When Kevin Richardson left the Backstreet Boys in June 2006, he walked away from the biggest boy band of the previous decade and left behind a question nobody wanted to ask out loud: could four voices still sound like the group that had sold out arenas on five continents? The four remaining members had an answer ready, but it would take them more than a year to record it. On October 24, 2007, the album Unbreakable arrived in Japan, the first Backstreet Boys record made without Richardson and the first to test whether the name still meant what it once did.
No auditions for a replacement
The band refused to hold auditions for a new member. A reality show offered exactly that, and the group turned it down. Instead, AJ McLean, Howie Dorough, Nick Carter and Brian Littrell went into the studio as a quartet, determined to keep the lineup exactly as it was. That decision shaped everything about Unbreakable, from the songwriting to the production and, later, the tour that carried the album around the world.
The studio picture had changed just as much as the lineup. For the first time, the Backstreet Boys made an album without the Swedish hitmakers Max Martin and Kristian Lundin, the producers who had shaped their biggest singles. The main job went to Dan Muckala, who had already worked with the group on the single "Incomplete." Other producers came in for individual tracks, and one arrival raised eyebrows: JC Chasez of *NSYNC, the rival boy band that had once traded chart positions with the Backstreet Boys, produced and co-wrote several dance tracks for the record.
The band members themselves took a bigger role in the writing. They co-wrote five songs with Jeremy Carpenter, and the sound they built together mixed adult contemporary pop with pop-rock and dance music. The group called the album "a mixture of old and new," and they cited one unexpected inspiration: the reunion of Take That. If a British boy band could return and be taken seriously, the Backstreet Boys reasoned, so could they. The result was a record that tried to sound grown-up without abandoning the harmonies that had made them famous.
Inconsolable and the album's range
The first single, "Inconsolable," came out in August 2007 and gave the album an early foothold in Europe. In Italy it climbed to number two, and in Switzerland it reached the top ten. The song did exactly what a lead single should: it reminded listeners of the old Backstreet Boys while quietly introducing the new four-man version. Not every track aimed for the same mood. "Everything But Mine" was a synth-driven dance number with an electronic riff, while the closing track "Unsuspecting Sunday Afternoon" split into two parts, opening with a one-minute a cappella intro before settling into a three-and-a-half-minute ballad. All four members have called it the best song on the album.
Japan embraced Unbreakable immediately. It debuted at number one and sold more than 102,000 copies in its first week, holding the top spot for a second week as well. The album also reached number one in Taiwan. In the United States the response was more modest: the record entered the Billboard 200 at number seven with 81,000 copies sold in its first week, making it the band's sixth consecutive top-ten album in the country. Worldwide, the album eventually moved 1.7 million copies, a fraction of the Backstreet Boys' peak years but enough to prove the quartet could still find an audience.
The Unbreakable Tour turned that proof into a global statement. It began in Japan on February 16, 2008, and ran for 99 concerts across Asia, Australia, the Americas and Europe before ending in Mexico on March 13, 2009. The routing was deliberate: the band played countries they had not visited in years, including Russia, Latvia, Estonia and Peru. The tour became a victory lap for a group that had refused to replace its missing member, and the final show in Los Angeles delivered a moment no setlist could have predicted.
At that last concert, Kevin Richardson walked on stage and joined the band. It was not a permanent return, not yet, but it closed the Unbreakable era with the five of them together one more time. Three years after that, in 2012, Richardson officially rejoined the group. Unbreakable had done its job: it carried the Backstreet Boys through their first album as a quartet and kept the door open for the day they would be five again.
Unbreakable had done its job: it carried the Backstreet Boys through their first album as a quartet and kept the door open for the day they would be five again.