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*~*~Backstreet Boys: Larger Than Life Part I & II~*~*
(Interview made 2.2.01 & 2.15.01)


Even though they've grown up, grown beards and (in two cases) gotten married, Nick, Howie, A.J., Brian and Kevin are still Backstreet Boys. But a lot has changed since we last heard from the grand old men of the boy-band era.

It's a crazy world we live in when their latest, Black & Blue debuts at #1, sells 1.6 million copies and is still considered a disappointment. But as they continue the mega-tour to promote their latest album of smooth R&B-flavored pop and dance numbers, the five guys say it's not about sales or competition.

Backstreeters Brian Littrell and Nick Carter told MTV News' John Norris they just want to put on the best, biggest, longest, most outrageous show of their careers. So expect flames, lots of costume changes and songs that are "more vocally challenging" than that other boy band's tunes. Not to mention some summer support from a slew of multi-platinum pals, including Shaggy.

MTV News' John Norris: Eight years on, is it any harder to get pumped up for a tour?

Brian Littrell: We don't do it all the time, seven days a week. We always take time for our personal lives so we can enjoy normality. When it's the right time, a new album comes around, we all come together and we try to put together a quality show for the fans. It's not really a show, but an event, something that they can take with them.

Norris: You guys had a longer-than-usual break before Black & Blue came out. That led to some concern about whether the audience would still be there. They seem to be.

Nick Carter: I had a nightmare last night, a terrible nightmare. I was walking into the audience right before our show went on, and there were just a couple people scattered here and there. I started crying, then I woke up. I'm so humble and so happy that our fans are there for us. It's a great feeling.

Norris: Since you know the ins and outs of touring, do you take a little more businesslike approach when you go out now?

Littrell: Our outlook has changed a little bit. The production is the biggest that it's ever been. I think we are carrying the largest show that's ever gone out.

Norris: It looked like there were 15 rigs outside the opening-night show.

Carter: There's 20 or 30. But the main concern is to get out there and put on a good show for our fans. That's why we put the extra time, effort and money into making everything as good as it can be.

Norris: There have been some changes in your personal life, including two marriages. Does that make things a little different for you?

Littrell: Last night in front of 21,000 fans, to get behind a microphone and greet the audience, it's like it always has been. They cheer for each of us just as they've done before. We had been living with the new music for a while, so we were anxious to get on the road and show people the live show.

Norris: A.J. stepped to the mic and said, "Backstreet's back!" Is there a sense of reclaiming your spot, one that might have been overshadowed by other artists?

Carter: Our spot. [laughs]

Littrell: We've always tried to create something for ourselves. There's been so many groups, and the market and music scene have changed so much just in the past five years. We always look ahead. There's really no now; we're always preparing for tomorrow.

Carter: We're kind of afraid of people forgetting about us. But when you do three nights in a row and you see all the people out there for you every night, you say, "Maybe I'll calm down a little bit and not worry so much."

Norris: When Black & Blue came out, there was speculation about the horse race between you guys and 'NSYNC, and how the record was going to do. Are you happy with the way things are going?

Littrell: There was no disappointment at all. We tried to set it up right; it was all our creative involvement to jump on the plane and fly around the world. We have so many fans all over the world that America is really small in the whole scheme of things. To sell more than 5 million records the first week worldwide, that's like something Michael [Jackson] or the Stones would do. It's amazing.

Carter: We can't be any happier. There's a lot of people out there that work their butts off to get to the points that we've been to before, and we're working really hard, too. We've been around for a while, but we're grateful to be able to sell that many records in the first week. The Backstreet fans are the strongest out there. That's no disrespect.

Norris: Had [1996's] "Quit Playing Games (With My Heart)" never broken when it did and the way it did, a lot of artists might not have had the careers they have.

Carter: When we first came here, it was us, it was Hanson and it was the Spice Girls.

Norris: It was pre-Spice Girls, wasn't it?

Carter: It was pre-Spice Girls, but we were like, "Darn it, man, Spice Girls are blowing up the spot and we're still sitting around working our butts off." Finally, we got what we deserved. I think it was lucky timing. Everything goes in cycles, from fashion to music. And when we first came on the scene, in '93-'94, it was Nirvana and Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre. We were completely outnumbered trying to make a mark.

Norris: In this country.

Carter: Yeah. When Nirvana and Snoop were huge, we blew up in Europe, so they shipped us out.

Norris: You played in the round on the Millennium tour. This time, you've got a traditional, end-of-the-arena stage set. What are the biggest differences you've seen in terms of playing?

Littrell: Being in the middle was like a constant circle. We were running all the time, and the show was just like clockwork. When we get the Black & Blue show to that point, it'll be easier. We're still a little bit out of shape, trying to get back into the flow of things. And it's hard to sing 21 songs a night live.

Norris: Is this the biggest set list you guys have done?

Littrell: Yeah. We did 19 on the Millennium tour, but we have to do medleys now because we don't have time to do three or four albums' worth of stuff. We're trying to figure out how the Beatles did it and how the Stones do it.

Norris: So "Quit Playing Games" and "As Long as You Love Me" get put into medleys.

Littrell: Yeah. We want to fit them in, but we're talking about maybe pulling some of them out.

Norris: You play virtually the entire Black & Blue album.

Carter: That's what we want to do. We want to be able to show the fans the new songs.

Littrell: That's exactly what we did on the Millennium tour. We did the whole Millennium album, except for one song.

Carter: It's hard to toss up all those songs. But thank God we've had so many singles.

Norris: "We've Got It Goin' On" is not included for the first time.

Carter: First time the national anthem is not in there.

Littrell: The Backstreet anthem. I didn't even realize it until you brought it up.

Norris: You're not too nostalgic. [laughs]

Carter: We'll do 10 seconds of it and it'll be in the show. We really love that song, but we've been doing it for seven years.

Littrell: You end up hating the choreography.


Norris: You start the show with "Everybody (Backstreet's Back)" and "Larger Than Life," which are fan-oriented songs. Is it important to start off with a tribute to the fans?

Carter: Oh yeah.

Littrell: We've always started with the anthem song to the fans, because that gets them riled up. We want to keep it going with the dancing and keep the intensity up. And then we do the traditional costume change and try to do some low ballads. We try to make our show up and down, up and down, so everybody can stand up for a little, then sit back and listen, and then stand up and dance.

Norris: It's also easier for you to do it that way. There are some costumes that are better for up-tempo songs. You couldn't really dance around in those white coats.

Littrell: You don't want to come out and do all of your up-tempo songs back-to-back, because you would kill yourself. And then there would be mid-tempo numbers and ballads that you just sit around singing and people would be like, "What's gonna happen next?" We were just talking a couple days ago about how the dancing is coming along a little easier, just because we've had more of a chance to do it singing. When you try to put the singing with the dancing, that's when it becomes a train wreck sometimes. But that's what the rehearsals are for.

