Backstreet Boys Are Excited to 'One-Up' Their Smash Residency with DNA World Tour Next Year
What are the chances that the Backstreet Boys would drop a new single, announce an upcoming world tour and a tenth studio album all in one day?
Last week, the bandmates — AJ McLean, Nick Carter, Brian Littrell, Kevin Richardson and Howie Dorough — released their new single, “Chances,” written by Ryan Tedder and Shawn Mendes, announced their upcoming album, titled DNA, and the DNA World Tour, which be the group’s biggest arena tour in 18 years.
“We are stoked to finally be here again gearing up for a new album, new tour, and brand new single,” McLean, 40, exclusively told PEOPLE. “There are so many amazing things we have up our sleeves. It’s really nice to see the actual payday when we’ve been busting our butt in the studio. We’ve been working on this record for quite some time now, it’s finally about to be sooner or later presented to the world.”
While in full swing with their Las Vegas residency, the “Larger Than Life” hitmakers, who just celebrated 25 years together, could not feel more grateful for this new chapter.
“For a group like us to still be here 25 years later is a huge testament to the music and a huge testament to our fans — the most loyal fans in the world sticking with us the entire time and they continue to push us to strive and be better,” McLean said.
“We’re always trying to set new goals for ourselves. I know going into this tenth album that we set that goal to be able to put up a massive tour, especially coming off the heels of such a huge show in Las Vegas. To be able to one-up that or at least have something that’s so different from Las Vegas but still of that type of magnitude would be a dream. Here we are about to go into pre-production for exactly that, which has been amazing. It really is a dream come true. We are blessed.”
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With a new album — which will be released Jan. 25 via RCA — and a world tour coming in 2019, the boys are more than ready for a new slate of adventure — this time, with their families in tow!
“The upside to us now really being able to take the bull by the horns is something really different and something we’ve never really had before — which is to really have enough prep time,” McLean explained. “To really schedule it to where there is a good balance, we all do have families and kids that are in school. Brian’s son is going to be 16. There are a ton of variables that do go into planning a world tour.”
He added, “It’s not just like, ‘Let’s just book the shows and then go.’ There is definitely a lot more to it now. We all talked back and forth about the tour routing. We talked about where we’d like to be, what certain cities we’d like to have days off in so we can take our families to go see the world. It’s all worked out perfectly. We can really make this work to our benefit.”
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The tour, which will kick off in Portugal on May 11, will touch down in Europe and then head to the US until mid-September. Tickets are go on sale.
And even though there are plenty of moving parts to this next wave of fame, the boy band is here for the long run.
“As long as we all communicate with each other, nobody is going to hold each other back,” said McLean. “We all want to push each other and support each other.”
