60 Songs That Explain the '90s - Backstreet Boys—“I Want It That Way”

Episode Date: December 17, 2020

Rob explores one of the greatest boy band songs of all time, “I Want It That Way” by the Backstreet Boys, by discussing the nonsensical yet sonically pleasing lyricism and the perception of boy bands in larger cultural criticism. This episode was originally produced as a Music and Talk show available exclusively on Spotify. Find the full song on Spotify or wherever you get your music. Host: Rob Harvilla Guest: Maria Sherman Producers: Isaac Lee and Justin Sayles Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You're listening to a music and talk episode where full songs and talk segments play together only on Spotify. Best of all, you can create your own music and talk show for free with Anchor Spotify's podcasting platform. Get started at anchor.fm-fm-f-M-C-H-O-R-F-M-U-S-I-S-I-S-M-U-S-I-S-E-L-K. A lot of spelling there, but just do it. Many fine songs. make any sense? Are those songs better than songs that do make sense? Is language just a construct?

Is coherence just a burden? Are the best songs post language? Can songs be math? Can math be pop? Can math be art? Can math as art be sexy? Not sexy, but you know, suggestive. Too many questions. I apologize. I withdraw those questions. I have just one question, which is, tell me why what? Tell me why what? To what does the why refer? I never want to hear you say that I want it that way. Who is the I in I want it that way? Is it me or is it you? What is the nature of that way? To what way does that way refer? How does a song that starts off by rhyming fire and desire descend so quickly into semantic chaos? And why do we find that chaos so purifying, so edifying, so satisfying? What makes I want it that way by the Backstreet Boys math and pop and art

and inarguably the single greatest boy band song ever born? The what is actually maybe a where. It's Sweden. But really, it's a who. It's Max Martin. I want it that way. Believe when I say, not believe me when I say, that would throw off the meter. That would imbalance the equation.

That would fuck up the math. My name is Rob Harvilla. I'm a music critic at the Ringer, and this is 60 songs that explain the 90s. Today we find ourselves in the spring of 1999. The sun is shining. Y2K looms. We're all partying like it's the year. It actually is. And we're all basking in the baffling and dazzling sunlight. I want it that way. It was written by Max Martin and Andreas Carlson, produced by Max Martin and Christian London, and performed by the Backstreet Boys as the lead single

to their Blockbuster album, Millennium. What a time to be alive. What a time to be alive and working in the music industry. We got like a half year to go at this point, but I submit to you that I want it that way functions as the end credits of the 90s. And maybe not the end credits of the music industry, but the beginning of the end credits. The beginning of the end, Napster is looming also. This song is the last, or if you're an in sync fan, the second to last, good time. A lot of people involved are ever going to have. So please, enjoy yourselves.

Can't reach to your heart when you say that I want it. That way? All right, it has long been established that this song don't make no sense, but I'd like to explore why that actually makes the song better. To do this, I'd like to backburner the Backstreet Boys themselves for a little while. I mean no disrespect. Don't at me, as the kids used to say. My guest today, we'll be talking to her later, is Maria Sherman, who wrote a really wonderful book about boy bands called As It Happens, Larger Than Life. And together we will delve into the backstreet of it all. For now, suffice to say the backstreet boys. Formed in Orlando in 1993, Nick Carter, the cute one, Howie D, the shy one, Brian Latrell, the goofy one, A.J. McLean,

the bad boy, and Kevin Richardson, the medium-cool older brother. They were brought together by arch-supervillain manager Lou Pearlman, who I would prefer to backburner entirely, if it's all the same to you. According to Maria's book, Lou was contractually the sixth Backstreet Boy and the sixth member of Insink, the rival Blockbuster Boy Band, he convened, once the Backstreet Boys started to rebel against him. He got paid like a sixth member in any event. He ripped both groups off on a galactic scale and possibly ripped off everyone he ever worked with. He was also dogged by rumors of inappropriate behavior, unwanted sexual advances towards some of his artists. A 2007 Vanity Fair Exposé alleged that Nick Carter's

