10 Love Lessons We Learned From BSB’s Music

It’s February, meaning everyone is thinking about Valentine’s Day. And whether you’re single, dating, engaged or married, it’s probably easy to say that we were shaped by the crushed we had back when were teenyboppers. Many of us dreamed we’d one day marry a Backstreet Boy and grew up to learn that life just doesn’t work that way. (Though wouldn’t it be nice if it did?) We moved on and found our own princes and maybe…our tastes were BSB influenced. Our romantic expectations were easily influenced when we were younger and our Boys were ruling the boyband world. Hell, we still have expectations because of the way those damn Boys manage to charm us!

So here’s ten lessons in love…straight from the Boys’ music.

1. We Can Find A Man Who’ll Never Break Our Heart
Basically, the Boys sang an entire song promising they’d never hurt us. They’d never make us cry. They spend an entire song coaxing out of our broken hearted state, getting us to trust in love again. You know what? I grew up wanting to find a guy JUST like that. Broken Promises Boys! (Now I can bring up 10,000 Promises but I’m practicing some control.)

2. Even If What He’s Saying Makes No Sense, If It Sounds Romantic – It Is
I hate even encouraging this thought, but it’s not wrong. Let’s be honest with ourselves, the song I Want It That Way is BSB’s legacy. It’s the song everyone recognizes not only from 1999, but the 90s in general. But do you know what the lyrics actually mean? No! No one does! The Boys to this day can’t answer what the damn song is ACTUALLY about! But you know? The song is pretty. The song is romantic. No one really knows why…but it sounds like a love song so it is. A guy can say a bunch of nonsensical lyrics and if it sounds smooth, it’ll work.

3. Look For A Guy Who’ll Walk A Long Damn Way To Impress Us
So in Give Me Your Heart they offer to walk us home from school. Okay, that’s pretty tame. But then you get to Anywhere For You and that walk? It turns into something a little more intense: “I’d walk halfway around the world, for just one kiss from you…” and then there’s All I Have To Give where they say to get to us they’d walk a thousand miles! Oh and in Crawling Back To You, they give up walking and crawl to the point where their hands and knees are bruised. I mean, it’s hard to NOT have high expectations at this point.

4. It Doesn’t Matter If He Can’t Spell As Long As He’s Saying Sweet Things
I love the song Beautiful Woman, I really do. But if I pay attention to the spelling? I go a little crazy. “B is for beautiful as the sunshine, E tells me everything is feelin’ alright. A goes to you (I’m assuming You stands for U? Maybe?) and me swingin’ in town, T is two, I want you, You’ve got me actin’ like a Fool) Like…If you spell it out you have BEAUTIUFOOL with the way they’re spelling it in the song. Like, NO! No! No! But I mean, they are saying really nice things and they sound good…so okay.

5. If We Want It Good? Get Us A Boy Who Thinks He’s Bad
Remember, Nick was singing this when he was about 15/16 years old. He’s not even a bad boy NOW. None of them were. But they pretended to be pretty well. And they were and still are, pretty good guys. So go for the good guys trying to be bad. You can’t go wrong cause deep down, they’re the softies. Bad Boys well…they really are bad for you. Thank you Boys for pretending to be bad, because we knew it was a lie and learned the best of both worlds works best.

6. Loving A Serial Killer Can Sound Romantic In The Right Words
I’ve done a whole post talking about this. “I don’t care who you are, where you’re from, what you did, as long as you love me…” When you analyze this, it’s creepy. It’s unhealthy. But it’s worded in such a way that I know I to this day adore this song and smile any time I hear it, because of how it charmed me as a teenager. Even when I know that this is kind of disturbing. Basically that song says you can be a serial killer but if you love them? They’ll love you. Romantic? Sounds like it.

7. Love Can Be A Life Or Death Issue!
So…love is serious. I mean, it’s emotions and connections…but it can be life or death. In Falling Down Nick says, flat out…”I don’t wanna live my life without you.” Hell the Boys decide to leave their life in our hands in As Long As You Love Me. While promising how they’ll never break our hearts, they remind us they’d rather die than be without us. And don’t forget that in All I Have To Give they don’t think they can live without us. If I Don’t Have You which while lesser known, is one of my personal favorites, they’ll DIE if we say goodbye! There’s nothing more serious than that. Probably signs of something really unhealthy, looking back. But well, at least we learned love can be that powerful?

8. You Can Change Your Whole Life With A Phone Call
Let me tell the story ’bout the call that changed our destiny. Who knew a phone call could do so much? And it’s not even a one time thing? First there was a call that dropped out cause of dead battery and later lost a Backstreet Boy his girlfriend. But like a sequel, One Phone Call tells us that ever since that day it’s like a jail sentence. And while they’re in that jail? We’re their one phone call. They want to call their warden essentially since when you think about it. That’s a lot of love if we’re putting them through hell. The point is, phone calls? They are VERY important. Life changing!

9. Guys Are All About One Upping Each Other
Seriously. There’s two songs here that are all about topping your current boyfriend. I mean the song is called More Than That for Pete’s sake. They can give us more than our current boyfriends. They can do more. And in All I Have To Give? They put down all the nice gifts someone else gives us and shows us all about he can be better. We learned pretty early on that there’s always that guy who wants to go all Alpha Male to impress a pretty girl.

10. What Makes Someone Different, Can Make You Beautiful
The message in this song gave us all hope. No jokes or cracks about this last lesson. Mainly because this is something I wish more girls today realized. Everyone has that thing about them that makes them feel weird. Even if you don’t admit to it to anyone else, you know it’s true. I for example am pretty random. Most people call me quirky. We all have that trait where we wish no one noticed it. But, life would be boring if we’re all the same. The song is true, What Makes You Different Makes You Beautiful. Thank you Boys for putting this song out. It gave many of us hope at an age many of us needed it.

After all these years, we know one thing is true. The lesson the BSB fandom has taught any and all future boyfriends! If a guy ever wants to win our hearts? He lets you drag him to concerts to watch those Boys sing these songs to us. If he can do that? He’s a keeper.