I Want It That Way
| "I Want It That Way" | |
|---|---|
| Song |
"I Want It That Way" was the most successful single from the Backstreet Boys' 1999 album, Millennium. It was written by Max Martin and Andreas Carlsson. The song is considered the band's biggest hit to date, and was one of the biggest hits of 1999. The song was highly played on the radio, and the video, directed by Wayne Isham, was well played on television. It was later released on the Backstreet Boys' greatest hits album, The Hits: Chapter One, in 2001.
Popular success
The single broke the record for most radio station adds in its first week with 165. It reached the #1 spot on the Billboard Adult Contemporary charts, where it stayed for 14 weeks. On the Billboard Top 40 Mainstream chart, it set a record for most weeks at #1. The single, however, failed to reach #1 on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at #6. The song was honored with three Grammy nominations, including one for "Record Of The Year".
The song hit big in the UK, debuting at #1 on the singles chart. The song eventually set a record for the most weeks on the chart since the chart was conceived in the 1980's. "I Want It That Way" made chart history in the Netherlands being the first single ever to debut at #1 in the Top 40, without being in the "Tip Parade" first. The song also entered the charts at #1 in Italy, Spain, Canada, Austria, Switzerland and Germany and went on to reach the #1 spot in over 18 nations.
The song was voted #10 in the MTV/Rolling Stone list of the "100 Greatest Pop Songs Of All Time" in 2000. It was ranked #16 on Blender Magazine's 500 Greatest Songs Since You Were Born list and #61 on Vh1 100 Greatest Songs Of The Past 25 Years.
Parodies
- Weird Al Yankovic made a parody called "eBay".
- A parody called "Which Backstreet Boy is Gay" became an Internet phenomenon & also became misattributed to "Weird Al" Yankovic.
- I Want A Fat Babe is a ShockWave video featuring the Backstreet Boys (referred to in the parody as the SnackTreat Boys) discovering and praising an obese woman in song and dance.
- I Want It That Way is a humorous video of two Beijing college students lip-synching and imitating the style of the Backstreet Boys.
- Blink-182 sent the video up in the video for their song All The Small Things
- In one Get Fuzzy cartoon, Bucky Katt parodies the song to make it about pigeons, "I Bit It My Way".