. Their stage directors said he had to be eased into the stunt. They reported capping it at around fifty two feet, while other accounts put the platform's maximum far higher.[1] [2] [3]
• Every one of the band's first ten charting albums reached the Billboard top ten, a feat last managed by Led Zeppelin. The streak was completed when DNA debuted at number one in 2019. Their Christmas album in 2022 became the first to miss the top ten.[1] [2]
• Nick lip synced over Brian's vocals in the Quit Playing Games video, because he had not yet recorded his verse. The video was shot on the first of July 1996. Nick's new second verse was recorded in London that August.[1]

Disputed stories

These stories are told often but the accounts don't agree. Here are the versions and who says what.