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The song in question was called "Quit Playing Games With My Heart", and the only consolation I could get out of it was the fact that it would be off the airwaves in a few weeks and the band would be shoved into obscurity, robbing convenience stores in a month or two. Oh, how wrong I was. The band was called the Backstreet Boys, and they ended up catapulting to insane levels of fame and stardom over the next few years, performing a whole array of similarly vapid songs.

The whole "boy band" genre-consisting of them, N-Sync, and lesser players such as 98 Degrees, O-Town, and probably a whole bunch of others I've never heard of-seems to be dying slowly, gasping its final harmonized breaths as I write. Of course, everyone saw this coming, but it was strange that it took so long. When I was in elementary school, all the girls listened to the equivalent band back then, the New Kids on the Block, but they were nobodys after what, a year or two?

The current crop of boy bands has managed to scam success for close to five, six years at this point. They should all be well into the drugged-out haze section of their VH1 Behind the Musics by now, but yet they're still raking in some pretty good dough.

But don't worry-this article will not be an examination of the "boy band" phenomenon. I

liken that sorry era of popular music to a bout with leprosy-once it's over, you don't think "Hmm, let me examine that experience". Fuck no, you try to forget about it; you're Glad It's Over.
No, this scholarly article will take a look at one particular player in the Boy Band scene, Mr. Nick Carter of the Backstreet Boys, pictured to the far right. I have had two encounters with writings about Mr. Carter, and heard a couple of stories, of all which paints a funny, if conflicting picture.

A friend of mind scored this priceless tome while dumpster diving behind a bookstore: "Nick Carter: Secrets Only a Mother Knows", written by his mom Jane Carter. Pretty weird a book like that would be in a dumpster, huh? Now, granted, her target audience was 12 year old girls, not 22 year old guys who write about books found in dumpsters, but either way I think it's a bad, kinda fucked up novel, and here are a few random observations from it.

It's essentially a tedious, poorly written account of Nick Carter's early childhood before becoming a Backstreet Boy. She goes through the tales of all his early auditions and try-outs, the ups and downs, the lessons learned, and the eventual rise to fame. Plus plenty of pictures with captions like "hot!", "Cool!", and "The Once and Future Star!"

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