I Want IT That Way - Parodies and Pop Culture

Parodies and Pop Culture

• Ryan Adams performed the song live several times starting in 1999, albeit with a satirical slant. He played acoustic guitar on his cover version and routinely touted the quality of the song. However, he frequently attributed the tune to 'N Sync or claimed ignorance as to which boy band performed the original.
• Howard Stern had a parody on his show called "The Gay Way", which was sung by his band The Losers.
• "Weird Al" Yankovic made a hugely popular parody called "eBay" on his 2003 album Poodle Hat. The song peaked at #115 on the Billboard charts.
• A parody called "Which Backstreet Boy is Gay" became an Internet phenomenon and also became misattributed to "Weird Al" Yankovic. It was actually performed by the morning crew at Portland, Oregon radio station KKRZ-FM, known locally as Z100.
• 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.
• The above mentioned lip-synching students are parodied in the first episode of the first season of TV series Heroes. Two young men can be seen miming to the song in a scene featuring Hiro Nakamura and Ando Masahashi in a bar.
• Blink-182 sent the video up in the video for their song "All the Small Things".
• Mr. Meaty characters Josh and Parker lip-synched this song in a commercial on Nickelodeon.
• ApologetiX wrote a parody called "I Want in That Place" on their 2000 "Spoofernatural" album.
• Bob Saget sings his version Danny Tanner Was Not Gay in his stand-up routine.
• The Oh Boyz sing a parody called "I Want in My Way" on Kim Possible.
• Sanjaya Malakar, Phil Stacey, and Chris Sligh performed the song as a comical performance on American Idol Season 6 Tour.
• Josh Farro, Zac Farro, and Jeremy Davis of Paramore sang this song with a Japanese representative while on tour in Japan for their album All We Know Is Falling.
• Cricketers Brett Lee, Shane Watson, and Kumar Sangakkara sang this song during the inaugural DLF Indian Premier League tournament.
• Main characters, Shawn and Gus from USA Network's Psych, played by James Roday and Dulé Hill respectively, sing a rendition of the song while trying to block Juliet (Maggie Lawson) from the spotlight during the end credits of the episode "Forget Me Not."
• Christian comedian Tim Hawkins parodied the song as "I Work at Subway".
• Posted in October 2009, a popular YouTube video titled "A Day at the Office" showed five young office workers recording themselves on laptop webcams doing a lip dub performance of "I Want it That Way."
• Selena Gomez & the Scene cover the song on their House of Blue Tour.
• British boyband JLS performed this song and Everybody (Backstreet's Back), along with two N Sync songs in a medley on their tour to support second album Outta This World.
• Teenage boyband, Connected, sang cover version of "I Want it That Way" on the popular British Talent TV show Britain's Got Talent in auditions for judges on May 1, 2010. YouTube video titled "Connected – Britain's Got Talent 2010 – Auditions 3"
• Several of the Dancemania series albums have featured eurodance remixes of the song, including CJ Crew's uptempo remix recorded for the 2001 compilation Dancemania SPEED 6.
• Psychedelic rock Vanilla Fudge covered it on their album The Return.
• Limbeck covered the song on The Skiball Champs EP.
• In 2010, Steel Panther covered the song on a few live shows and released the single as a download in the UK
• An animated version of the music video was shown on the beginning of the Arthur television special, Arthur: It's Only Rock 'n' Roll. The five members were also featured as guest stars.
• In the comedic piece Murder in the Knife Room by Jonathan Rand, the character "Boy Band Reject" claims to be the writer of the song, him being "the sixth Backstreet Boy."
• Brazilian comedian Rafinha Bastos parodied the band as "Backstreet Farmers", sing this single.