The Kelly Clarkson Show
“The Voice” coach and “American Idol” winner Kelly Clarkson welcomed the Backstreet Boys to her eponymous talk show on Wednesday, April 6. There the boy band performed the hit songs of… other boy bands! And Clarkson got on the mic to perform the Backstreet Boys’ 1999 hit “Show Me the Meaning of Being Lonely.”
Watch below.
The First Performance Was Part of the Game ‘Throw Me A Line’
One of the other guests on Wednesday’s show was comedian Taylor Tomlinson, so Clarkson enlisted her help in hosting the game “Throw Me A Line,” in which guests can show off their knowledge of music lyrics.
For this game, the teams were Brian Littrell, Kevin Richardson, and AJ McLean versus Clarkson, Nick Carter, and Howie Dorough. The team of Littrell, Richardson and McLean whupped up, singing iconic Boyz II Men songs “I’ll Make Love To You” and their own song “Larger Than Life.”
But Clarkson’s team did get the NSync hit “Bye, Bye, Bye,” though CLarkson cried foul that the other team got the song McLean wrote: “Unfair advantage! Unfair advantage!”
Later, Clarkson took to the stage to perform “Show Me the Meaning of Being Lonely.” In the YouTube comments, her fans were stunned at the emotion she put behind the cover.
“It’s amazing how she puts her emotions behind most songs she covers. You can feel it,” wrote one fan. Another added, “Kelly is a great storyteller.”
“It’s like hearing the song for the first time!” wrote another fan. “What a beautiful rendition!”
The Backstreet Boys’ Wives Are Ready For Them To Go On Tour… And Get Out of the House
During the interview segment, Clarkson played the boy band a clip from an interview with rapper Machine Gun Kelly where he recalled going to a Backstreet Boys concert as a kid and throwing up because the screaming fans were so loud.
“I don’t know how that equaled out to me throwing up, but I know it happened, though. They came down on these hoverboards and everyone was going to crazy and I [threw up],” said Kelly.
“Fortunately, we hadn’t started singing yet, so that wasn’t why he threw up. That’s a good thing,” cracked McLean.
But the reason Clarkson brought it up is because she has a lot of fans too, but she said that fans of boy bands are “a different ballgame.”
“I have friends that actually worked on y’all’s tour … and it’s like a different kind of fandom. They really are invested from a young age and it’s loud!” said Clarkson. “It’s like a different frequency.”
“Excited to get back out to the fans,” Dorough said of their upcoming tour.
“We’ve been chomping at the bit, just sitting at home, eating,” said Richardson, with another member off-camera adding, “Driving our wives crazy.”
“[Touring] is a different kind of energy and we thrive on that energy,” added McLean. “Don’t get me wrong, our kids were so happy that we were home for the last two years, but our wives were like — you have to go back to work. Please go back to work.”
And Carter said that he thinks now, with restrictions lifting but the world still being pretty chaotic, entertainment is more important than ever.
“Now, especially with the way everything is in the world, entertainment is so needed right now. Our job is so important to get people’s minds off things,” he said.
Tickets for the Backstreet Boys’ DNA World Tour are on sale now. The tour kicks off April 8 in Las Vegas and runs through September 14 in Oklahoma City for the North American leg. Then on October 3, the tour heads to Europe through November 6 before picking back up in Australia and New Zealand in February 2023.
“The Voice” returns in the fall of 2022. With no spring 2022 season, it is the first time in the show’s history that it will only air one season per year. There is no official word yet as to which coaches are returning.
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