mother openly referred to Lou as a sexual predator. There's a movie about him called The Boy Band Con, The Lou Pearlman story. There's a book about him called The Hitch Chirade, Lou Perlman, Boy Bands, and the biggest Ponzi scheme in U.S. history. In 2008, that Ponzi scheme landed Lou in prison, where he died in 2016. That's plenty of Lou. The Backstreet Boys first hit it big in Europe, as one does. Their official debut album in the United States 1997's Backstreet Boys feature songs from their first two

official albums abroad, including the hit single, Everybody Back Streets Back. Hit it, boys. Who, back from where? You may have asked yourself at the time, that confusion was good practice. That song was co-written and co-produced by a Swedish pop music guru named

Dennis Pop, Deniz with a Z, and his young protege Max Martin. Max Martin was born Carl Martin Sandberg in Stockholm in 1971. In the mid-80s, under the name Martin White, he fronted a glam metal band called It's Alive. No exclamation point. And it's alive, which is a shame. Here now is our hero delivering the chorus to a 1993 song called Sing These Blues. Lyrically, that's a little too linear for my tastes, but I trust that those guys knew their target audience. As a frontman, Martin's signature move

appeared to be like, think the prayer hands emoji over the mouth, the fingertips resting on the lips. It's a very brooding, contemplative, sexy gesture, sexy adjacent. Best case scenario here is Jeff Buckley, if Jeff had been a little more metal, and if he'd lost an octave or two of vocal range, or Alice in Chains, if they were quite a bit less metal. It's alive, not a global success, but soon, then is pop.

co-founder of Shayron Studios in Stockholm, home of many of the country's finest songwriters and producers, would take young Max under his wing. And together, they lend their talents to the bridge, the second album from Ace of Bass. Gargantuan Swedish hitmakers, crudely speaking, the Abba of the 90s, nothing crude about Ace of Bass themselves, mind you. This tune is called Beautiful Life. Dennis Pop, who'd already co-produced even bigger Ace of Bass songs, including The Sign, died of stomach cancer in 1998.

He's clearly a beloved figure in this universe as a musician and as a human. When Max Martin won the Polar Music Prize in 2016, it's a Swedish royalty thing. Max praised Dennis, saying, he made me realize how difficult it is to make things sound simple. Max added that the two secrets to write

the perfect pop song in no particular order were love, meaning his life, and to steal from the, best, meaning primarily Prince, Kiss, and Abba. In 1998, in the wake of Dennis Pop's death, Max took the reins at Shayron Studios, and later that year, as the writer and co-producer, he helped redefine what the term global success even means. Brittany Spear is historically a little more suggestive. So here is where the late 90s teen pop supernova begins in earnest, with Britney's baby one more time, also the title of her 1999 debut album that sells 25 million copies worldwide,

which is just a flabbergasting number. I can never get tired of trying to explain to you young people how one CD used to cost like $18. This is some pre-industrial revolution shit. You don't understand. At this point, the music industry is in its colligula phase, whatever that means to you. This is the absolute peak. This is the cliff. This is the hot rod driving off the cliff.

In 2009, the journalist Steve Knopper published a book quite instructively titled, Appetite for Self-Destruction, The Spectacular Crash of the Music Industry in the Digital Age. And he wrote, Teen Pop was one last squeeze of the sponge to get the world to spend millions and millions of dollars on compact discs. So in 1999, you get Baby one more time. And later that year, you get Backstreet Boys Millennium, which sold 1.1 million copies in the first week in the United States, alone, a new record that stood until 2000. When Insinks No Strings Attached, featuring the Max Martin co-write, It's Gonna Be Me, sold 2.4 million copies in its first week.

In the United States alone, a record that stood for 15 years until Adele broke it. Later in 2000, Brittany's second album, Oops I Did It Again. The title track Very Much of Max Martin Joint sold 1.3 million stateside in its first week. And then the collapse. Napster. etc. In 1999, total revenue from U.S. music sales and licensing was $14.6 billion. In 2009, it was $6.3 billion. I still have trouble feeling bad about this.

