Let’s get this out of the way: yes, I went to a Backstreet Boys show. Sort of. Go ahead. Laugh. Get it all out. I’ll wait.
Done? Good.
My girlfriend Amber is obsessed with this man. Not “she likes him.” Obsessed.
I first saw it up close in 2019. We went to Vegas to see the Backstreet Boys’ Larger Than Life residency, and that was the first time I watched her react to them live. Let me give you some perspective here. I’m a Tool guy. I know what devotion to a band looks like. I’ve been on the inside of it for decades.
She’s got me beat. It’s not even close.
Don’t get me wrong, the Vegas show was cool. It wasn’t my thing, but when a beautiful woman asks if you want to go to Vegas with her, you don’t say no. You say “why not,” you go and you check it out. And the Backstreet Boys show wasn’t bad. Again, not my thing. But not bad.
So that’s the baseline. If the Backstreet Boys are rolling into anywhere within driving distance, or he’s coming through on his own, she’s going, and that’s the end of the discussion. Being the good boyfriend I am, I make it happen. That’s the job. So on November 10th, our friend Cathy — that’s Cathy with a C — got behind the wheel of a rental van and pointed us at Minneapolis to see him on his first solo run, The Better Man Tour.
Now, I want to be honest about my headspace going into this, because it matters. I had an opinion, and it was carved in stone: this guy has got to be auto-tuned to the gills. Processed within an inch of his life. There’s no way he can actually sing. Not live, not without a rack of plugins doing the heavy lifting while he waves at the crowd. I’ve spent 30-plus years behind a board. I know exactly what a boy band vocal chain looks like.
I was dead fucking wrong.
AJ, Alex, Alexander James: Pick One
Going in, I knew it was “Alex something” and that was the extent of my research.
Most of the world knows him as AJ. AJ McLean, one-fifth of the Backstreet Boys, the guy who’s been taped to bedroom walls for three decades. Even more people know the face and not the name at all. To them he’s just “the one from the Backstreet Boys.” But his full name is Alexander James McLean, his friends call him Alex, and he’s done hiding behind the initials. He put out his first real solo album, My Name Is Alexander James, back in January. This is his first North American solo tour under that name, and his next album, Sex Love and Music, drops on Black Friday.
And here’s the part that messed with my head a little. Alex was born January 9, 1978. So was I. Same day, same year. We’re exactly the same age, down to the day. He even released that album on January 9th, on his birthday. Our birthday. While I was spending three decades behind a mixing board, the guy who showed up in the world the same day I did was selling out arenas and getting his face taped to bedroom walls.
Different paths, man.
If you want to see what this tour looks like from his side of the stage, Alex is documenting it himself. Here’s the first episode, straight from his own channel:
So for the rest of this post he’s Alex. By the end you’ll understand why he earned it.
Musical Chairs
The show was booked at First Avenue, the big room. At the last minute they moved it a few blocks over to the Fine Line, which holds about 600 people. For my Madison folks: picture the High Noon Saloon. Small, tight, nowhere to hide.
Remember that. It matters.
Feed Me, Mad Chicken
Now, here’s the eternal concert dilemma. You want to eat before the show, because a three-hour night on an empty stomach is amateur hour. But you also showed up early for a reason, and you are not about to give up your spot to a sidewalk full of 40-year-olds acting like sophomores.
Enter Mad Chicken, right by the venue.
Let me tell you something. This was some badass chicken. Hand-breaded, juicy, perfectly seasoned, the kind of tenders that make you rethink every sad fast-food strip you’ve ever choked down. And they’ve got a lineup of house-made sauces that I could’ve worked through all night.
Here’s the kicker. Mad Chicken is a Wisconsin outfit. It started in 2017 at the Fox River Mall in Appleton and grew from there, with locations in Milwaukee and beyond. So we drove all the way to Minneapolis and the best meal of the trip came from our own backyard.
Of course it did.
The Line
We showed up a couple hours early, and here’s the thing that hadn’t fully occurred to me. We’re all old now. Backstreet Boys fans aren’t teenagers anymore. They’re 40.
And there was already a line. A line of 40-year-old women behaving exactly like 15-year-old girls, vibrating on the sidewalk, waiting for doors.
Holy shit.
Amber had scored meet and greet passes, so we parked ourselves by the front door, across from the screaming sophomores, and waited. Around 5 o’clock, Keith, Alex’s head of security, came out and started handing out meet and greet passes. When he was done, he looked at us and said he was letting us in before everybody else.
