Backstage Pass

Backstreet’s back, all right.

The Backstreet Boys – featuring all five original members, including Kevin Richardson who officially returned to the fold last month – have finished a new album “In a World Like This,” due out July 30, and will start a tour Aug. 2 to celebrate their 20th anniversary. The tour, featuring Jesse McCartney and DJ Pauly D as openers, will stop at Nikon at Jones Beach...

Beck and Frank Ocean lead the pack with two nominations in the O Music Awards, which award the best in the intersection between music and technology.

Beck got nominations for best interactive music video and analog genius, while Ocean was nominated as “Must Follow Artist on Twitter” and in the “Too Much Ass for TV” category, which celebrates NSFW music videos. (Does anyone really stand a chance...

Hey, “American Idol” had a good finale!

Both Candice Glover and Kree Harrison performed well and the choice is in the “Idol” voters’ hands now. (And the judges didn’t get to talk much, so it was even more enjoyable than usual.)

Who will win? Well, if this was purely a singing competition, it would be Candice, who was both bolder with her vocal choices and a stronger singer overall. But...

This is probably the toughest of “The Voice” performance shows because there is so little time for all 12 contestants to perform. It’s the one show of the season where “The Voice” becomes very much like “American Idol” — without, you know, all the dysfunction.

The show is also the first one where mentors can no longer save their teams — only votes determine who moves forward. It’s also the...

Yeah Yeah Yeahs kick off a big Great GoogaMooga weekend at Prospect Park Friday.

Intro brings you the week’s hottest videos and shows every Monday. To catch up on all the Intros and watch classic Long Island music scene videos, check out Newsday Music’s YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/newsdaymusic.

THE LIST YEAH YEAH YEAHS, “Mosquito.” At Great GoogaMooga at Prospect...

Chris Hadfield, the Canadian astronaut and commander of the International Space Station celebrated the end of his five-month mission by unveiling the first music video filmed in space – for David Bowie’s “Space Oddity,” of course.

Hadfield, who has been using social media to generate interest in space travel, tweeted the video out Sunday night, saying, “With deference to the genius of David...

The results from the first public vote on “The Voice” turned out weird.

The show brought out their vote accounting firm Telescope’s chief executive Jason George to say there were “inconsistencies” in the week’s voting data and that the text and online voting results were thrown out. However, Carson Daly said that “Telescope certifies that removing those votes did not affect the outcome for...

This is what “American Idol” does best.

Most of the show’s problems faded away last night, as the focus shifted away from the comments from outsiders and the judges’ odd bickering back to the contestants for Hometown Visit Week. When (is “if” actually possible?) producers retool “Idol” in the off-season to try to reverse its ratings collapse, they should remember this show and go back to the...

Night Two of “The Voice” playoffs didn’t pack the same punch as the first night.

And even though Blake Shelton told his team to be on the lookout for big “moments” that they could use in their own performances, they didn’t really come out with major “moments” of their own. That may have been more Shelton’s doing with his ultra-country song choices than the finalists’ fault, though.

Shelton...

Lady Antebellum celebrated the birth of their fourth album “Golden” (Capitol Nashville) last night with talk of another upcoming birth: The first child for singer Hillary Scott and drummer Chris Tyrell.

When Scott, in her seventh month of pregnancy, pointed out a small puddle onstage at The McKittrick Hotel, she was quick to point out its origin. “That was a water bottle,” she said, “not my...