Feeling bad for the music industry. I bought a whole bunch of $18 CDs for one song in my time, and I have to confess to you, Millennium by the Backstreet Boys, it's a bad album. I'm sorry. The first three songs are larger than life. I want it that way and show me the meaning of being lonely. That's fantastic. The last three songs are Spanish eyes. Yikes. No one else comes

close. And the perfect fan, which Brian LaTrell co-wrote and dedicated to his mother. That's another kind of Ponzi scheme. The way Steve Knopper put it in his book was, the least frustrating way to obtain I Want It That Way in 1999 or 2000 was to download it for free illegally. But that's all boring math. What made I want it that way so desirable in the first place? Max Martin would suggest it's melodic math, meaning when you're writing a song, the melody comes first always. And the lyrics, the words themselves, support that melody. That's it. If they make sense these words, then great, fabulous. If they don't make sense, it's fine. Protect the melody. The words don't matter. The syllables matter. The precise number of syllables, the precision with which the number of syllables

in one line mirrors the precise number of syllables in the previous line. Balance the equation. Hit it, Kevin. Turn your brain off or the language part of your brain off and just enjoy this for what it is. Just a gorgeous, luscious, sexy adjacent, absolutely first-rate collection of syllables as sung by your medium-cool older brother. This is sincere praise. This isn't condescension. This isn't a neg. Max Martin would play a crucial role in rebuilding the music business in the early 2000s and beyond. And this is how he would do it, one melody, one syllable, one smash hit at a time. He helped teach us how to hear pop music as math, as art, as math, as art. You know, it's actually fascinating. Music critics have a whole philosophy built around how pop music is just as worthy of praise and respect and debate as any other kind of music,

and I'd love to tell you all about it. That philosophy is called B. I'm just kidding. I'm not going to talk about at all. We don't have time to just list Max Martin songs. It's a ridiculous list. It's excessive. Kelly Clarkson, Taylor Swift, Katie Perry, the weekend, pink, maroon five, sure, on and on and on.

For whatever reason, when it comes to fully grasping and appreciating the idea of melodic math, one of the Max Martin collaborations where I flatter myself that I can hear it most clearly is Taylor Swift's, we are never, ever getting back together. Not my favorite Taylor song, necessarily.

Actually, it is my favorite Taylor song. And even if she's repeating the same lines, the chorus might still leave you counting syllables in your head. And it's striking how beautiful that visual is, how freeing it is to physically hear words, turning into numbers. And suddenly it's secondary, just how petty Taylor Swift is being,

and to whom? Syllables. You can get to feeling a little like Zach Gallifanakis playing Blackjack in the hangover, like the equations start appearing. in the air? Only two writers, Max and Taylor, and two producers, Max and Shelback on that tune, which is generally on the low end for him. A Max Martin joint is never a Max Martin solo joint. Often there's a half dozen other writers and producers in the mix. The sheer number of people

involved gives you some idea of how difficult it is to make things sound simple. Even if you're a devout believer in this super fascinating music critic philosophy of this takes some getting used to, that Max Martin is less a human being than the shiniest cog in an elaborate music biz machine that cranks out these luxurious equations that eventually lead to one pop star or another, purring sexy adjacent nonsense directly into your ears. At first it might feel antiseptic or inauthentic or just robbed of the intimacy of a single human singing a perfect song to another single human. But you gotta know the math to fully appreciate the art. The Backstreet Boys never quite broke up, which is quite rare in the boy band Sphere.

In 2019, their album DNA debuted at number one on the Billboard album chart, albeit in January, somewhat of a dead zone for pop. I'm pretty sure it's alive, could reunite and have a number one record in January. Nevertheless, Nick, Howie, Brian, AJ, and Kevin have stuck this out. Cruises, Vegas, package tours, including one with their 80s boy band predecessors, new kids on the block. They got plenty of hits, plenty of highlights. But really, there's only one. After DNA hit number one, the New York Times pop cast, which in the unlikely event you're unfamiliar, I heartily recommend,

devoted an episode to the Backstreet Boys and the boy band State of Play. Maria Sherman was a guest, actually. And that's the first time I heard the original I wanted that way, with the dreaded alternate lyrics. This version is still floating around the internet and solves the tell me why problem by eliminating the tell me why is entirely. That makes way more sense, much more consistent, but it's awful. Isn't it awful?

