November’s just begun, but one of Backstreet Boys’ new holiday songs — “Last Christmas,” from their new album, A Very Backstreet Christmas — is already on the airwaves. Backstreet’s Howie Dorough says their fans are primed to start celebrating early this year and they’re happy to provide the soundtrack.

“I hear so many people that are telling us now, ‘I can’t believe that we’re already getting into the spirit,'”Howie tells ABC Audio. “I think that in the past, I’ve always thought, Christmas — you really shouldn’t be thinking about it ’til after Thanksgiving. But I think we’re changing things up for fans. I think they’re already in the Christmas spirit right now, really preparing for it. So that’s a blessing.”

While Backstreet is booked and busy promoting the album with appearances this entire holiday season —including the ABC special A Very Backstreet Holiday, airing December 14 — there’s one place they won’t be: Las Vegas. Last year they’d planned a holiday residency, but scrapped it. According to Howie, Backstreet will return to Sin City in the near future, though.

“We originally did have some Christmas shows last year … we were going to try to release the record last year. But unfortunately, with COVID and everything and some timelines that we didn’t meet to get the record out, we pushed that off,” Howie explains. “But there’s some talks about Las Vegas coming back around soon.”

“I can say we’re looking at, y’know, hopefully getting back out there after this run of the DNA [tour] to do some more shows on Vegas, maybe create another residency,” he teases. “So, we’ve got a lot of fun things [planned]. I mean, Backstreet Boys won’t be slowing down.” 

The “Backstreet Boys: Larger Than Life” residency ran from 2017 to 2019 and grossed more than $36 million.

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