NKOTBSB w/Jordin Sparks
Izod Center
Tuesday, June 13
Better than: Sitting at home bitching about “manufactured pop.”
It was 8:35 last night when the lights at the Izod Center went down, and it was approximately 8:35:01 when the screaming started. The loud, screechy, lusty yelling sustained itself throughout the opening credits for the show by NKOTBSB—the hybrid of New Kids on the Block and the Backstreet Boys, two “boy bands” more contemporaneous than collective memory might remember—and up until the two bands, joined as one in a Voltron of parethetical title asides and indelible hooks and proclamations that the ladies in attendance were all beautiful, appeared above the stage, looking deadly serious, staring stonily outward.
And then… the opening to Coldplay’s “Viva La Vida” kicked in.
A curious choice, for sure, but one that almost instantly made sense, given that the idea of whose song opened shows on the NKOTBSB tour would probably be the source of message-board arguments and parking-lot sniping for months. “Viva” actually served as a bed for a mashup between the New Kids’ recent Ne-Yo-penned track “Single” and Backstreet’s 2000 track “The One” that worked quite well. It wouldn’t be another two and a half-ish hours until things let up, and in between there were bedazzled Public Enemy shirts, synchronized dance moves, Naughty By Nature cameos and outpourings of gratitude. And lots of crotch grabbing (by the guys) and singing along to indelible hooks (by the crowd).
