Backstreet Boys: This is Us. I think not.

Back in the day I was one of the biggest Backstreet Boys fan I knew, complete with posters and merchandize, even stationery I wrote on the first time I wrote to my first love. I can safely say that I have heard every album till Black & Blue atleast a 1000 times. Now, I didn't even know until a few minutes back that their newest album released in September last year.

Of course I had to preview it, for old times sake and the fact that I hope each time that it's better than the previous, whether I am listening to them or not. Just for the love we shared, just for the unmailed poem the girl wrote for AJ when he was in rehab, just for the 14 year old who put her ear right onto the speaker and cried every night to "I need you tonight". Unfortunately and it breaks my heart to say it, they sound bored and stale, even more than in their previous album. They have tried to team up with T-Pain to sound more current and "with-it" but it's not working. It makes me sad, it really does. What do you do when you feel that the only thing that you could do with your career is not good anymore? Sure you can start a restaurant, have your own reality show, collaborate with lesser known musicians on their albums but doesn't it kill you to lose the one thing that made you? The one thing (I assume) they have probably loved more than anything in the world. The work that didn't seem like work and so much so it broke relationships, made them take drugs, go to rehab to bounce back because of the strength of that love.

Except I feel somewhere down the line they lost themselves. I still know they are a talented bunch but I guess some things are not meant to be, not for a second time perhaps. They've seen their best days, so have I. But I don't want to be around while they self-destruct.

R.I.P. Backstreet Boys.
You will always be loved for all the love you taught us when we didn't even know what it was.