Millennium (Jive, 1999)
Millennium is the third studio album (second in the U.S.) by American vocal pop group, the Backstreet Boys, released on May 18, 1999 by Jive Records. It was a highly anticipated follow-up to both their U.S. debut album, and their second internationally released album. It was their first album to be released in both the U.S. and internationally in the same form, at the same time. In the United States, it holds the record for most shipments in one year, with 11 million in 1999. It was nominated for five Grammy Awards and spawned four Top 40 singles, including the single I Want It That Way. Three of the singles, I Want It That Way, Larger than Life and Show Me the Meaning of Being Lonely, became some of their most successful and remembered hits of all time, with I Want It That Way becoming their biggest hit to date. Millennium has since become one of the best-selling albums of all time, selling over 24 million copies worldwide. The band promoted the album by the “Into the Millennium Tour,” which became one of the fastest-grossing tours of all time.
Millennium debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, where it remained for 10 non-consecutive weeks. It sold 1,134,000 copies in its first week of release, breaking the previous Nielsen SoundScan record held by Garth Brooks for single-week record sales. (This record was subsequently overtaken in 2000 by N’SYNC with the release of No Strings Attached.) Millennium sold nearly 500,000 copies in the US on its first day alone, setting a record for first-day sales, and became the best-selling album of 1999, selling 9,445,732 albums. It remained on the Billboard chart for 93 weeks, eventually selling over 13 million copies in the United States and being certified 13 times Platinum. As of October 2014, the album stands as the fifth best selling
album in the United States of the SoundScan era with 12,250,000 units sold.
I Want it That Way has since become the Backstreet Boys’ signature song. It peaked at #1 in Austria, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Scotland, Spain, Switzerland and in the UK, as well topping the European Hot 100 and Canadian and American adult contemporary charts.