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*~*~Come Together~*~*

Meet the new New Kids on the Block. Are they the same as the old New Kids on the Block? Well, yes and no.

A quintet of hunkalicious singing studs, the Backstreet Boys are, on the surface at least, walking the well-trod path of teen-dreamdom that was last notably traversed by Beantown's prefab fivesome. And just as the New Kids eclipsed the superstardom of their predecessors Svengali Maurice Starr's previous charges, the members of New Edition the Backstreet Boys have had little trouble surpassing vocal outfits like Color Me Badd and Shai, which served as inspirations for the Orlando, Fla., fivesome on its way to world domination. The group is even co-managed by a former NKOTB road manager, fer cryin' out loud.

On the other hand, the Backstreet Boys have been relatively sedate in terms of charting on police blotters and newspaper scandal sheets at least thus far. They've set no hotel rooms on fire; had no charges levied against them that they don't actually sing their own vocal parts; and, as for exposing themselves à la almost-New Kid "Marky" Mark Wahlberg in Boogie Nights, well, they're still young. Give them time.

The B-Boys jelled in 1993, in Orlando, where high-school students A.J. McLean and Howie Dorough and junior-high student Nick Carter frequently ran into each other at acting auditions. They began hanging out, started singing, and eventually brought in two additional members, Kevin Richardson and his Kentucky cousin, Brian Littrell. The band's initial local gigs ranged from high-school gymnasium dances to Grad Night at Sea World. But eventually, with the inclusion of smooth R&B-pop numbers like "Tell Me That I'm Dreaming" in their act, the Backstreet Boys heated up the local teens sufficiently enough that a phone call placed to a Jive Records executive during one of its pandemonium-inciting gigs resulted in the group scoring a recording deal.

Though their eponymous debut album has by now sold more than 10 million copies in the United States, the group was anything but an overnight success on its home shores. The quintet's 1995 single, "We've Got It Goin' On," fizzled after climbing to No. 69 on Billboard's Hot 100. It hit hard in Germany, however, and the band soon found itself in the middle of a European Boysapalooza, along with other teen-scream bands like Take That and Boyzone that were then dominating the notoriously fickle Continental market. "Over there, they had a bunch of what's called 'boy groups,' so we had a ready-made market," explains Littrell, apparently fully aware of the musical implications of supply-side economics. "But since we were Americans, we were a fresh new sound for Europe. We had more of an edge, and unlike a lot of those other boy groups, we were more than just a bunch of pretty guys. We could sing."

Whatever the source of their appeal, the Boys' record sales were real, as they succeeded in ringing up more than 5 million in unit sales outside the United States. They also nabbed the viewers' choice award at the MTV Europe Awards in 1997 and caused a panic in the streets of Madrid during a staged meet-and-greet affair that eventually had to be canceled. All in a day's work, it turns out. "In Europe, there's no walking anywhere without a bodyguard," Dorough told Teen People in March of 1998. Security head Lonnie Jones added, "When teenage girls all push in a group, you can't stop them."

Predictably, there have been several Beatlemania-like breaches of security. According to Seventeen magazine, two fans once hid in the storage hold of the group's tour bus; and one European admirer scaled a barbed-wire fence to get into their dressing room. Topping the list, though, was a particularly gaga young woman who gave McLean two diamond rings they turned out to be her parents' wedding bands.

But of course, it's always lonely at the top, and dating has sometimes been a problem for the Boys. "People say, 'Who cares? You're loved by thousands of screaming girls,'" Littrell recently lamented to Teen People. "But it's not like there's somebody I can call anytime and say, 'This is how I feel.'" But that changed on Sept. 2, 2000, when Littrell, 25, became the second Backstreet Boy after Richardson married his longtime girlfriend, dancer Kristin Willits, on June 17, 2000 to take a bride. Littrell and his fiancée, actress Lieghanne Reena Wallace, 30, walked down the aisle in a candlelight ceremony attended by all four of his musical cohorts.

And though some of the Boys have complained that nobody really knows them, a wealth of fun facts can be gleaned from a rip through the myriad of fan-maintained Backstreet Boys Web sites: When Nick goes shopping, relates one, he loves to buy sneakers and gold jewelry; Brian's favorite food is macaroni and cheese, and his favorite cologne is Safari by Ralph Lauren; A.J. likes girls with nice eyes and long hair; Howie is most likely to "invite you for a moonlight walk along the beach"; and Kevin "spent eight years of his life living in a log cabin, and he's also a qualified ballroom-dancer instructor!" Don't ever let it be said that they'll never make Monkees out of these guys.

The group's redoubled efforts in America have begun to pay off their debut album, Backstreet Boys, was released domestically in August of 1997, and spawned a number of hit singles, including "Quit Playing Games (With My Heart)," "As Long as You Love Me," and "Everybody (Backstreet's Back)," all of which have done well across several radio demographics. So, in addition to being young, good-looking, rich, and successful, the Backstreet Boys have established what looks to be some staying power.

Still, there's that little bit of lingering doubt: "When you think of a teen sensation, you think of the past and how this is just another one to come along," Carter admitted to Billboard in 1997. "We realize that people are talking about that, but we take everything with a grain of salt. We know it's going to take a lot of proving."

Proof came in May of 1999, when the band released the highly anticipated Millennium. Its first week out of the gate, the disc amassed 1,133,505 in sales, making it the most albums sold in a week ever since SoundScan began recording sales figures, handily trouncing the record set by Garth Brooks the previous December.

In August 1999, the band announced a massive North American tour backing its Millennium CD that sold out every one of its 53 dates in a single day. "Being that the album is titled Millennium, we're going to make the show a futuristic trip," Backstreet Boy Kevin Richardson told Wall of Sound upon the album's release. The two-hour show was presented in the round, and included almost 20 songs.

As the year came to a close, the Boys were declared the top sellers of 1999, and they started the new year by announcing an extensive marketing campaign with Burger King. Over the summer of 2000 they appeared on VH1's Divas Men Strike Back and will end the millennium with the much-anticipated release of their third album, Black & Blue, on Nov. 21.

Expectations are running high for the new disc, specifically whether or not it can beat the single-week sales record set by labelmate 'N Sync earlier this year. But in an interview with Wall of Sound, Howie Dorough imparted that he and his comrades aren't as concerned as you might think.

"The whole big thing is who's breaking whose record, especially since we had the record ourselves last year," says Dorough. "But records are made to be broken, and to us, it's not so much about that. It's just about making good music, and if the fans love it and we're happy with it, everyone else will come along with it."

Come 2001, the Boys will undertake a massive tour in support of Black & Blue, which will kick off Jan. 23 in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. The group's first U.S. leg will take it through March, at which time the band will head overseas, hitting Southeast Asia, Australia, Europe, and South America, before returning for another set of U.S. dates.