Backstreet Boys - Artistry

Artistry

The Backstreet Boys have always prided themselves as a vocal harmony group and not a boy band. In order to fight the boy band stereotype and the backlash from New Kids on the Block's lip sync scandal in the beginning, they sang a cappella at every chance they got. The ad they answered in 1993 was for a singing group with "New Kids on the Block look with a Boyz II Men sound", and they aimed to have a white version of Boyz II Men. "We were fans of New Kids, but were we really modeled after them? No. We looked at ourselves as Shai, Jodeci, Boyz II Men, the true vocal groups. That's who we listened to and who we really wanted to be like," Littrell stated in 2011. The Backstreet Boys often employ polyphonic harmony, which makes them unique and sets them apart from other singing groups. In choruses, Littrell, Carter, and McLean usually sing the melody with Dorough harmonizing above the melody and Richardson covering the bass parts. During Richardson's absence, McLean and Carter together covered his part in choruses while Dorough took his solo parts.

The Backstreet Boys' musical style has evolved over the years. On their debut and sophomore album, they sang a hybrid of R&B and dance club pop mixed with new jack balladry and hip-hop. With Millennium and Black & Blue, they're starting to abandon R&B and shift more toward pop and pop rock, as demonstrated on songs like "I Want It That Way", "Shape of My Heart", "Larger than Life", and "Not For Me". The group drastically changed their style in 2005 with their comeback album Never Gone. It is an adult contemporary record featuring only live instruments, a departure from their previous pop sound that features a lot of synthesizer. Compared to their previous albums, Never Gone is "more organic, more stripped-down, less harmonies, more instrumentation". Their first album without Richardson, Unbreakable, is similar to Never Gone. It leans to adult contemporary and contemporary pop music and features interwoven choral harmonies, piano, strings, guitar, and drums, with a little bit of hip-hop and reggae elements on some tracks, like "One in A Million". With their seventh studio album, This Is Us, they went back to their original dance-pop beats combined with electropop. It also contains a more R&B sound compared to Unbreakable.