Norris: The Grammys are coming up. Are you going to make it to the ceremony?

Littrell: It's the 21st of February, right? I think we've got a day open on our schedule. We have been preparing for that, and we would like to be there if at all possible.

Carter: It's tentative.

Norris: You're up for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal, for "Show Me the Meaning of Being Lonely." That's got to be nice, because it's a real personal song.

Littrell: It's awesome to be nominated for a Grammy.

Carter: Being nominated is like an award.

Norris: Not too surprisingly, you're up against a tune called "Bye Bye Bye."

Littrell: Wow, who does that?

Norris: Some guys from Orlando. On MTV last year, Kevin was asked, "What song would you like to never hear again?" And he said "Bye Bye Bye." [laughs]

Littrell: Kevin [Richardson] will never live that down.

Norris: Any thoughts on competing with that song?

Littrell: You're competing with everybody.

Carter: You're competing with the same producers. When they write for 'NSYNC, their stuff is a little more dance-oriented. It's a little less vocally challenging, I guess you could say. It's just two different styles on the radio.

Littrell:Sometimes you hear a song you like on the radio and think, "If there wasn't an 'NSYNC, we could have had that for our next album." Now there's all these different groups, and with success comes popularity. And then people are throwing themselves at you and trying to get a piece of everything. That happened to our producers.

Carter: It's a ruthless business, and people try to get what they need out of it. But I'm happy to just be able to sing and perform for our fans. We're blessed to be in this position. As long as we can keep doing that, we're cool.

MTV News' John Norris:: It's a fine Backstreet tradition that the first night of the tour is always great. But on the second night, anything that can go wrong...

Howie Dorough: ...Normally does.

A.J. McLean: Always does.

Kevin Richardson: Seems that way, yeah.

Norris: Last night was the tour's official opening night, but it was really your second show. So there were a few mishaps?

Richardson: We were having some technical problems with lifts and trap doors not closing and not going up when they were supposed to. Certain things got stuck and didn't happen when they were supposed to like surprises for the audience, which I'm not going to tell you about.

McLean: We got put in some weird predicaments. Our security was having an aneurysm because we were a lot closer to the audience than we were supposed to be.

Norris: At one point the fans were really close to you. Is it not supposed to be like that?

McLean: No.

Richardson: It was great.

McLean: Well, it was, but not in the way it happened. We were supposed to stay in our first position, where we ended up, and we ended up going down toward the floor, which was kind of bad.

Dorough: It was cool, though.

Richardson: The audience really enjoyed it.

Dorough: They got a special thrill out of it.

Norris: The stage for the Millennium show was round. How different is playing in the round versus the traditional setup, with the stage at the end?

Dorough: It's not as intimate, unfortunately, on the end stage. In the round, there were no bad seats in the whole auditorium or stadium. I don't think there are many bad seats [with the new setup] either, because the stage is so big. We do some special things that give us a chance to see a lot more of the audience, without giving it away. Being on the end stage is a little bit less intimate, but it's definitely a bigger production.

McLean: It's also easier for us, though. After running the circle the entire night, it gets tiresome. It's a lot more work; you have to cover more ground. On this stage, we have us five, our 10 dancers and a seven-piece band. Everything is filled up enough so there's no dead spots or gaps on the stage.

Dorough: They see us all together, at once.

Norris: It feels like a bigger show. Is it?

Richardson: Oh yeah. We have 29 trucks. We would have had 30, but we took some elements out, to save for when we do stadiums in the summer. So, yeah, it's bigger. The stage is really huge.

McLean: It's almost 200 feet wide.

Richardson: It overlaps the seats on each side of the arena. That's really cool, because we get to run right up in the audience. And we've added a huge video element to the show.

Dorough: We put a lot of money into the production a little bit too much money. We're not making money on this tour. It's all good, though.

Norris: Is it safe to say this is your most expensive tour yet?

McLean: If you combine all of our tours and then triple it, you might get close.

Richardson: It was money well-spent. It's a beautiful show and the audience is going to get their money's worth and have a great time. That's what's most important. Right, fellas?

Dorough: I was going to say that, but you didn't give me a chance to finish.

Norris: You guys have been doing this for eight years now. Is it tough to get yourself pumped up for yet another tour, or is it always different?

McLean: It's always different, because it's a different album, it's a different production. We've all changed whether it's looks, or getting older or just maturing as a group. We're constantly trying to reinvent ourselves. We've definitely done our tours in perfect stages, going from a rinky-dink stage with a little catwalk and a real thin Backstreet Boys logo on the back wall, to where we are today. We've been trying to continuously make it better and just give our fans a real incredible show.

Richardson: It's challenging to come up with different ideas and to make it exciting and new and fresh for us and for the audience.

Norris: Was pulling out even more stops this time an important concern, or did you consider doing something more scaled-back?

Richardson: Down the road, we want to do more scaled-back stuff. If we get the opportunity with the next album, it would be cool to do theaters again. We've talked about doing that just doing real small, acoustic-vibe stuff.

Dorough: We try to outdo ourselves each tour, but where exactly can you go? Especially with the last time being in the round and us flying and everything. It was like, "How can we top ourselves this time?" I don't know if we've topped it per se, but we've got a good show that we feel really comfortable with. But, like Kevin said, I think we would feel just as comfortable with a show that's more intimate.

Richardson: With this tour, because we're planning on doing stadiums in the summer, we didn't want to have to bring in a brand-new stage later. And when you play stadiums, if you're on something small, you feel like an ant. So we wanted to go with something big. And this light show that we've got now we've got the best in the business, Peter Morris, doing our lighting. He's done Michael [Jackson]. He's done everybody.

Dorough: This stage is unbelievable; it's huge. It's more for stadiums than it is for arenas. In the arenas, it's like, "Wow!" We're really up close. Everyone can see us, totally.

Norris: Without giving too much away, there's no flying this time. Can we safely say that?

Richardson: Thank God we don't have to put those harnesses on. It took us an hour just to get those things on. Those were hard on the old groin area.

McLean: That was real bad.

Norris: But there are some surprises?

McLean: Yeah, we have some pretty nifty gadgets on this tour.

Richardson: It's fun to come up with new, exciting things for your audience. They want to see something different; they want to see something exciting.

Norris: There's a point where the fans kind of get to go backstage with you guys, in a sense.

Richardson: Yeah, yeah.

McLean: This is probably one of the most dangerous stages for us, because of all the different entrances and exits and all the special things that we have on stage. If one of us is really in the zone focusing on singing to that fan and makes a wrong move, we'll fall in a hole somewhere.