Rockstar treatment. I’ve done Rolling with Scissors long enough to be a little used to it, but it never stops being cool. So we roll right past the entire line, and every one of those girls gives us the stink eye. You know the look: who the hell are they, and why do they get to go in first.
Sorry, ladies.
Front Row, Chair Off
Amber drives her chair straight up to the stage. Dead center. Front row. Parks it, kills the power and makes an announcement: I’m not moving.
OK, babe.
A few minutes later, somebody from the club wanders over. Very polite. Very helpful. Hey, just so you know, we have a wheelchair section, if you’d rather have that, since it’s such a small club.
And where’s the wheelchair section? Back by the soundboard.
Now, as an audio guy, I’ll be fair here. That’s not a bad spot. The mixer lives in the one place in the room where the sound is supposed to be best. That’s the whole point of putting it there. On paper, it’s a great offer.
But I couldn’t resist. I said, “Well, there’s not gonna be a mosh pit here.”
She laughed. “Oh no, I don’t think so.”
Amber didn’t even look up. “No. I’m not moving.”
Second time in ten minutes she’d made that announcement, and it was just as final as the first. Not a request. Not a debate. A statement of fact. The chair was off. The matter was closed.
The staffer knew when she was beat. She left. We stayed. Front row.
So we’re sitting there waiting for the meet and greet to start, and the door behind us swings open and Alex just strolls into the club. He walked right past that entire line of fans, and I don’t think a single one of them clocked it was him until he was already inside.
Then he came over and talked to us. For a while. Before the meet and greet had even started. Amber was, to put it mildly, losing her mind. And here’s the thing: he’s a genuinely nice guy. No ego, no entourage, no checking his phone. Just a guy hanging out at the front of a stage with two people in chairs like we’d known each other for years.
Eventually he had to go get ready, and he told us to stick around for the meet and greet and the Q&A.
The Part Where I Shut My Mouth
There was a Q&A, which was a nice touch. The rest of the fans filed in, and then Alex and his band came out and did a couple of acoustic songs.
And it blew me the fuck away.
I’m not kidding, you guys. No processing. No tuning. No safety net. Just him, his band and a few feet of air between us. I sat there with my jaw on the floor. Thirty years of engineering, and I couldn’t find one thing to be smug about.
About that band: they’re called Alex’s Angels, every single one of them is a woman, and they are not window dressing. Venzella Joy is on drums, and her résumé includes Beyoncé, Jay-Z and the Super Bowl halftime show. Let that sink in. Cindë is on guitar, and she shreds like she has a personal grudge against the fretboard. Jamie-Leigh Schultz holds down the bass on her first-ever tour playing it, and you’d never know. Liz Mller is on keys. And Blanche J and Dylan Jenét Collins handle backing vocals with pipes that could carry a show on their own.
Don’t believe me? Here’s the band doing “Can’t Love You Anymore” without him. No Alex, no lead singer, just the Angels. This is what his backing band sounds like by themselves:
And being in Minneapolis, of course my brain went straight to Prince, as it should. If you don’t know your history: Prince built his bands around killer women players. Wendy and Lisa in The Revolution. Sheila E. behind the kit. Later, 3rdEyeGirl, an all-woman power trio that could flatten a room. Standing in his town, watching Alex front a band of women who could absolutely hold their own, it felt about right.
A couple of songs, a round of questions, and then he sent everybody upstairs to get ready for pictures.
Upstairs Is Not an Option
Small problem. We’re both in chairs. Upstairs is the balcony. We are not going upstairs.
Keith came over before we even had to ask: you two just hang here, he’ll be right back. There were roughly 200 people in that meet and greet. Alex walked past every one of them, came back downstairs to us, had another conversation, took a bunch of pictures, and then went back up to do autographs and photos with the regular people.
Not us. We were the special people.
The Openers
Two openers. DJ Gab Wright worked the room with Top 40 to get everybody warmed up. Then Matt Bloyd, a solo guy out of Nashville, walked out and opened with a Britney Spears cover. In a room full of Backstreet Boys fans. That’s either brave or insane, and it worked. He wasn’t bad at all.
The Show
I’m still braced for the Backstreet Boys experience. Choreography. Vocal runs that go on for a week. All the weird boy band stuff. For the record, I don’t mind the Backstreet Boys. They’re just not something I’d ever put on voluntarily.
This was not that. Not even close.
For the first few songs, my reaction was simple: OK. This is good. This is actually good.
