Backstreet's Back, all right...? I guess?

What is our duty to ourselves and to others when we just want to feel good?

I was the target demographic for the Backstreet Boys in the way that gym bros are the target demo for Costco bags of pre-chunked rotisserie chicken. When they burst onto the scene in 1997, I came pre-loaded with a love of complex harmonies and wholesome boyband looks, primed by years of fixating on The Beatles, The Beach Boys and The Monkeys. When I first got hooked on these pop acts, it felt like I had missed the window for the really good stuff. My first ever musician crush, Paul McCartney, was 42 years my senior (not an impediment for most rockstars, I realize. Big yikes!!) but some of the young men of BSB couldn’t even legally drink when they blew up in the States. My time had come. The boyband craze do-over had arrived, and boy was I fucking IN. My poor, sainted mother trotted us out to the Mall of America for God only knows how many meet and greets, letting me skip school to sit crisscross apple sauce on the linoleum outside Sam Goody for ten hours at a time for the chance to get a crinkled Teen Beat poster signed by AJ, Kevin, Howie, Nick, and Brian (ordered here by how likely I would be to survive an encounter now without throwing a punch).

Unless you’ve been living under a rock (frugal) or threw your smartphone into the sea (enviable, on trend) you’re aware that the Backstreet Boys have taken over the Sphere in Las Vegas for a series of concerts with 3D visuals ranging from generically futuristic to ego-death inducing for audience members on anything stronger than a Zyn.

I mean, what the fuck?

Anyway. So, I should be feral for this. Admittedly, part of me is. When the first TikToks started showing up on my For You Page, I felt a primal, teenage stirring, then a tightness in my throat that meant nostalgia tears were imminent. For reference (and lbr, comedy) here’s what I looked like when I was 100% sure one or all of the Backstreet fellas would discover me in the crowd and fall to their knees in romantic desperation.

She’s showing knee AND cultured! Your loss, boys.

The urge to pull up flights to Vegas lasted until I saw the price for tickets. 357 dollars for the cheapest seat. Larger than life, indeed. No big deal, I thought, I’ll look through the comments on these TikToks, the hype will flow on an unstoppable wave, making the fomo so intense that I’ll be plunged directly into fight or flight and that price tag will seem like a pittance to cure my suffering. “Someone in the front row should hold up a sign that says: GULF OF MEXICO.” …huh? I knew Brian Littrell had some unfortunate politics, but I had yet to witness his full swan dive into the Right Wing Griftosphere, complete with a frivolous lawsuit in which he tried to bully a sheriff for daring to let the unwashed masses near his beachfront property. And, oh brother, he went on Fox News to cry about the sanctity of his mansion on the Gulf of America. Now that top TikTok quip made sense, as did the war erupting between progressive fans and the It’s Not That Deep crowd in just about every comment section of the videos I stumbled across.

My tummy started hurting. What is our duty to ourselves and to others when we just want to feel good? It led me down other paths, darker ones, considering how anyone with a shred of conscious has had to turn away from nostalgia nerd darlings like Neil Gaiman and JK Rowling. I thought about that new Harry Potter reboot, about the timing of it all, how it feels like it nestles in perfectly beside this Backstreet Boys residency, a fervent plea for our attention so we can be soothed with what’s familiar in a time that’s increasingly alienating. The world doesn’t look like it used to, the future feels terrifyingly uncertain, but here is little Hermione Granger and here is AJ McLean, and doesn’t that sort of tilt the world back on its correct axis again? You’re not forty-one and facing a future where AI takes your job, you’re thirteen, you just got braces, your Spice Girls tank top is incredibly kick-ass, and you have never looked better in platform Skechers. Don’t you feel better?

The answer is no. The answer is we have to be beyond these things now. I guess I’m sorry. It’s not my fault, but I’m sorry. This music and these books didn’t change your life because they’re the absolute best art to ever exist, they were sold to you. Peer pressure, ubiquity, marketing avalanches—something like Harry Potter didn’t fall in your lap, it was very intentionally placed there. When you build something big, when the community expands and expands, it’s harder to extricate yourself from it. It’s harder to see a you without it as part of your identity.