Dorough: Which has happened already.

McLean: Which has happened to Howie, during dress rehearsal. And it happened to Kevin twice. No one got hurt, though.

Norris: There's a video opening that involves a kind of cosmic happening...

McLean: Giant potatoes hitting the earth.

Richardson: Originally, we thought we'd have a storyline throughout the entire show, and we would begin with the earth almost being destroyed. Then we were going to start bringing things back to life, and at the end of the show it would be all glorious and happy again. So at the beginning of the show, you're experiencing this destruction. But the rest of the storyline wasn't working, so now it's just a cool intro. The earth cracks open, we come up out of it and boom! here we are.

Norris: You guys start with "Everyone" and "Larger Than Life," which are real fan-dedicated tracks. Was it important to start that way?

Richardson: When we were writing and recording "Everyone," we were like, "This would be a great opener for the tour."

McLean: And it's perfect to be followed up by "Larger Than Life," because that was the same exact thing.

Norris: This show features some of the most intense dancing we've seen in any of your shows.

Richardson: The choreography may be more challenging, but I don't think we're dancing more than we have in the past.

McLean: There are more up-tempo songs in this show than we've had in probably any of our tours.

Norris: Are you gratified with the response to the album, despite the media-inspired horse race with 'NSYNC's record?

McLean: Very. We went through a phase where we got blinded by the world factor and the global release of the previous album. With Black & Blue, we kept focusing on the U.S. and, "If we don't sell this many million records, it's not this, that and the other." But we have to think globally. We are a world-renowned group, and we've got fans as far away as the Far East, as well as in the U.S. But we can't sit back and focus on just here. And that first week's sales were very gratifying to us. We beat ourselves.

Dorough: We beat our record from last year and we created a couple new records. I was told we were the first artists to have two albums in a row go platinum the first week.

Richardson: Records are nice, but as long as we're selling albums and tickets, that's what's great.

Dorough: And records were meant to be broken.

Norris: Some writers have asked, "Can they reclaim the pop crown?" Do you pay attention to that hype?

Richardson: I don't pay attention to it.

McLean: We just want to keep on doing what we're doing. Obviously, people really enjoy it, and we love doing it.

Richardson: There is no crown.

Dorough: Never knew we had it, never knew we lost it. [laughs]

*~*~Backstreet Boys: The One On Ones~*~*
(Interview made 5.1.00)


It hasn't been all smooth sailing for the Backstreet Boys; they've each weathered their share of tragedy and strife in their lives.

Howie Dorough lost his sister Caroline last year, while Kevin Richardson still feels the pain of his father's death nine years ago. A.J. McLean was reunited with his long-lost father after the group found success, while Nick Carter dealt with very public reports of a falling-out with his own mother. And last year, Brian Littrell underwent open heart surgery to help repair a cardiac defect he had been born with.

MTV News' John Norris got unlimited, up-close and personal access to each member of the Backstreet Boys to talk about these very difficult issues. The guys' candid, revealing, and moving responses can be found in these five exclusive one-on-one interviews. Check 'em out.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~NICK CARTER~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

John Norris: Any thoughts on going solo someday?

Nick Carter: Eventually, I might do it. That might be just because I wanna do something different.

MTV: I would think, though, that there must be people that you encounter saying, "Nick, hey, you've got the voice, you've done the group thing, why not go off?" Are there forces around you, encouraging you to do that all the time?

Nick: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. There's tons of forces. You've got to be comfortable in your environment. You've got to feel at one with what you are doing, and I feel at one with what I'm doing right now, so no matter what people say, it doesn't affect me. Right now, I'm just not at the point where I'm feeling like I wanna do something, but there probably will be a point, there probably will, but I don't know when.

MTV: Are you still in the relationship you were in a year ago?

Nick: Mmm, yeah.

MTV: And as you know, there was a lot of talk that that had led to a falling out between you and your mom.

Nick: Well, not really. No, it was more deeper than that. I think that was a scapegoat for a lot of things having to do with my relationship... for other things that were going on. Really, everything right now is extremely cool. I love my family.

MTV: Your relationship with your mom is okay at the moment?

Nick: Yeah, it's good.

MTV: She's been pretty involved with your career from the get-go. Do you now think that maybe it's not such a good idea for family and business to be intertwined?

Nick: I believe that, right now, it's more so, that I wanna be with my family and not [talk] business. That is probably the big issue, what it was. Now it's more just about me wanting to have my family out of the business, 'cause I deal with it so much. I'm living the business. So when I wanna just take a break and get away from it all, I don't wanna have to come back and deal with it all, with all the business and stuff. I wanna be able to just chill, so that's pretty much what it's all about.

MTV: Has it become difficult for you to keep your business and personal lives separate?

Nick: It is kinda personal to me, and at the same time, I'm in the spotlight all the time, and everybody's in the spotlight, so a lot of people know your business. Once you sign on the dotted line, that's what you're obligated to let everybody know.

MTV: Is it safe to say there won't be a "Heart And Soul, Part II" coming out anytime soon?

Nick: Not anytime soon.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~AJ MCLEAN~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

John Norris: Any new tattoos?

A.J. McLean: Nothing, yet. I'm looking forward to getting one on this tour. I've drawn it out, got it all mapped out. It's gonna be good, it's just gonna hurt. I'm trying to get it right here [points to left pectoral]. But I'm not sure. It's a little G clef with angel wings and a halo and Christ's face right in the middle, and it will say, "Music is my savior" as well as "Christ is my savior."

MTV: Cool. You were you talking last year about getting the "69" one somewhere on your stomach?

A.J.: Yep, got it on my stomach, right there. That hurt like a son of a gun. I tell you what, I was in tears for that one. It's like, I take three or four months in between each tattoo, so you kind of forget mentally what it feels like to get it done. So I go back in, and it's that same initial reaction. Your body gets numb. You start sweating. You start freaking out. You got to pound down a Coke and the caffeine.

MTV: There was a lot of speculation about, you know, "69" and all the meaning of that...

A.J.: No, it's actually my lucky number. It really is. I mean, there's purely no sexual content whatsoever, to clear that up. It just seems to be the perfect number for me, but no sexual content whatsoever.

MTV: Just in general, would you say that if you guys want to grow up in terms of performance, if you want to be more sexual, do you feel restricted from that?

A.J.: I think we did at a certain point, where we did the previous tour -- not the "Millennium" Tour, but the tour before that -- when we did our solos, and I did the song "Lay Down Beside Me." And then I got down on the floor and did my whole spiel on the floor. That kind of opened doors for us. I was a little nervous when [BSB choreographer] Fatima said, "Why don't you get down on the floor and hump the floor?" without saying it any other way. And I was like, "Well, I don't know if that's going to go over real big with the moms and the dads in the front row." I did it and got the great crowd reaction, and I felt better about it, and that kind of made us all realize, Okay, I guess we can kind of go a little bit further with it.

