"The Backstreet, Who?"

It is official, I’m getting old! Can you believe it has been fifteen years since the boy band Backstreet Boys began their first tour and thirteen years since “I’ll Never Break Your Heart” was blasting through our portable C.D players? I can’t! Just last night my roommate Brittany, who teaches at a local dance studio, randomly asked me “Did you know thirteen year olds don’t know who the Backstreet Boys are?” It caught me off guard. Then it hit me, “Wait, what? You mean THE Backstreet Boys, your students have never heard of them, ever?” Brittany being a self proclaimed BSB fanatic yelled, “I know rite”.

She then told me a story about her playing a Backstreet Boy song to her dance class. “Who is this?” asked one of her thirteen year old students. “The Backstreet Boys” commented Brittany. “The Backstreet, who?” said another student. By the tone of Brittany’s voice I could tell she was frustrated with the youth of today’s society. I too asked myself “how on Earth have they not heard of the Backstreet Boys, what about NSYNC, and the Spice Girls, anybody from the 90’s?” Then it hit me. The thirteen year old girls in Brittany’s dance class were born in the mid- 1990’s.

The music I spent hours if not days listening, singing, and dancing to with my Spice Girl hairbrush, was the music of the past. It was the music of my generation. Now, here is the part that depresses me. For the first time in my life, I have quoted a famous saying from my fifty- five year old mother “It was back in my day!”



-Boy band.. of MY generation!? :/