It's like watching the five cutest boys you've ever seen in your life fail algebra. And to think without Max Martin, we might never have known why it's so awful. How would we ever know the way that we wanted it? My guest today is Maria Sherman, author of Larger Than Life, a history of boy bands from NKOTB to BTS. Maria, thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me. This is exciting. Of course, of course.

Maria, who is your favorite Backstreet Boy and why? This should be an easy question to answer, right? When I was like a kid, so when this was actually in my life actively, I loved Brian LaTrell because they always was positioned him in the middle of a lot of group shots, which I thought, like, connoted leadership. But I realized now it's just because he was very short. And they were like, I don't know, it's like a perspective thing. And I also, uh, all of my friends liked Nick Carter and I didn't want to have to compete. So I was like, yeah, I'll do like the second place, hottie. Um, but now

it's strategic. Yeah. Um, but nowadays I love Howie. Justice for Howie. You go for the underdogs, I guess. Well, that's so true throughout the boy. bad story. If you like this music, for some reason, I think you have an affinity for that, like, extremely American reading of, like, an underdog, which is just all perception and maybe not based in reality. But he, in doing research for this book, I didn't realize that he originally auditioned to be in Minuto, which was, like, big in my household, because my mom is Puerto Rican. And then I learned that he was Puerto Rican through that. And I was like, oh, wow, representation. That's fun. In the documentary from a couple years ago, show him what

you're made of or some variation of that. I just found him to be like so sweet and kind of tragic in a way that I'm very endeared to. What is the tragedy of Brian? Oh, I was speaking of Howie. Oh, I'm sorry, sorry. But Brian has his own tragedies. I think like of the Backstreet Boys versus NSYNC debate, Backstreet Boys are hella emo and NSYNC was like for people who enjoyed their adolescence. That's my reading of it. Well, I was going to ask and that's a very succinct way to separate them. Yeah. I go for Kevin myself.

Like, people told me for years that I seemed like a dad way before I actually had kids. And I feel, I feel like that's Kevin's energy. You know, I was drawn to that. Of course. I, I, I had a Kevin phase as well. But then, like, when NSYNC came out, I was like, oh, Kevin is just, like, bootleg JC is the true hottie, which is, like, very perverse. But, yeah, those are really complicated than I thought it was going to be.

But, okay. I apologize. Oh, no, that's all right. What do the Backstreet Boys bring to I Want It That Way? Does Max Martin get too much credit for the majesty of this song? This is also a complicated question for me, because I think there is certainly something interesting about Max Martin. And I think as like an American music critic,

I've learned that a lot of the ways we value music as like authentic or good is based on songwriting. We like to think that the musician singing the songwriting, playing the song or moating or whatever, or doing so because they wrote it and it like came from their heart. And obviously you can't do that with a lot of pop music. And with boy bands especially, I think it's kind of viewed as especially formulaic. And that's why we like to focus on Max Martin, the sort of secret genius behind the scenes, which I really think it mostly speaks to just how Swedish he is. Because there's like, what is the term? Yon to Loggin. That came out of nowhere. Have you heard of this? There's this thing,

there's this cultural idea in Sweden, and I think it exists in Scandinavian countries at large, at least in Finland, I know it does. And I've learned this from like punk and metal bands, not pop bands, but Yon's Taloggan is this idea where there's a dismissal of like personal celebrity. So the mythos isn't so much constructed as it is like,

just get out of my face. I want to have like my happy winters and whatever they do, whatever it is what they do in Sweden. No idea, yeah. But as Americans, we're like, that's so fascinating. Who's this like secret man who kind of looks like, Jesus writing all of these pop songs for these like Floridian children.

