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The One (Backstreet Boys song)

2000 single by Backstreet Boys

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 31, 2026
Entity authorityQ2586504 ↗
Source-derived summary

"The One" is a song by American boy band Backstreet Boys. It was released on May 1, 2000, as the fourth and final single from their third studio album, Millennium (1999). It reached the top 10 in Canada, Hungary, Portugal, Romania, Spain, and the United Kingdom, and it peaked at number 30 on the US Billboard Hot 100.

Background

A sneak preview of the song was released on the Selections from A Night Out with the Backstreet Boys CD on November 17, 1998, and had a slightly different sound to it, while another preview was shown at the end of Britney Spears' album ...Baby One More Time (under the title "I'll Be the One") two months later.

In a 2001 interview on The View, the group stated they never really intended "The One" as their fourth single. The group held a poll on TRL allowing fans to choose the next single from their album, and after Nick Carter himself called in and voted for "The One," his large fan-base followed. The rest of the group had preferred the song "Don't Want You Back," leading in votes up to that point.

Music video

Background

The music video was directed by Chris Hafner and Kevin Richardson in April 2000. Most of the video is in widescreen format, though the within letterboxed black area are pulses of color based on the brightness of the shots. The choruses mainly feature two different clips side-by-side, further letterboxing the video.

Editorial summary

“The One (Backstreet Boys song)” enters the record as 2000 single by Backstreet Boys. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Backstreet, Boys and song can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2000, 1999, 1998, 2001—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 2000-05-16. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Backstreet, Boys and song.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“The One (Backstreet Boys song)” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Backstreet, Boys and song provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2586504. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2000, 1999, 1998 and 2001.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “The One (Backstreet Boys song)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.