MTV: Moving on to the "Lonely" video, one thing you didn't do -- of course, Kevin has got the thing in there with his dad -- I know you didn't bring in anything regarding the whole reunion with your father. Was that considered?

A.J.: You know, it's really funny that you say that, because when we were in prior meetings for the actual video shoot, [the director] had a whole setup of how each person's scenes would go. We came up with the whole concept ourselves, with the individual things, and Brian with his heart and Kevin with his dad. But the funny thing is, he had no idea about my father. The original scene was supposed to be me in a desert with nothing around with picture frames floating in the air, going through a time lapse photography, talking about me and my father, and there being a man in the distance coming toward me, and I try to get to him, and then he's gone. And that was going to be my father. Like, "He's in your life, he's out of your life." It was weird how he knew that or had that set up and didn't know anything about my father or anything about my life. But we ended up flipping that around, because Kevin's father and that whole situation has been more publicly known among our fans. People kind of know that Kevin, whenever we do something related to a cancer foundation or something that's related to any kind of foundation, Kevin and Brian and Howie, because they've had losses in their families, can kind of relate better to their sequence in the video. Howie with his sister, that's the whole concept. But me and Nick, we're kind of just random in the video.

MTV: You were four when your dad...

A.J.: I was four when my mom and dad split up.

MTV: Do you remember how you thought of that, or how it was explained to you when you were a kid?

A.J.: My father was never really talked about a lot growing up. The last time that I saw him, from the time my parents were separated, I saw him when I was about twelve years old. Ten, twelve, around that age, and it was for the holidays. It was the weirdest thing, because I at first didn't know who the hell he was. And then my mom kind of clued me in... patted me on the back and said, "That's your father." I was like, "Oh, okay." Didn't see him after that, and then kinda like bumped in to him again, and it was just like...

MTV: Didn't you seek him out, though?

A.J.: Ah, yeah. We were in the studio, and my grandfather came to drop off an envelope to me. It had a return address on it... which was probably about 15 minutes from where I was living at the time. So I decided, Why the hell not? So I went ahead and checked it out, and sure enough, there he was. Backstreet memorabilia up on the wall. He had been keeping up on the whole Backstreet thing, since the whole thing started.

MTV: Did that feel weird knowing that this guy was out there following what you were up to?

A.J.: It was kind of awkward, but he kind of expected me to jump back into it and just become [his] son all over again. I couldn't do that. I was raised solely by my mom and my grandparents and my uncle and my aunt and my immediate family, now. My mom is the most wonderful woman alive, and she had to play the role of both mom and dad for me and just, you know, be there for me in every kind of [way], whether it was me having a guy problem or me having a problem with girls. She was there for everything, you know, and he wasn't. So it's like, I just can't accept that back in my life at the drop of a hat. If it were a gradual thing, yeah.

MTV: Plus, being at a point where you're at... do you have to approach something like that with a certain amount of caution or be suspicious of what someone's motives would be, wanting to be close to you?

A.J.: Yeah. I mean, I was always warned by my family. My family continuously filled my head with, "You're gonna be successful, you're gonna make a lot of money someday, you're gonna be a big superstar" and all this stuff. I believed it in my heart, but I didn't visually believe it. They also said, "Your dad's gonna come looking for you when he sees a little dinner bell ring and he sees the cha-ching," and I didn't believe that either. And, just as things started to pick up, phone calls started coming in, started getting Christmas cards, started getting birthday cards, like, "Wow, man, they were right." And it's like, what do you do? Because that is still my dad. I mean, that is still my flesh and blood. I look at someone like Kevin, who doesn't have a father right now and I do... I'd love to fix things, but you just can't. You just got to let it go and be your own man and be your own person.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~BRIAN LITTRELL~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

John Norris: I want to ask you about the "Show Me The Meaning Of Being Lonely" video, because I think a lot of people are actually surprised that you are able to bring something like your heart surgery in to a video like that. Was it a hard decision to make? Or what it like, "Let's go for it?"

Brian Littrell: It was something that we wanted to give to the fans or give to the audience, so to say. Something that came directly from us. Life experiences. And it was a tough decision for me to make, because I was thinking, "Well, what has been trying in my life that sticks out?" Obviously, it was my heart surgery.

I had long talks with the director, because I didn't want it to be too vivid. I didn't want it to be too graphic because it's hard enough for my family to watch it, let alone me. But I wanted to share that, because it was a growing experience for all of us. For each and every one of us.

MTV: Do you remember -- because I talked to you a few months after the surgery, and you were showing us the scars and everything, and you guys were back at Radio City, hitting the road and it seemed all to be all good. But I know since then, you've talked about the fact that you postponed surgery the first time to stay out there on the road, and then you did go back on tour relatively soon after the surgery.

Brian: It really wasn't my choice.

MTV: I was going to say. I mean, but it should have been, shouldn't it have?

Brian: It should have been nothing but my choice, but it was scheduled, and you deal with... I mean, a lot of stuff went down with that. A lot of trying times happened with that with our previous management. The schedule was just laid out in front of us, and that was what got so frustrating, because it was just chop, chop, chop. Had to be everywhere at a specific time, and nothing could stand in the way. After experiencing a delay in my surgery twice, then finally having it, and then eight weeks to the day of my surgery, I was back up on stage in Charlotte, North Carolina.

MTV: Oxygen tank standing by.

Brian: Yeah. I mean, for the first two weeks of the tour I had paramedics and people, because I didn't know.

MTV: It had to have been pretty scary.

Brian: It was very scary. I mean, that put a lot of weight upon our shoulders with coming to terms with making a decision about what was most important. Was our health important? I kinda got picked as the example. I guess to say, that out of all five of us, it happened to be me, it turned out. Everything happens for a reason, and it turned out good. Thank God, you know that everything went well, that we didn't have to take too much time.

I know there's a lot of loving and caring fans out there, and I got letters beyond belief. You know, of gratitude and thankfulness. But I think it shows them a different phase of what our work is like, 'cause they realize that a little bit through me, I think, of how hard work is. You know a lot of people think the entertainment business is such an enjoyable thing and glamorous. It has its perks, but, you know, there's real life behind all that.

MTV: I would imagine that Kevin, having lost his dad and knowing that his cousin had a condition growing up as a kid... I would imagine he was going through it pretty hard when you were having your surgery.