Then he played “Oceans,” a new one off Sex Love and Music.
Holy fucking shit.
That’s the song where it stopped being “good for a Backstreet Boy” and became just plain good, full stop. Cathy got it on video from the front row on Amber’s trusty old iPhone 11. You need to hear it.
This man can flat-out sing. Real soul, real control, real power, and none of it coming out of a laptop. (Photos from the show are up here.)
Then he dedicated “London” to Amber. It’s a song off his first solo record, and he gave it to her. I need you to understand this. Out of that entire meet and greet, he stood on that stage and remembered her name. Cathy caught it:
Meanwhile, a quick census of the room: I counted maybe six or eight guys in the entire club. Everyone else was a woman, and a good number of them were looking at Amber like she’d just won the lottery. Which, to be fair, she had. And yes, we were right out front the whole show. The soundboard can keep its wheelchair section.
Hey, Amber
The show’s over. We’re heading back to the van, rolling down the street, and someone comes up behind us. It’s Alex, on his way back to the bus.
He doesn’t stop for a photo or make a thing of it. He just says, “Bye, Amber,” as he walks past.
That’s it. Two words. But think about it. He’d done a full meet and greet, signed who knows how many autographs and played an entire show. And out on a dark Minneapolis sidewalk, he still knew her name.
No cameras, no crowd, nobody watching. Just a guy who didn’t have to do it, doing it anyway.
So here’s my confession, on the record. In Vegas I filed the Backstreet Boys under “not bad, not my thing” and moved on. I walked into the Fine Line sure Alex was a studio creation. I walked out having been schooled by a Backstreet Boy — one who’s exactly as old as I am, no less. Alexander James McLean can sing. Live. No net.
I was wrong. Let that sink in.
Yes, I See the Irony
I’m about to say something a little hypocritical, considering this post is full of video. Hear me out anyway.
You paid good money for that ticket. You waited in line. You’re standing a few feet from someone you’ve loved for decades. Why are you watching the whole thing through a 6-inch screen? Put the phone down. Be in the room. The memory you make with your own eyes is better than any clip you’ll never watch again.
And yet. Sometimes you want to document it. Sometimes a moment is so good you need proof it happened, and you want to share it with the people who couldn’t be there. That’s the balance. Grab a song or two that matters, then put the phone away and actually watch the show.
That’s how we did it. I didn’t film the whole night. I mostly just stood there with my jaw on the floor. Most of what you see in this post was shot by our friend Cathy, who drove the van, ran the camera, took the photos and let me and Amber just be there. You can see her photos from the show here. Cathy, thank you. You made this whole post possible.
More From the Road
Full disclosure: we did shoot a lot more than what’s in this post. Front row will do that to you. But I’m not about to turn this post into a wall of video. I’ll be adding more to my YouTube channel over the next little while, so subscribe there if you want the rest.
In the meantime, don’t just take my word for it. The fans out there are documenting this whole tour, and they deserve the credit. Here’s some of the best of it.
At the Paramount in Huntington, New York, Alex brought his daughters Elliott and Lyric on stage for “Into Your Heart.” Try watching this without smiling. Shot by My Teenage Wasteland:
Remember how I said this wasn’t a boy band show? Well, he does throw the Backstreet Boys fans a bone, and he does it his way: “I Want It That Way” mashed up with “September.” From Montclair, New Jersey, shot by I Heard Bruce Might Show Up:
And if you want the whole night, here’s the full show from Skokie, Illinois, the night after ours, shot by bsbfrk411:
Big shout to Nicole Campbell too, who filmed most of the set in Montclair and Brooklyn. Her channel is the place to go for clean clips of “Better Man,” “Relapse,” “Can’t Love You Anymore” and more.
Thank you to everybody out there holding up their phones so the rest of us can relive it. Just remember to look up once in a while.
P.S. Minneapolis, We Need to Talk About Your Sidewalks
One more thing before I go, because I have to get this off my chest.
I was not impressed with Minneapolis infrastructure. The sidewalks need a shitload of work. When you’re rolling a chair, every heave, every crack and every crumbling curb cut is your personal enemy. And look, I get it. Big city, limited budget, a whole lot of concrete to maintain. But you have a train running straight through downtown. The whole downtown core is genuinely walkable. Rollable. Whatever. Even with the busted-up sidewalks you can get around, and that’s exactly what makes it so maddening. You built most of a great system and then forgot about the part people actually touch.
Fix the damn sidewalks, Minneapolis.