A crowd of women in their 30s and 40s crowded the Allianz Parque in São Paulo on Friday night. They were there to remember the youth and sang loud hits from the Backstreet Boys, a sensational 1990s boy band who brought their DNA World Tour to São Paulo after being postponed by three years due to the Covid were pandemic.
Judging by the excitement of the crowd, it was worth the wait. A mix of “Everyone” and “I Wanna Be With You,” two of the band’s oldest songs, opened the show 14 minutes late. The audience went wild.
“I feel so young,” said one woman, laughing. Behind her, another fan who appeared to be in his fifties took selfies with a themed headband tied around his head. Her greyhaired husband looked at the stage with an unfriendly face.
It was a different crowd from the one that filled the stadium in early December when Harry Styles charmed a group of teenagers with his British charm. But when the Backstreet Boys took the stage, there was little difference between the audience.
Finally, the quintet of Nick Carter, Kevin Richardson, Howie Dorough, AJ McLean and Brian Littrell rocked audiences with 1996’s “I Wanna Be With You” and 1999’s “Don’t Want You Back.”
“We promised we’d come back. I want to be the first Backstreet Boys to say ‘Thank you Brazil!’ to say.
The rhythm dropped as the band presented newer tracks, such as those on the tournaming album released in 2019. People in the audience really wanted to hear the old ones. Proof of that is the scream that went up with “Show Me the Meaning of Being Lonely.” That’s when sweat began to mix with tears on a fan’s face.
The quintet unleashed its voice on the dramatic “Incomplete”. Then they did one of those choreographies with the track “Undone” that enchanted a whole generation. It’s smooth and charming moves, nothing like the goofy TikTok dances pop artists use today.
Nick Carter and Brian Littrell wowed fans when they teamed up at the end of Shape of My Heart to make a heart with their arms. The fan, in her 50s, who had previously taken selfies with the band’s banner, jumped around excitedly, but her husband still hadn’t managed to smile.
Halfway through the show, AJ McLean and Kevin Richardson stopped the show to change their looks. They did it on stage, in a mobile changing table. McLean later allegedly threw fans blue underwear that he had worn. A wave of screams went up.
Afterwards, the five singers changed again and dressed in white to sing “Everybody (Backstreet’s Back)”, one of their biggest hits. The audience jumped until the ground shook.
The quintet appealed to nostalgia. They sang a string of hits including “We’ve Got It Goin’ On”, “It’s Gotta Be You”, “The One” and the classic “I Want It That Way”. Only with the latter did the grayhaired finally get carried away and raised his cell phone to immortalize the moment in a video. Pleased with the result, he called his wife to leave two songs before the show ended.
The Backstreet Boys bid farewell to fans under a sea of white ribbons as giant balls bounced over the crowd. After the tickets for this show were sold out, the boy band will perform again in São Paulo this Saturday. Nothing like reliving youth and making money from it.