Brian: Yeah. He flew to Minneapolis to see me. Rochester, rather. But he came up and visited me for a couple of days and it kind of hit home when he saw me out walking with my, you know, walker and things. They had me up on my feet two days after my surgery, and I was walking laps around the hallway, and that was tough, because I've always been so physically active, and knowing that something would kind of knock me on my butt like it did... it was tough, but that's kind of when it hit home. I remember looking in the waiting room and seeing him in there -- and he kind of turned a little white -- thinking, "Wow." You know, "It's really happening." But we were going so fast, it was hard to kind of slow down and wake up to what was going on.

MTV: You mentioned your faith, that it's always been important to you. When you went through the surgery, was it at its darkest point? Was it challenged? Were you questioning? Was there a lot of, "Why Me?"

Brian: Not really. It was kind of disbelief, because I felt so healthy going into the surgery. That was kind of the hardest thing to believe was why I had to do this in order to live the rest of my life. And when you weigh those things, I thought, Well, I've got a wife and some kids ahead of me that I would like to see, God willing, besides all of this going on. I'm making a living for myself, but I'm benefiting my family down the future, down the road. But when you weigh those things I thought, Well, no career, no status, or no star status... is worth losing all that.

MTV: Your faith is as strong as ever.

Brian: I think it's stronger now, just because there's more. I've been asked several times when I've been home, you know, people say, "How do you stay accountable to God?" You know, because of all that is introduced with this business.

MTV: I was going to say. Does it challenge you a lot?

Brian: The way I handle situations on the road is like: If you don't put yourself in that situation; if you can think ahead and plan to be elsewhere when you know that something else is going on over here; if you choose the right path rather than the left path, and you don't even set yourself up with putting something that might be strange, that you could see or take part in... you've gotta pre-think those things. I'd rather stay in my hotel room than go out to a bar and be caught with whatever and have somebody say, "Well, you're such a big Christian," and then you had a beer. I'm not gonna tell that I'm not gonna have a beer, because I do, but at the same time, it's like, you put yourself in that company, because you're not just going out to be by yourself. You're going out to be involved with everything that's going in there, and God forbid something happens. It's not worth it.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~HOWIE DOROUGH~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

John Norris: We've been talking to the guys about the meaning of "Show Me The Meaning Of Being Lonely," the song and the video, and we wanted to talk to you about your segment, and dealing with the loss of your sister Caroline.

Howie Dorough: With my sister passing away a year and a half ago, that was something that was, like, the very closes thing for me: the feeling of being lonely, and knowing that I no longer had that one-fifth of my family there, and knowing that feeling of how it felt like when she passed away and I literally had to get on a plane right after her funeral, that day, to go to South America to perform an concert the next day. It was our first, actually first couple of concerts that we ever canceled, in Minneapolis, in the history of the Backstreet Boys.

MTV: Was there ever a question that the show would, or wouldn't go on with or without you?

Howie: We knew when we got started in this whole thing that there would be a lot of things we would have to sacrifice. I figured the guys would probably go on, but it was something that was a big enough impact on everybody that they decided, Let's just take this time off here and reschedule it.

MTV: What was that like for you?

Howie: It was one of those kinds of things that I wish to never happen upon anybody, and it's one of those kinds of things that you don't really [think] about. This is all great, but at the end of the day, like, with certain situations, like Brian's heart surgery, or with a family member passing away, it just makes you realize that nothing is that great more than your own life or a family member of yours.

MTV: Your sister had Lupus, I understand. Was it a sudden thing?

Howie: She had it for 13 years, actually. Her death did come drastically. It was literally a month before that, she was... not even a month. I think it was couple weeks before that, we had finished up our tour in her hometown in Raleigh, North Carolina, and then it was, like two weeks after that. We went to the MTV Awards, and it was right after the MTV Awards, the night before we had won our awarrd, and the next morning, I found out that something had happened to my sister, and possibly, I might want to come into town.

I just thought that, you know, she was just having a bad lapse on the whole thing, and I was just praying to God that nothing was gonna happen. But in the back of my mind: "Well, do I go? I know we have to hurry, I only have one day off," and I was like, "Do I go ahead and go, or do I go on to the next town?" Just something in the back of my mind said, "You know what? Just get on a plane. Don't even think about it." It was about 5 o'clock in the morning when I got the notice.

I just got on the [next] plane out, and I just missed her. Like I said, there was a couple other of my family members that got a chance to see her. I actually missed the first flight out, and I caught the second flight, and me and my father had just missed actually having just a few moments just to hang with her. When I got there, though, everybody thought that everything was okay, that she was just having a bad lapse and everything, but literally, as soon as I got there, she had went under.

I always hold the thought of my last concert with her in Raleigh and just the excitement of being there, and it was, like, so exciting for her to have all her family and friends [there], 'cause she's the only one that lives outside of Florida. It was like a big deal to her, you know, a small town there in North Carolina, all her friends knowing that her brother's a Backstreet Boy and everything. I had, like, a big thing for her, and I think, for her, it's like... I think she kind of held on, knowing that I was there, and then, all of a sudden...

MTV: How has your family responded to the "Show Me..." video?

Howie: It touched my mom, especially, a lot. A year ago, we had a lot of people coming to the house and giving sympathy cards and putting a lot of donations toward the foundation. Out of all of us, my mom took it the hardest. It's one thing having your parent pass away, but having your own daughter or your own son or whatever, pass away, it's that...

MTV: That's what they say: you're never supposed to bury your children.

Howie: Yeah, exactly. But I think now, with the video and everything, she watches the video and I swear, I think it actually helps her move on. She's able to talk about it. She's able just to move on with life.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~KEVIN RICHARDSON~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

John Norris: We've been talking to each of the guys about their particular segment in the "Show Me The Meaning Of Being Lonely" video, and I knew you had lost your dad, but I really didn't know a lot of the circumstances around it until I read more of what went into the video. Can you talk about your decision to include the home movies in the video, and how tough a thing that was for you?

Kevin Richardson: My part of the song, "Life goes on..." whenever I sing that part, it just makes me remember how, when my father passed away, how I wanted everybody to stop what they were doing and recognize it and realize it kind of stops, but life goes on. I think that's a realization that I had back then. It's like, when my father died, it made me realize, "Life goes on." Life keeps going with or without you. So I really wanted to include him in the video, or at least the story. I mean, I had some home video footage that I thought about using, but I was like, You know what? I don't want to see [my father] on MTV. But I wanted to include that, and that's just me in a hotel, just reminiscing about me and my dad and watching all the old home movies.

MTV: How old were you?

Kevin: I was 19 when he passed away. It was nine years ago. I was living in Florida, and I got a phone call from my mom that my dad wasn't doing too good. He had had an operation before that, but they didn't want to worry me. They didn't tell me it was cancer. They just said he had a problem with his colon and with his intestine, and they had to take a polyp out or whatever, but they didn't tell me it was cancerous, because they didn't want to freak me out. So she had told me that it was cancerous, and he had been going to chemotherapy. And I was just like, Oh, God. So I moved back home and within about a month or two, he passed away.

