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My seven-year-old son has discovered Backstreet Boys. More specifically, he’s discovered their 1999 song “Larger Than Life”
The song got lodged in my head after I heard it on one of Spotify’s 90s playlists last week. I started singing it at dinner and eventually played it for him and his sister. He was immediately won over, though I suspect that a lot of that was due to the song’s bizarre Star Wars/Blade Runner-inspired music video.
For years friends have ribbed me about how any potential offspring might musically rebel against a parent with obsessive and omnivorous listening habits. I’ve always brushed it off, figuring they’ll inevitably find music I actively dislike or don’t understand.
Falling for a boy band from my generation feels like a personal attack though.
For those of you who were not 17 in 1999, it’s hard to express how omnipresent Backstreet Boys and the teeming hordes of boy bands who came in their wake, from N’Sync down to Otown, were.
It was a pop-cultural landslide that swallowed everything in its wake, and I hated it all. Not that much of what I was propping up as an alternative was high art. Still 12-18 months away from my “come-to-indie-rock” moment, I was deep in a transition from 90s alt-rock to nu-metal. Ugh.
My opinions on this period have softened in the last two decades - age, poptimism, a general blurring of genre line, and the relegation of North American boy bands to Shoppers Drug Mart playlists have all contributed to a personal reassessment of the era (TL;DR version: some good tunes amongst a lot of fluff!). But I digress.
It makes sense that a seven-year-old would find a lot to like in a song like “Larger than Life.” It’s hooky, none threatening and the energy never drops.
My son’s favourite songs previous to “Larger Than Life” have included tracks (not albums, and rarely more than two from any one artist) from R.E.M., AC/DC, Carly Rae Jepsen, Talking Heads, Haim, B.A. Johnston, the Undertones and Kiss. He’s also had short obsessions with songs from kids performers like Fred Penner, Raffi, and Koo Koo Kangaroo. To me, an aged music nerd, this list is hilariously eclectic and lacks loyalty. To him, they’re all of a piece, part of the same musical continuum.
He’s not wrong: music is a conversation, with every new song referencing, mirroring or in some way reacting to every other song that came before. This was the promise of digital music. No gatekeepers! No boundaries! Everything is up for grabs! To a degree that’s happened. Just look at the rise of artists like Lil Baby and SZA who can score number-one albums based on a fervent base of very online fans alone.
But as a recovering music critic who has spent a large part of their life mentally researching, consuming and categorizing music, I struggle with the absolute lack of context with which he consumes these songs.
Here is an incomplete list of things about this song and this band I would like to impart:
The personalities of the individual BSBs - and every other pop group at the time - were heavily marketed to fans in the 90s, but the group’s members’ personal lives have at times eclipsed the music. When my son asks which member I like best, he’s basing his decision exclusively on the cool sci-fi outfits they’re wearing in the “Larger Than Life” music video and questions my answers on this criteria alone.
Kevin, the oldest, least interesting “Boy” both on and off stage, left the band in 2006 only to return in 2012. Many people did not notice!
Millenium, the 1999 album for which “Larger Than Life” was the opening track, was BSB’s third album in Canada and Europe, but only their second in America.
“All you people…” is a far more weighted phrase in 2023 than it was in 1999.
“Larger Than Life” falls into the “song for the fans” genre of boyband songs. See also: “History” by One Direction; “Long Live” by Taylor Swift.
The opening lines: “I’m gonna run and hide when you’re screaming my name, alright/But let me tell you now there are prices to fame, alright” also makes it a “complaining about being famous" song. A twofer! See also: “Piece of Me” by Britney Spears; “Paparazzi” by Lady Gaga
Those lines echo the opening scene of the Beatles’ A Hard Days Night film, which he has seen.
But previously intimating that Gene Simmons is kind of an asshole or telling him that Bon Scott died from “too many grown-up drinks” kind of threw him for a loop. And I remember seeing the (very bad) made-for-TV movie Summer Dreams: the Story of the Beach Boys when I was nine. The Beach Boys, still basking in their post-“Kokomo” glow, were my favourite band and I remember how shattering it was to learn about the actual people behind the music.
