The members of R&B vocal group Boyz II Men have plenty to celebrate this week. The Philadelphia natives were excited to tout the Eagles’ Super Bowl victory.
Appearing onstage in all white, the three current members of the group — who have been releasing music for more than 33 years — were excited to get the party started. Though admittedly, this might seem like an unusual definition of “party.”
Boyz II Men is a now-trio-once-quartet of singers that formed at the Philadelphia Creative and Performing Arts high school in the late 1980s. Inspired by — and eventually championed by — their predecessors, New Edition, Boyz II Men quickly rose to fame in the early 1990s and continually broke Billboard chart records with songs such as “The End of the Road” and “One Sweet Day.”
The current lineup includes Nathan Morris, Wanyá Morris and Shawn Stockman, and these three guys are a well-oiled singing machine together. It isn’t at all a surprise to find out they’ve had more than three decades of experience making music; their harmonies are so smooth and flawless that they often sound as if they have one voice.
While their show Sunday night at Rivers Casino on Pittsburgh’s North Side was on the shorter side — just a bit over an hour, and felt like it went faster — I can’t say I felt cheated. There have been plenty of acts that play two-hour-long sets but never deliver what the audience actually wants, but the same could not be said for Boyz II Men; there wasn’t an ounce of filler on their setlist.
Even throwing in a verse of Michael Jackson’s “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Ge Enough” in their opening medley felt satisfying. Watching the in-sync trio dancing around onstage amidst fog and pulsing blue-purple lights, it felt like getting to see the long time professionals that these guys are, and that’s something special.
But they brought out all the hits, too; even non-fans would have known more than half of the songs they sang.
“Take it nice and slow, don’t hurt yourself,” Nathan Morris said as the drummer kicked them into the soothing “Water Runs Dry,” one of those songs that would elicit a snap of the fingers and an “oh yeah, I’ve heard this one!” from a lot of people who lived through the ’90s.
After doing a verse of “Can You Stand The Rain?” they moved into pop chart powerhouse “On Bended Knee,” encouraging the audience to clap along at the end through their soul-rending vocals. It’s an amazing thing that after so many years, they can still sing these songs like they’re living through the worst breakups of their lives, simultaneously.
The chorus repeated under blue and white lights with the crowd swaying back and forth, each of the members walking casually around the stage, coming to the center to sing in a tight-knit triangle.
After the more upbeat “Hey Lover,” they took a pause to thank the crowd for weathering cold, rain and snow to come out. The crowd certainly didn’t seem to mind the weather.
They kept mixing things up, with “Uhh Ahh” a highlight of their playful harmonies (fun fact: this song’s beginning in sampled in “Countdown” by Beyonce), and “4 Seasons of Loneliness” allowed each member of the trio to show off their individual ranges.
Then they tried something a little different with a medley of covers, including an achingly beautiful version of Sam Cooke’s “A Change is Gonna Come”; a rocking pair of Lenny Kravitz hits (“Are You Gonna Go My Way?” and his cover of “American Woman”) and a fun and upbeat sendup of Bruno Mars’ “Locked Out of Heaven.”
They closed out this mini-set with an ode to Prince with “Purple Rain,” pulling out all the stops, including a killer guitar solo by Stockman.
They took the opportunity to remember Prince, Whitney Houston and Michael Jackson, as well as their own mothers and grandmothers — the inspirations for their musical careers — who are no longer with us. This moment of memorializing added a new bittersweet tinge to “It’s So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday,” and then “One Sweet Day,” their 1995 duet with Mariah Carey that held the longest streak atop the Billboard Hot 100 until it was broken by Lil Nas X in 2019.
But Mariah wasn’t there, so the audience had to pick up the slack. They didn’t disappoint; the lifted-high voices of the crowd were nearly as loud as the ones onstage, singing Carey’s parts of “One Sweet Day.” The whole moment felt spiritual, like a church service for lovers of music.
They followed that with “I’ll Make Love To You,” another of their well-remembered hits, and then a lovely goodbye to the assembled concertgoers before launching into another chart record setter, “The End of the Road.”
But we weren’t getting out of there without one final gesture to Philly — and an opportunity for Morris, Morris and Stockman to show off their still-fresh dance moves. “Motownphilly,” with its harmonized scatting and New Jack Swing beat, is an absolute classic and the song that catapulted Boyz II Men into the stratosphere. It’s no wonder they still look like they have fun performing it, under rainbow lights and with creative little vocal runs here and there to accentuate how fun the song is.
Morris thanked the crowd for 33 years. “You know what? I don’t have anything else to do, why don’t we spend another 33 years together?”
All three members stayed onstage long after the last note was warbled, talking to fans and bobbing along to the band’s last jamming riffs. It’s amazing to fit so many hits into such a quick set, but Boyz II Men made every second count.
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