MTV: Wasn't he the one who really encouraged you to go to Florida in the first place?

Kevin: Yeah.

MTV: Was there any one point where you decided that you wanted to become a performer? Was there any performer or record that inspired you?

Kevin: When I was 9 years old, we moved to this camp, and there was a piano in like the mess hall where they had, like, activities and stuff, like Ping-Pong tables and stuff like that. It was the first time I ever had access, any time I wanted to, with a musical instrument. So I used to just go down there and tinker around on [the piano] every now and then. And I started picking music out that I was hearing on the radio. My dad was walking by the mess hall one day, and he's like -- he used to tell his friends this -- "I heard the prettiest sound coming out of the mess hall. I was like, 'Who is in there?'" And he was like, "I opened the door, and it was my son on the piano." A good memory of my dad.

But yeah, I just started tinkering around on the piano by ear. I can't read music. I wish I had [learned]. I took some piano lessons, but when I took piano lessons... I mean, she had me playing "Mary Had A Little Lamb," and I'm reading it when I could already play "Jump" by Van Halen and stuff by ear. So I would just buy tapes and records. I listened to Prince all the time. When I was a little kid, when I was like five or six years old, I listened to my mom and dad's Ike and Tina Turner records and the "Saturday Night Fever" soundtrack. I would just lay in the living room with the headphones on and just lay there and listen to it. So music, it's like I've just been trying to follow my heart, and it's just like music is always going to be a part of my life, no matter what I do.

MTV: You mentioned the line, "Life goes on...," and it does, but in different ways. Brian seems to have gone through a reevaluation of what's important as a result of his surgery and the way that management treated it and the way that he had to get back out on the road and this and that. Can you talk about that a bit? Have all you guys reevaluated what's important?

Kevin: I mean, when Brian went through that, it made me reevaluate definitely, because I'm a work-aholic perfectionist, and sometimes it gets out of control. And at this point, right before Brian went in to the hospital, you know, we already had a tour. We've got a tour booked, and we've got to do the tour. And if our management would have planned with us instead of planning by themselves, we wouldn't have been in this situation. If it would have been a team effort, if we would have all planned together, Brian wouldn't have had to move his surgery twice. But he did, and that's sad. An open heart surgery that has to be moved twice? I mean, that's ridiculous.

Here I was: "Well, we got this deadline over here, and release this single, and we got to shoot this video, and we got this tour booked, and we can't postpone it, because if we postpone it, we're gonna lose momentum. We're trying to break it to the U.S., etc., etc." And when I saw him after he got operated on, walking down the hallway with a friggin' IV hooked up to him, that opened my eyes. Yeah. It made me realize what's important. And if you don't have your health, and your family and your happiness, your career don't mean sh**.

MTV: And Howie was saying, with his sister, he actually had to ask himself whether he should have left the road and phoned home and seen her.

Kevin: Isn't that weird?

MTV: Yeah, it's pretty messed up when the priorities are like that.

Kevin: Exactly.

MTV: It seems like, and success certainly adds to this, you are able to call the shots now as far as how you approach things.

Kevin: Well, we want to have a balance, you know. We don't want to end up on "Storytellers," all screwed up in 15, 20 years. We want to be in this business for a long time. We want to be writers, producers, label owners, whatever. We've learned a lot, and we want to be healthy and happy, and you have to have a balance.

*~*~Backstreet Boys: The Next Level~*~*
(Interview made 2.1.01)

What else can you say? It's the Backstreet Boys, for cryin' out loud, and the scintillating fivesome from down Florida way -- that's Kevin, Howie, Brian, A.J., and young Nick (as if you didn't know) -- is currently in the midst of a U.S. tour that's seeing the group performing in the round and getting closer to fans than ever.

While the guys love performing live, that's not the only thing on their minds right now. In addition to a heap of Grammy nominations on their shiny, platinum-covered plates, they also have some tremendous plans for the future, which they shared with MTV News' very own John Norris when he caught up with the group before a show in Buffalo, New York.

In addition to spilling the Earth-shaking news that both Kevin and Brian are engaged to be married (see "Two Backstreet Boys Ready Wedding Bells"), the guys also waxed candidly about their plans for their next album -- the first for its glossy new multimillion dollar contract with Jive Records -- as well as their thoughts about their newly minted labelmates 'NSYNC (see "Backstreet Boys Address 'NSYNC's Shadow"), the pop-ification of the Grammy Awards, and how, when the tour is over, they're all going to hole themselves up in some remote location and develop their plans for taking BSB to the next level.

The Boys also gave Norris the rare privilege of sitting down with each of them to go one-on-one for five very provocative Q&A sessions, the results of which you can find in RealVideo within these pages.

Step lively, now... they're waiting for you.

John Norris: All right. I have a date I'm going to lay out on you: March 21. Does that mean anything to any of you... other than being my birthday. Which it is, I'm not kidding.

Kevin Richardson: Didn't we sign our record deal on a March 21?

MTV: Actually, what I was getting at is, Jive Records is gonna drop an album called "No Strings Attached" on March 21. I was wondering, is this an album that you guys are gonna even pay much attention to, as far as how it does the first couple of weeks out there? Are you curious to see whether or 'NSYNC waited too long, or did you not even give it a thought?

Howie Dorough: I think, of course, it's human nature. We're gonna obviously want to know how it's doing.

Brian Littrell: Some of us want to know. Some of us don't.

A.J. McLean: I think ['NSYNC is] going through the same stuff we've finally broken the chains out of now, so I wish them the best of luck. [RealVideo]

KR: God bless them.

AJM: We've been through [contract problems] and I tell you what: It sucks. But now it's finally the way we want it to be, so I wish them the best of luck with everything.

HD: Now it's all out in the open. Everybody knows everything. It's like, we're two successful groups now. It's about making good music. Whoever comes with the good music is there at the finish line.

MTV: You don't really get any bigger in terms of music business than you guys are at right now, if you want to start measuring it in tens of millions of records sold. But after a certain point, I would think that what you're going for and what is important to you shifts and changes. As you look toward the next record and tour cycle, are the priorities different, would you say?

BL: It would have to change, or everything gets old... you keep doing the same thing. It all coincides. We go right back in the studio after this tour [to] create another record that we are proud of, that nobody else would have an opportunity to listen to. We'll live with it for a couple of months, [then] issue it to the record label, see how they feel about it. Start picking singles, start the plan, start the whole thing, and then we'll reinvent ourselves tour-wise.