I (probably) won’t tell him these things of course, or at least I’ll hold off until it comes up naturally in the barrage of questions he levels at me and his mom about anything he takes an interest in.
As much as I may want to dadsplain Backstreet Boys and other pieces of pop culture he encounters, I’m also aware that I can inadvertently spoil them for him and his younger sister. I guess this is my version of keeping my kids innocent, before they become cynical and jaded like their old man.
I asked Chat-GPT to write a haiku about the Backstreet Boys. Honestly, I have no notes.
Kool Kids Self-promotion Club
Back in January I reviewed UK post-punks’ Dry Cleaning’s Toronto show, and noted that seeing them onstage is “a sharp and welcome counterpoint to their tempestuous and often flailing peers.”
I also reviewed the new EP, Cuntry Covers Vol. 2 from Toronto musician Bria (aka Bria Salmena from Frigs and Orville Peck’s backing band). “Intentional or not then, Bria Salmena's choice of country covers as a way to introduce herself as a solo artist fits in with a long musical lineage.”
Kool Kids Music Recommendation Club
A little housekeeping: given my propensity for leaving large gaps between issues of this newsletter, I’m going to start updating the Kool Kids playlist on an ongoing basis, and only writing about the best or most interesting songs, artists and albums in the actual newsletter.
Also, I’m continuing to update the Concert Recommendation section with Toronto-area shows that have caught my eye and ear.
“I think my kink is when you tell me that you think I’m pretty,” tells you a lot of what you need to know about Blondshell, aka Sabrina Teitelbaum: a tendency for oversharing with a comically self-aware edge. Teitelbaum used to make more pop-leaning music as Baum. But her work as Blondshell leans hard on 90s alt-rock tropes in a way that should please fans of artists like Soccer Mommy and Momma. “Kiss City,” the song that the aforementioned line is from, is the second in a growing line of pitch-perfect singles leading up to the release of her self-titled debut album on April 7.
Pittsburgh, PA noise-pop group Feeble Little Horse just reissued their debut album Hayday on Saddle Creek at the end of last year and now, hey-hey, the quartet are ready to drop a whole new album in June. “Tin Man” is the first song off of the self-produced Girl With Fish. It boasts a big fuzzy chorus where singer Lydia Slocum details putting apartner back together, only to be the one to get dinged in the end.
Pet Shimmers surprise dropped a follow-up to their pair of 2020 breakouts Face Down in Meta and Trasher Earthers at the beginning of the year. On Anon Playable Cloud the band continues to mix 90s lo-fi indie rock with very online sounds and attitudes. The result is warm and disorienting music that never quite settles into a single groove, which is part of the appeal to me. “Sonder” was originally released last summer as a single with “Edgelord” (both are on the new album) but it’s a great place to jump into the band’s swirling sound world.
Just before the holidays, Toronto’s Eamon McGrath dropped not one, not two, but seven new albums. The records range in sound from collections of Crazy Horse jams to psych rock-inspired experiments and everything in between. They’re all quite good! Still, McGrath’s not the kind of person to rest on his laurels. He’s already got another new album, A Dizzying Lust, due March 25. Based on the first two singles, this is going to be more of an acoustic-leaning set. “Fireworks” dropped last week and might be the best thing McGrath has done yet.
Dipping my toes into the Southern hip hop continuum for a minute, Gloss Up is one of many Memphis-area MCs to turn a beat from fellow TN-producer Hitkidd (Megan Thee Stallion, Bladee, Lil Uzi Vert) into pure gold. She’s also best friends with GloRilla, another Memphis rapper who had an even bigger breakout last year with another Hitkidd track, “F.N.F.” (the two are now beefing over song credits). Anyway, it seems fitting then that Gloss Up and GloRilla would team up for the appropriately titled “BestFrenn.” The track is part of Gloss Up’s official debut, Before the Gloss Up, which is pretty awesome. If you like this I’d also highly recommend the Hitkidd produced posse cut “Shabooya.”
Ian Gormely is a freelance music journalist based in Toronto.
Hit up koolkidsmusicclub@gmail.com for questions, criticisms and submissions.