A Very Backstreet Christmas, the first holiday album from Backstreet Boys, is out now. Backstreet’s Howie Dorough says he’s relieved — not just because the album was postponed from 2021, but because they’ve literally been trying for decades to record it in the first place.
“I feel a big weight lifted off of all of our shoulders,” he laughs. “This is something that…we’re going on almost 30 years, I think. Every Christmas we keep on saying ourselves, ‘When are we going to do that Christmas record?’ And…we just never had the proper time to be able to do it.”
But as Howie notes, “The one positive thing that came out of COVID…was the blessing of giving us time to actually make this record.”
Due to production deadlines, Backstreet had to record in the middle of the summer, but Howie says their producer helped them get in a holiday mood: “[The studio] was all decorated with Christmas tree and stockings and the Yule log and stuff like that up on the screen, so it was quite easy,” he says.
The album mixes religious and secular favorites like “O Holy Night” and “Last Christmas” with three originals. Howie says when it came to picking the classics, all five members had “a lot of opinions,” so they stuck to the data.
“We said, ‘Everybody go and put down your top 15 songs,'” he explains. “And we did…almost like an Excel sheet, where the ones [with] the most votes…are the ones that made it.”
Backstreet fans definitely approve of the finished project.
“Nick [Carter] and I went on a live chat on Instagram, and the response from the fans was just overwhelming,” says Howie. “It seems like they really love it…I hope it was worth the wait!”
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