That said, at the time, and this is like Cheron Studios, we're in Stockholm, Sweden. It's 1998. Max Martin is mostly known for just doing baby one more time, but like Ace of Basin Robin and some British boy bands that don't really have any foothold in America. So the fact that he was able to like write this song for the Backstreet Boys and they were able to deliver on it, I think speaks volumes because he kind of finally used his magic or math or whatever. And we'll get into that.

Sure. With a group of male vocalists, which I think the Backstreet Boys had to be the boys to deliver on that. I also think in this song in particular, you can kind of hear their slight unique focal tonalities with many boy bands. And you can disagree because I think you are.

I can tell them apart sort of immediately. And I can't always do that with boy band songs. And that might also be because I love Backstreet Boys. But for me, I can hear their the differences in their voices in a way that really works on this song as opposed to other boy bands where unless you're studied in them, I think it's a little bit more challenging. I mean, like, AJ and Nick Carter are like light years away in my mind. I was going to ask, like, just on a basic level, what separates the Backstreet Boys from

in sync? Like, what is the philosophical and artistic divide there? This one is actually not so complicated. I think the Backstreet Boys, like, even in the song, they sort of stayed in their mid-tempo ballad Lane. They were just very moody all of the time. Emo, yes. Yeah, I think even their like oversized pants hung lower than N-Sync. It was just very much like, like poor postured pop music, whereas N-Sink was like way more active. And obviously Backshu Boys danced and they danced well, but like nowhere near as well as N-Sink, which is why I think

K-pop mimics more of the N-Sink trajectory than Backshu Boys, which also makes sense because N-Sink sold more records. I'll also say that in this song in particular, the fact that the Backstreet Boys were able to make a song that doesn't make any sense believable, that's a unique talent. It is. And it may be like the result of a Disney world education, but like it's really, it's very impressive. It's a skill set. It's an entirely different skill set. Because yeah, because it occurs to me that the whole melodic math thing is just a great way to make really stupid lyrics sound profound. It's like, no, no, you got to count the syllables. You. You're You know, is it all just a ruse?

I think so. But, you know, it's such a ridiculous idea, but I also think, like, certainly Max Martin didn't coin this. I think, like, popularize the idea that, like, you have to hit the chorus before a minute into the song or whatever or, like, yeah, the syllable thing where it has to mirror one another. I think naturally, even as a listener, I don't have any training in this, but I can tell when a song feels like it's not satisfying something.

And it's like, oh, it's because something feels embarrassing. imbalanced or whatever. Yeah, I'm kind of of the mindset where it's certainly a stupid, but whatever. I mean, he also said that, like, Lord's Greenlight was ineffective songwriting or something like that. Yeah, it adhered to his system. And I'm like, that's a great pop song, dude. I'm sorry.

I don't think so. Yeah, I'm with you there. So here's a thought experiment. What if in sync had song I want it that way? Like, same song, same lyrics. Is that sacrilegious to even contemplate? Yeah. That's fine.

I mean, I just, I don't think that they would do it. I think that like, even though in the chorus where they do like, I want it that way three times. And then I think it's the third Y where like Nick Carter goes, whyee. And it's like he pronounces Y weird. I think that's very proto. It's going to be May instead of it's going to be mean and sync trajectory. And it's hard for me to like even fathom how N-Sync would do it because I do think that they learned a lot from the backstreet boys and sort of improved upon the model, but no, this is a backstreet boys household.

Absolutely. I absolutely respect that. Was it immediately obvious to everyone that I wanted that way was possibly the greatest boy band song ever? Like, are you at all surprised at how revered this song is 20 years later? I'm not surprised because I find that when people get older, they, like, lose some of their hangups of adolescent embarrassment, or at least boy band fans have expressed that sentiment. to me, which is nice. And also, just by virtue of the fact that I hear this song at the grocery

