DNA

There’s one question the Backstreet Boys can’t seem to escape: Do they still consider themselves a boy band? The five-piece, most of whom are now over 40 and married with children, have come to embrace the term. “At this point, ‘boys\' has come to mean more, like, ‘friends,’\" Kevin Richardson told Apple Music’s Arjan Timmermans. “It keeps us young.” There might be some truth to that. On their ninth album *DNA*, the group dabbles in the sounds that are driving mainstream music in 2019: mid-tempo EDM (“Don’t Go Breaking My Heart”), ’80s-inspired synth-pop (“Is It Just Me”), and heart-on-sleeve country (“You’re my daybreak/You’re my California sun/You’re my Memphis, New York, New Orleans all rolled into one,” they croon on “No Place”). Even when they’re experimenting, though, they always feel familiar—they’ve still got those irresistible five-part harmonies, R&B leanings, and swoonworthy come-ons that made fans fall in love with them 25 years ago. The slick and swaggering “New Love” sounds like classic BSB. “There are moments when all five of us are like, ‘Oh, dude, absolutely,’” Brian Littrell said of the moment they first heard the song. “That’s what you’re striving for.”

Their first chart-topping album in nearly 20 years hews group-vocal magic to contemporary pop written and produced by top-tier technicians

The Nineties boyband's latest offering is standard fare topped with modern sprinkles, but Blood Red Shoes make a significant change in sound on their fifth record

By the late 2010s in their decades-long career, the Backstreet Boys have been an adult contemporary pop group longer than they were the teen pop titans of their late-'90s pop culture peak.

The band shamelessly plunder contemporary pop for a well-manicured sound designed to top the charts