THE BACKSTREETBOYS: Forever A Fan

“Never Gone” might be a best–selling album of ’90s pop music band Backstreet Boys, but the boys will be “Never Gone” from one Purdue student’s heart.

Genevieve DeSutter, a senior in the College of Consumer and Family Sciences, shows the shape of her heart in the form of five musically talented boys.

“People make fun of me all the time because of it, but I really like them because I like pop music,” DeSutter wrote in an e–mail. “I listened to them in the ’90s, just like everyone else did.”

DeSutter said ever since the band came out with the “Never Gone” album, she’s been hooked.

“It wasn’t the same cookie–cutter pop music of the ’90s, but it was a more mature sound,” DeSutter wrote.

DeSutter is a member of the Backstreet Boys Fan Club, but doesn’t think she’s obsessed.

“I don’t think I’m nearly as obsessed as I may seem,” DeSutter wrote. “But if you ask my friends, they would definitely say yes.”

Kelly McGinness, DeSutter’s roommate and a senior in the Collge of Liberal Arts, said she doesn’t think a day has gone by that she hasn’t heard DeSutter play at least one Backstreet Boys song.

McGinness and DeSutter attended the Backstreet Boys Concert at the Indiana State Fair in 2008.

“A couple days later, (DeSutter) called me and said she had been crying since she may never see them again in concert,” McGinness said. “She is not afraid to tell the world that she loves ‘the boys,’ as she would call them.”

DeSutter’s obsession with the band is contagious.

Lauren Farmer, DeSutter’s friend since freshman year and a senior in the College of Consumer and Family Sciences, said, “My love for the Backstreet Boys was revived due to (DeSutter’s) enthusiasm for ‘the boys.’”

Farmer went along to the Backstreet Boys concert at the fair with DeSutter and McGinness in 2008.

“One of the things that sticks out in my mind is how sad she was when it was over, since it was such a fantastic experience,” Farmer said.

DeSutter hasn’t given up on hope of a comeback from “the boys.”

“I think that most people are so fixated on who they were in the ’90s that they never give the new material a chance, even though it is genuinely different,” she wrote. “That’s okay with me, though, because no one can say that I like them just because everyone else does.”

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