We don't want to give everything away as of yet, but we've got a lot of new ideas in introducing the new album [on a] group basis as well as individual. The tour -- we've got a lot of exciting things that we've yet to do that we wanna show people that we can do. [RealVideo]

MTV: Do you expect that there is going to be more contribution on the part of everyone in terms of songwriting in the next record?

BL: Definitely, definitely.

Nick Carter: That's the next step.

MTV: I think that it was A.J. who told me that you are hoping to involve [Ricky Martin collaborator] Desmond Child, possibly, in the album?

AJM: We were. That would be a cool thing, 'cause I know that Nick had been talking about it, and Nick had played a couple of tracks for us, and I never even knew who Desmond Child was. Nick had to explain the whole roster. That would be cool, to bring kind of a rock edge, or kinda something a little bit different. I mean, we're always looking for new ideas, but we don't ever want to just 360 and totally change our whole thing, because we have a great formula that is the Backstreet Boys sound. We're definitely gonna use the Max Martin and the Cheiron family again, but we definitely want to dabble into different producers on this. I know Kevin was talking about, and hopes to work with, like [Janet Jackson producers] Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis and people like that. I mean, nothing's confirmed yet, but...

BL: Lionel Richie. Who knows?

AJM: Lionel Richie. It would be great.

NC: I think all of these ideas...

KR: Are just ideas right now.

NC: They're ideas. Of course, just to let everyone out there know that we're gonna stick [to] the way we are. We're not really gonna go off any different way because, as everyone knows, that could sometimes be the downfall of groups and stuff like that, by trying to experiment too much. Then all of a sudden you come out with something that... nobody really knows who the heck you are.

BL: But out of five different people, we have a common love for the music that you've heard from day one. That'll continue, obviously.

MTV: Talk about folks like the Cheiron family and Max Martin. I mean, do you feel that their talents are spread somewhat thin these days between you guys, Britney, 'NSYNC, and others?

KR: Ace of Base is where [late Cheiron producer] Denniz [Pop] really started off and got a worldwide [hit]. I mean, that album, the first Ace of Base album, was incredible. Then we started working with him and it's like, in the business, when somebody's hot, everybody wants to run over there and jump on that.

It's kinda frustrating, because it was like, something we discovered and we created and we helped. Max [Martin] is a great writer and a great artist and a great producer, and we love him to death, and we love our relationship with him, and I think we're gonna continue to work with him a little bit. But at the same time, we have the luxury of having adequate time to put together a great album, work with some people we've been wanting to work with for a long time, and we're just gonna take it slowly and put together a great album that we're proud of.

AJM: This would be a great opportunity for us to kind of, in a way, reestablish our individuality as the Backstreet Boys -- just kind of be on our own again and be just the Backstreet Boys again and not, you know, fall into, "Okay, well, that sounds like the Backstreet Boys record." [We'll] just reestablish ourselves again, and I think that'll really come into play, especially if we become more involved as writers and as producers, because nobody can copy something that's only you.

NC: What you mean, probably, is just coming out and just recreating every time, kinda like Madonna did. I guess that's how you stay on top. You gotta just keep recreating while the people are growing with you, that it's something new and something that's catchy to their ears, and it's something that they're going to enjoy listening to. Our jobs as entertainers and as recording artists is to make music for everyone out there, that they will enjoy.

BL: For the first time, we are, as a group, we're planning on taking a trip. Just us five, and nobody else. The destination is unknown yet, but what we're gonna do basically is just lock ourselves in a house with a studio where we can relax and where we can really feed off of one another and start from scratch. I mean, this is starting with nothing, with an engineer who can run one board, and another engineer can run another board. We could have two simultaneous studios going on, but relaxing and enjoying each other, because we've spent some of the best years of our lives together. So now all those experiences can come out through the next album, and who knows what will come out?

KR: Just go, "Pow!" That's what comes out.

NC: Basically.

MTV: The Grammys this year -- the nominations really seem to recognize pop music in a way that they haven't before. Not only you guys, but also Ricky Martin is well represented; Britney and Christina have Best New Artist nominations. Do you feel like there's been a change in the way that the Grammys view pop music?

HD: I think so. We were nominated for one award last year. This year we're up for four; to five now, including the song from Max and them. Ricky Martin actually performed last year, and I think it almost broke the boundaries down of what the music styles can be. I think pop is really coming back, especially this year, really strong. To see them actually nominating a lot of these pop acts, it's now being the trend for this year: pop music. I think people are finally starting to recognize that pop -- especially young people -- it doesn't have to be bubble gum popcorn-y sounds.

BL: I hope they don't categorize us and put us up there just because that was like the flavor of the year or something like that. I hope it's because of the music rather than, "That's the trend and let's go with it." I hope it's not that way. I'm hoping that it's respectfully done. It's the Grammys, so we'll keep our fingers crossed. We hope it's good. [RealVideo]

MTV: With some of you guys, when I talked to you individually, we talked about some of the business things of the last year and a half. A lot of it has been about control and taking control of your own situation and being with people you can trust. Would you say that, for the most part, it's been about financial business and control?

KR: Both, I think. Mostly for us, it was about morally what was right in a contract, and it was about things that were revealed to us that were one way when we were told it was another way, and it was about honesty and truth. It just so happened to be that honesty and truth was about a lot of money, but it also had to do with control as well, and in that making a balance. I mean, [we can] control that we can say, "You know what? We need to take a break so Brian could have heart surgery," or "We need to take a break so we can be mentally and physically healthy." Things like that. [RealVideo]

MTV: Thanks so much for doing this. It's always good to see you, and best of luck. Hopefully I'll catch up with you some time throughout the year.

KR: Oh, we're done?

*~*~Backstreet Boys: Back in Black & Blue~*~*
(Interview made on 12.8.00)

Somewhere in the 796,320-odd minutes that passed between the release of the Backstreet Boys' Millennium and the just-issued Black & Blue, the group went through a lot of changes.

The lineup hasn't been altered a bit, of course, and there's been a wealth of personal growth among the guys new business and artistic ventures and walks down the wedding aisle. No, these changes won't be apparent 'til you check out the new album for yourself.

MTVi News' Brian Hiatt and Robert Mancini had the good fortune to chat with A.J. McLean about those changes, such as the guys writing their own songs and pumping up the tempo and increasing the funk. All-around forays into uncharted BSB musical territory, like songs that have "a Latin/urban feel with this drill march behind it" oh, you'll just have to hear A.J. explain it himself.

So pull up a chair and let Mr. McLean guide you through Black & Blue, from the guys' first baby steps into songwriting to choosing the album title to speculation about which track will be the next single. Enjoy.

MTVi News: You've introduced Black & Blue with "Shape of My Heart," which is doing incredibly well. Did you consider releasing something more up-tempo initially, or was there a conscious decision to go with something slower?

