Not Your Typical St. Patrick’s Day: Backstreet & Bling

Instead of getting smashed off Guinness beer at some Irish pub like Paddy O’Shea’s (as I assume is how most of Beijing celebrated St. Paddy’s Day), I opted to celebrate this wonderful Irish holiday with box seat tickets at the Backstreet Boys Concert and Bling’s “Kiss Me, I’m Irish” party.  

All you haters can judge me all you want, I am proud to say that I spent the majority of my pre-teen years dancing and belting along to the Backstreet Boys. So to claim that I adore them is an understatement.

Back in the day, I bought tickets to go to their concert twice when their tour came to Sacramento and it was an hour and a half of pure entertainment delight.  I think that was…9 years ago, when they were still a 5 member band (Kevin left the group in 2006), when they were still making top Billboard hits, when they came out with their Black & Blue CD…back when people still bought CDs.

When I heard that the Backstreet Boys were coming to Beijing this time around for their This is Us Concert Tour, and that I was getting hooked up with box seat tickets, I just about lost it.

It’s been 17 years since the Backstreet Boys were first formed in 1993. They made it to the top as the top selling boy band having sold 130 million records worldwide with their first seven albums reaching the top 10 Billboard chart. And still, after 17 years, after losing one of their members, after a couple of them went to rehab and with the peak years of boy bands long passed, they’re still going at it and going to their concert was me reverting back to a Nick Carter-obsessed 12 year old girl again. 

Upon reflection, I must admit that the concert itself was half-assed – there were no special effects, only one centered screen, no costume change and the boys themselves could have cared less.  I still can’t make up my mind to determine whether they were all high on drugs or if they just didn’t care. Someone accidentally said “Oh, I almost f***ed up!” during the concert and at one point during the song “Incomplete,” Brian actually got on the floor and started swimming. Freakin hilarious.

It was overall, a very unprofessional concert…but at the end of the day, who cares?  It’s the Backstreet Boys!  I didn’t go to watch a “professionally, well-executed concert.”

I went to see the Backstreet Boys live, to hear them sing all my favorite songs from I Want It That Way, All I Have to Give, Show Me The Meaning, Quit Playing Games with My Heart, More Than That, Incomplete, Shape of My Heart, As Long As You Love Me…oh, the list goes on and on!

At the end of the day, I got to see them again, squeal like a little girl, and sing along to all their songs (yes, I still know ALL their lyrics by heart).  It was nostalgic and I absolutely loved it…maybe a little too much.

*Confession: After the concert, I was on a mission to find them and figure out how I could meet them so that we could be friends. And naturally, this would finally give Nick Carter the chance to fall in love with me at first sight and return my undying love.