My favorite member of the group is Nick. Not the first email you've gotsaying that, right? He's kind of the favorite.
To be honest, I can't really tell you why he's my favorite. I've been
asking myself that for the last ten years or so.
To give you a littlebackground on myself, pure pop music hadn't been my thing for a while before the
Backstreet Boys wandered into my life. I'm 31, so I was a part of that
generation who went from liking NKOTB to loving Nirvana. My first reaction to ["Quit Playing Games"] was "Who are these ugly mofos?" They wouldn't win me over with hairless chests writhing in the rain. But they kept trying to charm me, like earnest puppy dogs. I warmed up to them a little with "As Long As You Love Me." As a girl with a checkered past, it was exactly what I wanted to hear. I ignored the grammatical inaccuracies in "All I Have to Give." By the time they got to "I'll Never Break Your Heart," I definitely didn't change the station when they came on.
Cut to spring of 1999. I was driving with my friend to Memphis to see some band without a record contract, and the opening to "I Want It That Way" came on. My friend said "Oh, turn it up. This is the new Backstreet Boys." I turned it up. They had me at "Tell me why." I will never be able to adequately explain why, except that I think I just needed to hear some pretty boys tell me pretty things that the real boys in my life were not telling me.
Which brings us to Nick Carter. This is not the type of boy I went after in high school. This was not the type of boy I went after, ever. By all rights I should have been an AJ girl. Sure, Nick was gorgeous, but he was barely able to string a few words together in interviews. He was packaged as this video-game-playing semi jock b-boy wannabe man-child. Maybe he was my rebellion against what I was supposed to like. Maybe I was intrigued about what was underneath the image. In light of what has come out about his troubles, I probably just have this sixth sense about "broken" boys because I always had that desire to fix them. I had a feeling, even then. I knew the signs. Whatever it is about him, I'm amazed because I've always been fickle in my fandom and this kid has been a constant for over a decade. No matter what, I will always be grateful to that goofy blonde kid who almost killed my by kissing me on the cheek (I almost fainted and all the other fans wanted to kill me) because without him, I'd have never met my best friend, who I met in line for Millennium tour tickets. Like Nick, she's been a constant in my life for the last decade.
We grew beyond always talking about the Backstreet Boys to sharing a rich history of jokes and shared experiences that I can't imagine not having. We were in each other's weddings. We got each other through 9/11. We travelled the country together, chasing after those boys and getting the most amazing memories of our lives in the bargain.
I haven't seen them live since Nashville in 2002. Life got in the way. School. Work. Marriage. I'd kind of dig getting to see the Cute One and his friends live again, even if it does mean baring my soul to a stranger. Thanks for listening.
Do you hear that whistle? That's the sound of the Straight Talk Express blowing through the Wayward Blog. Congratulations, April!
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