Songoftheday 3/19/21 - Although loneliness has always been a friend of mine I'm leavin' my life in your hands, people say I'm crazy and that I am blind risking it all in a glance...

 

 

"As Long As You Love Me" - Backstreet Boys

from the album Backstreet Boys (US) & Backstreet's Back (Worldwide) (both 1997)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: ineligible to chart

Billboard Hot 100 Airplay peak: #4 (two weeks)

Weeks in the Airplay top-40: 45

Today's song of the day comes from the American "boyband" vocal group Backstreet Boys, who were groomed for success in Europe by manager and future felon Lou Pearlman and landed their first stateside hit in the autumn of 1997 with the mellow yet subtly whiteboy funky "Quit Playing Games (With My Heart)". But since that already was the fourth single from their debut album, which was released almost a year prior, international fans were already clamoring for something new, and so they released to radio and worldwide retail a song that didn't appear on the first version of that album, and would kick off their sophomore international disc, Backstreet's Back. "As Long As You Love Me" was a ultra-smooth mid-tempo love ballad written by Max Martin, who produced the track with Kristian Lundin. With vocal tradeoffs between Nick Carter, Brian Litrell, and AJ McLean, with Howie Dorough and Kevin Richardson providing backup (and eye candy especially in Kevin's case), the quintet went for what they know, with a lady-friendly music video that did the whole face-morph thing years before Michael Jackson's "Black or White", while quick camera shots were able to enhance whatever dance skills they had. All in all it was a pleasant record that won over people of all ages...

Since "As Long As You Love Me" was released as a commercial single in the U.S., it wasn't able to place on Billboard magazine's official Hot 100 pop chart. However, the song got massive radio love, enough to spend over a year on the airplay component of the list, reaching as high as the top-5 in March of 1998. The record also spent a week on the Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") radio chart, and made it to #15 on the older-skewing pop format of Adult Top-40. Internationally, the single went to #1 in New Zealand, while rising to the top ten in Australia (#2), Austria (#2), the UK (#3), Canada (#3), Germany (#3), Spain (#3), Denmark (#3), Hungary (#3), Sweden (#4), Switzerland (#4), Belgium (#4F/#7W), the Netherlands (#5), Norway (#5), and Ireland (#6). At the 1999 Grammy Awards, the Backstreet Boys were nominated for Best New Artist, which former Fugee Lauryn Hill won that year.

(8/10)

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Here's the Boys performing live on German TV in 1998..

Next up, in concert in 2000 in Indiana...

and lastly, reunited in 2016 for iHeartRadio...

Up tomorrow: This smooth female rapper reads the classics for her one shot at fame.