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Prepare for your mind to be blown, because once you hear it, you can't un-hear it: the acoustic guitar riff which opens Backstreet Boys' single I Want it That Way – which dropped this very month 25 years ago – was inspired by Metallica's Nothing Else Matters. That's straight from the horse's mouth, the horse in this case being songwriter Andreas Carlsson. He co penned the hit along with insanely well credentialed songwriter Max Martin (who's responsible for Britney's 1998 smash ...Baby One More Time ) for Backstreet Boys' third album Millennium . As for what the "that" in the chorus refers to, Backstreet Boys bandmember Kevin Richardson has said: "There are a lot of songs out there that don't make sense, but make you feel good when you sing along to them. And [ I Want it That Way ] is one of them." Case closed!

APRIL

THIS MONTH:

Backstreet Boys in the clip for I Want it That Way (1999)

Billy Joel

Emma Donovan

Taylor Swift has said that to create something new, she'll "attack" her previous creation. And that's precisely what the cover art for her super secret 2020 album Folklore did – in the gentlest, most cottagecore way possible. In comparison to 2018's Lover – a rainbow pastel parade of glitter and excess – Folklore was positively subdued, its cover depicting Swift staring wistfully up at the enormous trees of a pastoral hamlet in Lewisboro, NY (rumoured to be owned by her pals Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds). Shot in a monochrome palette, the art was a reflection of not only the record's music, but that the whole aesthetic was conceived during the COVID pandemic. Looking back at the stories behind our favourite album covers, this month it's Taylor Swift's woodland-wandering Folklore (2020).

The Tortured Poets Department

by Taylor Swift is out April 19 via Universal.

"I had this idea for the [cover art] that it would be this girl sleepwalking through the forest in a nightgown in 1830," Swift said , tongue-in-cheek, just after the album's release. "Very specific... I'd done my hair and makeup and brought some nightgowns. These experiences I was used to having, with 100 people on set, commanding alongside other people in a very committee fashion - all of a sudden it was just me and [photographer Beth Garrabrant]."

APRIL 2024

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