I’m going to gently invite you to sit in an uncomfortable truth. You did not discover the Backstreet Boys. You did not discover Harry Potter or Sandman, powerful marketing engines, exposure, peer pressure discovered them for you. That isn’t to say that they don’t have merit or value, or that you didn’t authentically enjoy them, but that there is nothing stopping you from finding replacements that will bring you just as much joy, wonder, and excitement. I hope it isn’t a secret that popularity is not a metric for quality. Often, what breaks through is what appeals to the broadest possible audience and offers the lowest barrier to entry, the least intellectual friction.

Let me say it again: There are more and better things out there for you to find and fall in love with. I think this can be an especially shitty call to action for folks like me who deal with ADHD or other neurodivergences. Certain properties become “comfort” shows or “comfort” books, and sometimes leaving those behind feels like an actual, physical pain. That’s not embarrassing, it’s valid. When something has meaning to us, it’s painful to leave it behind.

The truth is that a lot of powerful people have an impossible amount of equity entangled in that pain. A lot of icky doodoo heads are incredibly invested in your nostalgia dollars. They know you’re sad and dysregulated and fiending for a time in your life that you can never get back (girl, you did look bomb in those Skechers). They need your sad, dysregulated nostalgia dollars. Stuff like BSB and Harry Potter are cultural money-makers that have become too big to fail. Now it isn’t just a book series, there’s an entire theme park ecosystem to uphold, television shows, spin-off movies; if the next generation doesn’t glom onto Harry Potter, what becomes of that park? What becomes of the merch? What becomes of the black mold infesting JK Rowling’s living room and brain? Won’t you think of the black mold??? There’s a cynical desperation around these things, an ecosystem that you are encouraged not to consider. You are encouraged only to consider the dopamine hit that’s going to come when you stand elbow to elbow with another sweaty millennial gazing up into Popsicle Kevin’s dead, frozen eyes.

Again, what the fuck?

It isn’t just silly wizards and silly love songs and silly comic books, it’s capital, lawsuits, influence, politics, victims.

I just don’t think in a moment of intense political and cultural upheaval that these marketable appeals to nostalgia are a coincidence. We’re in an era when art should be its weirdest and most punk rock, genuinely, face-rippingly eclectic, and instead we’re being pedaled conservative trad wife slop, a reboot of a problematic, fatphobic, racist book series, and anesthetizing pop culture memory holes. Don’t look at your neighbor being dragged away by masked ICE agents, look at Popsicle Kevin! Don’t you want to look at Popsicle Kevin???

Joy and happiness and your capacity to enjoy something are not finite. You don’t have exactly one hundred attention dollars to spend. Setting aside one brand or band or book doesn’t put you in some kind of deficit. Your capacity for pleasure is infinite, I promise. There are so many other things out there for you to discover. I’m going to suggest that the Strange, New, and Weird can also provide comfort right now, that catharsis and intentionality are validating in moments when you feel unbalanced. The world is very scary right now, but what’s already soothing and familiar is not going to provide any answers for that scary world. There’s a remedy to all this doomery and gloomery. And yes, I can hear the knuckles cracking in preparation for angry comments. Why does it matter what I spend my money on? It’s not that deep! It’s a drop in the ocean! The Backstreet Boys make me feel good and I deserve to feel good 100% of the time! Why don’t you screech at the big dawgs who actually control this stuff and king make? All valid points, honestly, but number one, no big dawgs are taking my calls, and number two, I still recycle and walk as much as I can and try to make purchases ethically while private jet owners take fifteen-minute flights to go to the Super Bowl rather than confront the horror of traveling commercial, because it’s the right thing to do. I can’t offset their insane behavior, but I can still try. And I can try to weasel out of their tempting nostalgia traps, too, because there’s value in asking why someone wants you to buy something.

Trying, darling babies, is all I’m really asking you to do.

Try falling in love with something new. It’s scary but it’s also good! Think of it like setting Future You up for a different sort of nostalgia. Go to your library or bookstore and spend time browsing yourself. Ask your weirdest friend what they’re reading or listening to. Maybe Goog that author and make sure they aren’t assaulting people or donating all their money to harmful causes, idk. Hand your kid something like Amari and the Nightbrothers by B.B. Alston, or if you’re a grown kid and want a fix of magic, wizards, and witches, Rivers Solomon and Charlie Jane Anders have great options and are decent people. Hell, buy one of my books! Or don’t, I’m not here to boss you around. I am here to encourage you to seek new love stories with new art.