If You Want It To Be Good Girl (Get Yourself A Bad Boy)

Album: Backstreet's Back (1997)
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Songfacts®:

  • In a video to promote their 2019 album DNA, four of the five Backstreet Boys picked this song as the track they really hate.

    AJ McLean said: "That song should've never been recorded. It is the biggest piece of crap," while Kevin Richardson added that it's "horrible."
  • So who was the only band member who didn't plump for this song? It was Nick Carter, who just happened to have lead vocals on the tune. "I don't really have a song that I don't like," he said.
  • The song was written and produced by Robert "Mutt" Lange, who was worked with artists ranging from AC/DC to Shania Twain. This song appears to be a temporary blimp on his illustrious resume.

    Despite the distaste for the tune among the guys, they did record another of Lange's songs, "It's Gotta Be You" for their next album Millennium.
  • In a 2019 Songfacts interview, BSB's Howie Dorough told us the record label wanted this to be the group's first single in America but the band was adamant they should choose a different song (which ended up being "We've Got It Goin' On"). He said, "Even though we weren't true, certified artists who had been in the business forever to know what's right and wrong, in our hearts it just didn't feel right coming out with that song. The lyrics, the tone and everything, we were just scared. Being a young group like that, we already had enough of a battle to fight, being accepted in the world and showing people that we were singing and not lip syncing. So, we actually held our ground with our management that we needed to change the idea of that."

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