When the hamburger-shaped spaceship with the word “Millennium” on the back lowered down above me, I figured I was in for something special. What I didn’t expect was that, for the next two hours, the “Millennium…” let’s call it “Falcon,” would fly through an asteroid field before docking on a planet with light cycles and noir landscapes, as lines of code dropped down like rain and huge cylindrical gates of stars swirled around. But that’s what happened, and, I must say, it was phenomenal.
Last weekend, the iconic boy band Backstreet Boys started a short run of shows at the Sphere in Las Vegas, Nevada. It’s that huge dome you’ve certainly seen on social media that houses its own unique Darren Aronofsky film, will soon reimagine The Wizard of Oz, and has played host to mega bands like U2, Dead & Company, Phish, and the Eagles. Backstreet Boys are the first pop group to play the venue, though, and when the dates were announced earlier this year, my wife, her best friend, and I knew we had to be there.
Fast forward through months of waiting, miles traveled, and dollars spent, and we finally arrived at the Sphere for the show. We were there for night two of the multi-week run, so we implemented a strict 24-hour social media blackout to avoid being spoiled by videos and clips from the first night. That was mostly successful, so, as we entered the venue, we had no idea what to expect.
Okay, we had a little bit of an idea. Backstreet’s Sphere performances celebrate the 25th anniversary of the album Millennium, which, even if you aren’t a fan of the band, you almost certainly know. It was one of the biggest albums in history, with singles such as “Larger Than Life” and “I Want It That Way.” That, coupled with the fact we’ve seen Backstreet at venues all across Los Angeles and Las Vegas over the past decade, gave us a bit of an idea what to expect. But once the countdown clock clicked to zero, things were taken to a whole other level.
As you sit waiting for the show to start, you’re in this huge pseudo-laboratory. It’s dominated by a massive, phallic structure in the middle, which seems to serve no purpose. But, when the show starts, we learn this structure is basically a mega telescope that lets us rocket into space. It’s here we encounter the “Millennium Falcon,” fly around the asteroid, and we’re off to the races.
What’s hard to even describe in words is the feeling of watching all this happen. This was my first time ever at the Sphere, and it’s unlike anything I’ve seen before. It’s a completely immersive experience that stretches beyond what your eye can see. So, as long as you don’t turn completely around, you feel like the band is performing in a different place from where you’re sitting. Places that change in wild, imaginative, colorful ways throughout the show. And, more often than not, those visuals are sci-fi influenced.
So, for the show’s opener, “Larger Than Life,” we get those “Millennium Falcon” scenes that mirror Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back. A little later, “More Than That” takes us through a space station filled with red roses and silver beings, almost like Silver Surfer visits The Hunger Games. The song “Siberia” takes the group to a snow planet (Hoth?) where huge statues of their faces (almost like the Donner Superman) are carved into mountains. And, up until this point, I felt like maybe I was imagining all the nerdiness. But then Backstreet did “Get Another Boyfriend.”
During that song, two-wheeled vehicles that aren’t quite like lightcycles, but very darn close, blaze through a shiny, tech-inspired landscape. It’s kind of like the Grid from Tron, until the camera pans up. That’s when we see, way up in the sky, it’s actually a smoky, dark, neo-noir skyline. Immediately I said, “Tron meets Blade Runner.” It’s both obvious and, frankly, awesome.
Songs that follow had monoliths very reminiscent of 2001: A Space Odyssey, a huge, dare I say, world of water, and a clearly Tetris-inspired scene during “Quit Playing Games (With My Heart).” At this point, a few of these connections were stretches, but others weren’t, and after flying through an underwater oasis during “Shape of My Heart” and the stage literally leaving the ground to simulate a spaceship during “I Want It That Way,” the final three songs of the night locked everything in.
“We’ve Got it Going On” has the group singing in a sunburned, post-apocalyptic landscape that, at its center, houses multiple rings quickly circling a large ball of light. It looked like Stargate and the machine in Contact rolled into one. That went into “The Call,” which was literally just The Matrix. No hiding it. Code drops from the top of the Sphere all the way down just like in the movies. It couldn’t be clearer. Finally, for the last song of the night, the group did “Everybody (Backstreet’s Back).” “Everybody” is probably Backstreet’s most famous song and already had a super geeky monster music video when it was released in 1997. Later, it also made an appearance in Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s 2013 meta-comedy This Is the End. So there was already some strong pop culture grounding. Here, though, this version wasn’t filled with monsters or angels. It was, again, a huge sci-fi landscape filled with dancing robots that all looked like Star Wars Battle Droids wearing Mandalorian helmets.
Now, was I merely reading this into the show? Was I projecting my love of these movies onto the performance? At some points, most definitely, and honestly I’m fine with it. As the “Millennium Falcon” brought us back to the original laboratory, marking the end of the evening, I sat there in disbelief. I’d just witnessed not just a super fun, energetic pop show in arguably the most incredible, immersive venue in the entire world, but I had also been taken on a trip through worlds clearly inspired by, and sometimes directly based on, some of my favorite movies ever. Talk about a magical night I’ll never forget.
Backstreet Boys’ “Into the Millennium” tour at the Sphere in Las Vegas runs during the weekends through the end of August. Then, there’s a possibility it could come back in 2026. If it does, I’m going again. Without a doubt.