A.J. McLean: [When] we released our very first single, "We Got It Going On," back in 1995 in the U.S., it only peaked at the charts at #69. Granted, the whole music scene then was all grunge, hip-hop, gangsta rap and stuff like that, so we kind of got thrown into a frying pan and got French fried, basically. So [for Backstreet Boys] we went with "Quit Playing Games (With My Heart)" [as the first single]. When we came out with our last album, Millennium, we did "I Want It That Way" first.

["Shape of My Heart"] is a good bridge for us to go into the next album, Black & Blue. It's the Backstreet Boys motif that seems to work, which is coming out with a mid-tempo that's radio-friendly. It's very highly commercial. It can cover more than just pop radio; it can also cover AC [adult-contemporary] radio, sometimes even country radio, and once in a great while, maybe even urban radio. We had talked about releasing a up-tempo just to come out of the starting gate just totally blow everyone away with a great up-tempo song for the end of the summer, for all the kids going back to school but we had a pretty good record with the whole mid-tempo [vibe]. I think it was our best choice off our new album.

MTV: The single is definitely more adult sounding, at least in terms of the vibe of it. What were your goals for the album this time around?

A.J.: Well, we definitely wanted to have growth and kind of grow with our fans and grow with the music scene, and not stay so much in that "bubblegum pop" realm that people have kind of put us in. We didn't want to go too far and pull a complete 360 and go alternative or go totally off the deep end.

I think this album definitely shows a step up from Millennium and two or three steps up from Backstreet Boys, just by the musical content, some of the lyrical content, and some of the ideas behind some of the songs. Every song on the album doesn't sound like the next one. Each track kind of has its own identity, which is also a very unique quality about this record. I think that with this record, our fans, who have been with us since the first record which are now as old as us want to hear something a little bit more mature, in a sense. And it's also given us something to show our fans' moms and dads, that they can have something to listen to as well.


MTV: But there are strong dance songs on the album, too.

A.J.: Oh yeah, sure. There are actually more up-tempos on this record than have been on any of our other records in the past, whether it was Backstreet Boys, Millennium, or our first European album.

MTV: What's really new on the album? What will surprise people?

A.J.: I think the main thing that's going to surprise our fans, especially, and the people in the media and, hopefully, other artists is the fact that we wrote seven songs on this album, two of which were written by all five of us, as a group. "Time" and "The Answer to Our Life" were both written in the Bahamas when we took our writing trip together. I wrote a track on the album called "Yes I Will" which is a little bit more R&B, more like an old-school R. Kelly kind of jam. Howie [Dorough] wrote two songs on the album: "What Makes You Different Makes You Beautiful" and "How Did I Fall In Love With You." And then the rest of the guys kind of co-wrote on a couple of other songs that we did with Max Martin and Rodney Jerkins and Babyface.

I think the fact that the songs on this record, especially two of the up-tempos, are not your typical party, 'get up and dance' club songs. They actually have plots behind them and musically, they're definitely different. They're not like anything anyone has ever heard, or heard from us especially. One has a great potential to be the follow-up single is "The Call," is one of my favorites. It's got a Latin/urban feel with this drill march behind it, and this real ambient, in-your-face kind of vibe. It's basically talking about cheating, whether it's a guy cheating on his girlfriend or a girlfriend cheating on her boyfriend. It's stuff that happens every day. It kind of discusses trust and honesty in a relationship. It's not like your typical love song, which is 'Hey, I did you wrong, but now I love you and we're back together again' and all that crap that people put in songs, but granted, it does work because everyone wants to hear a good, quality love song.

MTV: But "The Call" is a little more real, a little grittier.

A.J.: Yeah. This is an up-tempo love song with some cajones, which is really different, I think.


MTV: A few months back when you were writing the album, you had said there might be a bit more rock and hip-hop and maybe even country influences. Did that end up turning out?

A.J.: There was kind of a rock/hip-hop jam that me and Nick [Carter] wrote in the Bahamas that we are going to save for a soundtrack, or possibly even save it and bring it back to life when we do the next album. There is definitely an acoustic, Savage Garden kind of vibe on the album; there's a little bit of a straight-up hip-hop, straight-up R&B. There's a couple of dance records, a couple of adult contemporary records, one that could be potentially sounding a little bit country. This is the most diverse album we've ever done. I think we'll definitely cover a lot more ground, because your heavy R&B fans will love "Shining Star" and "Yes I Will," and the typical dance music-type fans will like "The Call" and "Get Another Boyfriend" and "Not for Me." We have a song on the album about our fans called "Everyone"; it's like the second coming of "Larger Than Life."

I'm very happy with this record, and I think this is our best work yet. But it'll all come down to the 21st of November to see what everybody likes. It's kind of nerve-racking, but we'll see what happens with it. Trying to follow up Millennium is going to be tough.

MTV: Why did you choose Black & Blue as the title?

A.J.: Well, it's kind of a funny short story. We were in a photo shoot still trying to pick what we were going to call the album. We went through everything from Frozen Air to Deliverance, which was an idea that Fred Durst told me when I was hanging out with him in L.A. He's like, "A.J. I got this great idea, why don't you call it BSB: Deliverance." And I thought it was cool, but I was like "You know, I got to ask the rest of the fellas first."

So we were standing on the photo shoot set, and we were standing on a blue background, all wearing black, and Brian [Littrell] just turned to us and said, "Fellas, what if we called the album Black & Blue?" We all looked at him like he was on crack. We were like, "Dude, Black & Blue? What the heck? That's kind of boring." And he's like, "Think about it. Black & Blue - the first thing you think about is being beat up."

Honestly, the media has tried to bring us down numerous times. Even other artists have made fun of us or dissed us in their songs, made fun of us in their videos. It's kind of like, we've been taking all of these punches here and there. We're still here standing strong, because all that we care about, really, is putting out good, quality music for our fans, and it's always going to be like that. There's always going to be that rock and roll journalist that's going to do an interview with a pop band and is going to trash you, or there's going to be the Blink-182s that do a video based on making fun of groups like us. It's going to happen, and we can take the punches and keep on going and not even worry about it, which is kind of what we're doing. We've stuck together as a group and as a team and as a family. We've taken these blows and just kept on coming.

MTV: And there's no picture of the band on the album cover.

A.J.: There is a picture of us on the back of the album. It's a very strong picture. It's very "Reservoir Dogs"-ish, kind of apocalyptic, end-of-the-world. It's definitely something that I think has got a meaning, like the Beatles' [self-titled] "White Album" or Metallica's [self-titled] "Black Album." We don't want anyone to take [the title] negatively, like we're a bunch of wusses and we've been getting our asses kicked, 'cause that's not the case. It's kind of like a subliminal message, basically pointing fingers back at people that were trying to bring us down.