Music: Millennium

The Backstreet Boys

When a band sells 10 million albums its first time around, it ceases to be a band and becomes a franchise. Its objective turns from growth to survival. That's surely what Millennium's producers were thinking when they decided to reprise the same old boy-band routines--the synthetic arrangements, the pseudo-soul vocals. The sound draws scads of fans, but in the year since the BB's debut, half a dozen clones have flooded the market. Millennium might have seemed distinctive even, if it had taken a fraction of a chance.

--By David E. Thigpen

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