Kpop Guide

What K-Pop Can Teach the Backstreet Boys

The Backstreet Boys' 20th-anniversary album, In a World Like This, will be released next week, marking the group's first release since 2009's This Is Us. The members have been embarking on a return tour, stopping by radio stations, and appearing on morning shows, among other things.

However, because this band is approaching its two-decade anniversary, it has been together for longer than many of today's most plugged-in pop music listeners have been alive. Backstreet's fame isn't what it used to be; the band's most recent album, This Is Us, opened at No. 9 on the US Billboard 200 and generated just two songs with moderate success. In 2011, the group went on tour with New Kids on the Block, which capitalized on the nostalgia of fans who had been converted more than a decade before, but probably didn't win many new followers.

The Backstreet Boys have spoken about how the music industry has changed dramatically since the release of "As Long as You Love Me," and they are well aware that attracting young fans will be difficult. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, member Kevin Richardson talks on how, thanks to social media, today's mass audience demands new content from artists all of the time, something that wasn't the case when the Backstreet Boys were at their pinnacle. As a result, the boy band of the past may need to rethink its tactics in order to attract new followers.

Fortunately, they have a model to follow: Shinhwa, Korea's answer to the Backstreet Boys.

Although Korea's pop business is considerably younger than that of the United States, its tendencies are similar to those of the United States: dubstep, autotune, music competition programs, and so on. However, unlike in recent years in the United States, Korea has embraced group acts with zeal. It has made the creation of boy and girl collectives (also known as "idol groups") a science, allowing them to do much more than sing and dance. Despite the fact that K-pop is beginning to embrace more diversity in musical styles and musicians, owing in part to competition programs like these, idol groups continue to dominate and are ultimately where the money is. A total of 61 group acts and duos made their debuts in 2012, with 33 of them being male.

So K-pop is well-versed in the world of boy bands. Let's go back to 1998, when SM Entertainment introduced Shinhwa. Before departing SM in 2003, the six-piece boy band would go on to record four studio albums and win 17 music awards. They have just released their 11th studio album to honor their 15th anniversary, making them Korea's longest-running male musical group.

Shinhwa is five years younger than the Backstreet Boys as a group, but their path to become South Korea's most renowned men-who-used-to-be-boys band is years ahead of Nick Carter and co.

Shinhwa's six members are all in their 30s, and those physically capable have done their government-mandated army service. They've constantly recorded songs, gone on tour, and been on television in their 15 years together. Last year, their 2012 album The Return sold over 80,000 copies in Korea, which is a good amount for a group returning after a four-year sabbatical and fighting against artists in a crowded market. Some members are currently acting, doing music, and even assisting in the development of the next generation of idol groups. All of this maintains Shinhwa in the thoughts and ears of the Korean populace.

Aside from Shinhwa's omnipresence, clever self-awareness is a key component of the group's longevity. Shinhwa hosted a recent edition of SNL Korea in which the cast poked fun at themselves in a skit dubbed "A Night at the Museum." They portray themselves as much younger versions of themselves, posing as antiques from another period on exhibit for tourists to ridicule. Shinhwa, dressed in boy-band attire from a previous decade, create a formation while young museum visitors are perplexed by the group's identification, not knowing who they are.