It has been now 25 years since the Backstreet Boys took us into the new millennium with their 3rd album “Millennium”. This record had the most shipments in one year, with 11 million shipments sold in the United States in 1999. It was nominated for five Grammy Awards and became one of the best-selling albums of all time, selling 24 million copies worldwide. Also the Into the Millennium Tour became one of the fastest-grossing tours ever. To celebrate this anniversary they announced a Las Vegas residency at the Sphere and an accompanying album to the original album.
This 2.0 version has one new single that was never released, a demo of a song from the original album, five live versions of songs and four tracks that were performed live that never made the album. Lastly, there is an alternative version to their biggest hit “I Want It That Way” that was their attempt before Max Martin changed it to become the hit it became.
The new single “Hey” is a sentimental song that sounds nice just like most of their songs and has the famous harmonizing with all five appearing on it. “I’ll Be there for You” is a song most fans have heard before but it only made its way to one of those albums that had a single on it plus bonus songs back in the day so we knew it was good. “My Heart Stays with You” was a song that Howie D would sing for his solo for their first two tours and it was on one of the albums for a single with a bonus song before; also we knew it was good. The next two were new for those who don’t use YouTube to listen to their unreleased songs. “You Wrote the Book on Love” is a very young Nick Carter talking about a lover who knew what they wanted and has their typical harmonizing on the chorus, plus it has old school Brian Littrell vocals. The last one “If You Knew What I Knew” has AJ McLean’s typical suave voice when he is a lead on a song. Then Brian and Nick do their thing on the verses plus all the harmonizing hearing Howie D as well. The demo version of Brian’s song about his mother “Perfect Fan” definitely wasn’t as good as the one that made the original album as there is no Kevin Richardson on it.
Lastly the alternative version of “I want it That Way” has lyrics that actually make way more sense than the one that became their biggest hit. It sounds more like a love song than the other version which still to this day they don’t even know what it means. Those live versions to end the album come from the “Into the Millennium Tour” that most people have on VHS and CD (For the Fans).
It was nice the guys wanted unreleased tracks, demos and alternative tracks to be put on an album so people could get their songs but some were already released on albums or done live. The new single isn’t bad but Backstreet Boys fans want a new album more. It would be nice to take all the songs that didn’t make the cutting board for the rest of the albums because some are sometimes better than ones that did. Here’s to the next 25 years for the guys.