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Over the course of seven months in 1993, Pearlman found the five members of Backstreet Boys through a series of auditions, chance meetings and familial connections (Kevin Richardson, the boy-next-door one, and Brian Littrell, the older GQ-y one, are cousins). All told, Pearlman pumped $1 million into the group and $2 million more into an entertainment-company infrastructure to support its members before they signed with Jive Records. At the time, alternative rock was still big, the New Kids were played out, and industry wisdom was that bubble gum was over. But all things must return as well as pass.
"For a while there, kids wanted to be older than they were," says David Zedeck, owner of Renaissance Entertainment in New York City, which books concert tours for both Backstreet Boys and 'N Sync. "Now," he says, "kids want to be kids again. It's the effect of Disney and Nickelodeon on the music industry."
But here's the sad part of the story: when Backstreet Boys was starting to break, Pearlman, sensing an even vaster market, formed 'N Sync. Hurt by the sudden competition, Backstreet Boys sued Pearlman as well as their personal managers (who are allied with but independent of Trans Continental). Happily, the group settled out of court with Big Poppa, and members still graciously refer to him in interviews as "the sixth Backstreet Boy."
In terms of differentiation, to one critic's eyes Backstreet is the marginally raunchier group, although this is somewhat like insisting that Homepride Buttertop is a racier bread than Wonder. In each group's stage shows, nothing more untoward is going on than the obligatory bared torsos and an occasional semi-risque hip movement. Even Elvis Presley in his prime 4 1/2 decades ago was lewder. The song titles are self-explanatory: I Just Wanna Be with You, I Need Love, I'll Never Break Your Heart. Once in a while a kid may sing that he wants to be "your lover," but it's all within the realm of I Want to Hold Your Hand. As always, the groups are selling themselves as training boyfriends--sexy, crushable, but no Usher, say, who might use a swear word now and then or want to go too far too fast, if you catch our drift.
Oh, yes. The music. In interviews, Backstreet and 'N Sync members stress the centrality of "their" music. As Pearlman says, "You have to be able to sing first or it doesn't matter how good-looking you are." The two groups share some of the same songwriters and producers, and both acts owe their most immediate debt to the somewhat more sophisticated R.-and-B. harmonizing of Boyz II Men. The hits are catchy, even compelling, but it's hard, once a girl has grown breasts, to make it through a whole album's worth; then again, to be fair, the same was true of the Jackson Five, the greatest bubble-gum group in history.