Backstreet's back, alright?
With a year between them and the release of their 10th (!!) studio album, DNA, the Backstreet Boys have done the unthinkable and kept a recording career that began over 25 years ago alive. Sure, there have been stops and starts, but hey, they outlasted chief rivals NSYNC by over a decade and, last year, earned their eighth Grammy nomination for the album's lead single, "Don't Go Breaking My Heart." (Unfortunately, they lost Best Pop Duo/Group Performance to Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper's "Shallow."
"We've always been fighters. Nothing has ever been given to us," Nick Carter, who celebrates turning the big 4-0 on Tuesday, Jan. 28, told Us Weekly in December 2018. "We've had to work for everything we've got to this day. Being from a boy band, there's some label and we were put in a bubble. Every now and then, these miraculous things happen!"
With their their biggest arena tour in 18 years continuing through the end of May, the Boys, which also include Kevin Richardson, Brian Littrell, Howie Dorough, and A.J. McLean, have made a habit of looking to the future.
"I'm kind of over the nostalgia, to be honest," Littrell told the publication. "We want to take a new generation – or an existing generation who already likes our music – and take them to the next step. I love singing 'I Want It That Way' and what it's done for our career; I love singing 'Backstreet's Back,' but at the same time, with 'Chances' and 'Don't Go Breaking My Heart,' there are new memories to create. That's what the DNA tour is going to do."
But before we move forward with them, it's worth looking back—if just for one last time—at the 25 years of history that lays in the wake of the best-selling boy band of all time. Trust us, there's some wild stuff in their past that you don't want to forget about just yet...
(Originally published on January 25, 2019 at 1:06 p.m. PT.)