store and, like, at karaoke bars and wedding receptions and all over the place, that doesn't surprise me because you want pop songs from your youth to reappear. And this is a massive pop song, not of youth, but of any time period. But when it first came out, it was obviously adored by the fans, because this is, like, the record that really did it for them. Critically, it's funny because I think that, like, there was this weird language. And this exists a lot in the boy band story where critics are like, it's a good pop song, but I need to be dismissive of it in some way. Yeah. There's the entertainment weekly quote where the guy said it was like the sonic equivalent of warm milk, which feels like, which it's kind of a gross idea,

but then I'm also like warm milk. That's a comforting thing before bedtime and folklore or something. That doesn't seem like a horrible thing to be, though it is unbearably white. Yeah. You talk a lot in your book about critics dismissing teen pop and really, dismissing teenage girls. Like you write at one point that boy band fans are often described as ceaselessly aroused toxic creatures from the Black Lagoon, which is one of my favorite moments in the whole book. Is it progress at least that I want it that way? Has this sort of universal critical acclaim? Like, do boy bands at least get a little more respect now? In some circles, yes, but in others, no. I thought even in writing this book, it seemed like so late in the game. Because at least in

critical spaces we've seen that like, I mean, even the horrible conversations surrounding rock optimism and all that, that there was some sort of acceptance of like maybe there is value in this music. And I always felt that like boy bands kind of got the short end of the stick there. And that struck me as like inherently misogynistic because it's like, why can we talk about Ariana Grande without sweating or without morals? And yet you're going to dismiss me if I do the same for One Direction or some other contemporary act. But I don't know. In the rest of of the world, I say I write a book about boy bands and they're like, why or they want to fight me about the Beatles being a foundational boy band. So I think yes and no. I mean, everyone listening to

this is probably smart and attractive and wonderful and they get it. I like to think so, yeah. But I think in like, I don't know, I'm not telling my cousins that because I don't have to explain why this music is valuable to them. Right. Do you remember hearing I want it that way for the first time? Like, what was going on with you at that point? I don't remember hearing it for the first time, but I have distinct memories of it, like, coming on the radio and I'm sitting behind my mom and, like, dancing around, and she's, like, grooving a little bit. And it's, like, a, maybe a foundational shared musical experience.

Because before that, we would just listen to whatever she was playing, which was way cool. It was, like, Chatea and stuff. But she also enjoyed this song, so that felt really important. And it was also the first male vocal performer of any kind that I liked, because before that I was all Brittany and Spice Girls and all that sort of stuff. And then I was like, well, guys can sing too. Interesting. One of your 10 boy band commandments, I believe it's the second commandment, is thou shalt

respect a five-year lifespan. You know, boy bands last about five years and then dissolve or somebody goes solo. Like, the Backstreet Boys are still together. Like, they had a number one album, you know, in 2019. Like, what makes them different? What accounts for that longevity, I guess? Yeah, it's really interesting because it's completely unique to them. Like even new kids on the block people bring up as a band that's kind of endured,

but they certainly took a break and there was infighting and all of that sort of stuff and identity formation that happened outside of the boy band machine. But Backstreet Boys, I think they had like a genuine bond with one another that allowed them to maintain their friendships first and foremost, and then also their like musical careers. And I think a lot of that, and this might sound like I'm really reaching and I'm certainly therapeutizing here. But I think a lot of it might have been just like a bonding

over shared collective trauma. I mean, Brian has his heart issues continuously. They're betrayed by Lou Pearlman by, like, creating these guys. And even like Kevin, who lost his father to cancer is like, I thought you were my dad. And what an intimate, horrible betrayal. They were very, like, familially connected in this musical space. And then, of course, like, AJ has his drug and alcohol abuse. And there's all these things that are kind of going against them that I think brought them

together as opposed to every other boy band in the world. which is kind of torn them apart. Mercenary, yeah. And it didn't seem like any of them really were, like, hungry for that I'm the superstar solo career. They didn't have that, like, Justin Timber, like Harry Stiles character in the group. So.

Yeah. Well, Maria, this has been wonderful. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks so much to our guest, Maria Sherman. To our producers, Justin Sales and Isaac Lee, and to you, of course, for listening. And now, in full, here's the Backstreet Boys.

with I Want It That Way.