After nearly 10 years of glorious silence from Nick Carter and his group of overgrown 'tweens, the Backstreet Boys are back with the latest in a long line of snooze-worthy albums. "This Is Us" isn't as much a musical failure as it is an evolutionary one: Even some of the most talented producers in the industry (T-Pain and Britney-maestro Max Martin are but a few of the famous names on the track listings) are unable to help the Backstreet Boys grow up, leaving the album with the same teen-pop sound that left popular music at the turn of the millennium.
For the first few years of the group's existence, the Backstreet Boys were gods among men. The release of "Millenium," the band's sophomore album, brought a slew of chart-busting hits - from "I Want It That Way" to "Larger Than Life" - lauded almost universally as pop masterpieces: The group's lyrics were sweet without being saccharine ("Now I can see that we're falling apart / from the way that it used to be"), and its music was perfect for both karaoke nights and lullabies. It was the kind of CD that you could listen to with the boys and still leave in the car as you went to pick up a girl for a date.
"This Is Us" is everything that "Millenium" was not: childish, self-indulgent and downright creepy. The album's catchiest tune, "PDA," is perhaps its weirdest: An ode to public displays of affection, the song has lyrics that seem to be lifted from a porno: "We'd be at the club, the restaurant, the grocery store or the movies / kissing and touching with my hands all over your booty." One would assume that men in their mid-30s would feel at least a bit of embarrassment at crafting such a ridiculously lecherous song, yet the group describes its exhibitionism in painstaking detail: "From the lobby to the patio / From the Starbucks to the Navo / Hmm, nasty." Yes, nasty indeed.
The saving grace of the album, fittingly, has little to do with the Backstreet Boys themselves. Putting its money and fame to surprisingly good use, the group corralled a talented bunch of A-list producers to give the album some much-needed legitimacy. Jim Jonsin, the man behind Lil' Wayne's "Lollipop" and T.I.'s "Whatever You Like," brings his trademark synth-and-string combo to the title track, making it at least somewhat palatable; OneRepublic's Ryan Tedder - the magician who crafted Beyonce's "Halo" - tries his very hardest to give "Undone" some maturity; and Max Martin, the group's original producer, shies away from his usual epic sound in favor of something more akin to candy-coated kid's music. As for T-Pain's guest appearance on "She's a Dream," well - it's all that can be done to save the song.
While it was initially nice to learn that the world's most famous boy band had decided to stick with this whole music thing, after listening to "This Is Us," I almost wish that the Backstreet Boys had called it quits. In the band's own immortal words, it "ain't nothing but a mistake."
Pros T-Pain.
Cons You want just one answer to that? Really?
2 PAWS
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