Backstreet Boys are in the middle of their Into the Millennium residency at Sphere Las Vegas, which focuses on their 1999 album, Millennium. To go along with it, they’ve released Millennium 2.0, a 25-track expansion of the original album. Backstreet’s Nick Carter and AJ McLean says the album captured a very specific moment in pop culture.
“I think it was at a very special place and time for a lot of people,” Nick tells ABC Audio. “For us, we were coming out of Y2K, everyone was thinking that the world was going to end.”
“Nothing happened, by the way,” laughs AJ.
“Nothing happened, but it was very special time for us because it was our biggest album to date,” Nick adds. “It was at the time when [artists] were breaking records, a million records here, a million records there.”
As Nick notes, the teen pop explosion of the late ’90s and early 2000s led to previously unheard of record sales for artists like Backstreet, *NSYNC and Britney Spears. Millennium sold 1.134 million copies in its first week, breaking a record previously held by Garth Brooks. *NSYNC then broke that record in 2000 when No Strings Attached sold over 2.4 million copies in one week.
“It was this whole thing that was going on and so that’s why it’s so nostalgic right now,” Nick says.
Backstreet is performing Millennium, as well as their other hits, during their Sphere show. Nick says, “When you come to see this show, it’s gonna just take you right back to that really feel-good time, that nostalgic time that people loved.”
Millennium 2.0 features 25 tracks, including live songs, demos, a version of “I Want It That Way” with alternate lyrics and a brand-new single called “HEY.”
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