The energy in the O2 Arena on Sunday is rowdy. Groups of women are waving flashing LED sticks and taking pulls from plastic bottles of red wine. Millennial friendship groups in white cargo trousers and bucket hats are filming each other with phone torches on. A girl in a diamante camo cap, carrying a cardboard cut-out of Kevin Richardson’s face, is shouting at her friend about someone being “done for assault”. It’s the first day of the UK leg of Backstreet Boys’ DNA World Tour (for 2022, at least – the tour, which has been running since 2019, has passed through London before) and the hours leading up to it were full of uncertainty as to whether or not it would go ahead.
Taking place the day after the tragic death of Nick Carter’s younger brother Aaron was announced, a heavy cloud hung over the proceedings. “My heart is broken,” Nick wrote on Instagram shortly before the show. “Even though my brother and I had a complicated relationship, my love for him has never faded.” He was visibly emotional during the two hour, 32-song set. But the mood of the night was one of palpable support, both from the audience and from fellow bandmates Kevin, AJ McLean, Howie Dorough and Brian Littrell, who hugged and high-fived him throughout.
