Brian Littrell once joked in a 2014 interview: “To this day, I don’t know what ‘I want it that way’ means. But when 50,000 people sing it back to you, it means everything.” Director Wayne Isham’s music video—airport security corridor, white suits, choreographed anguish—cemented the song’s legacy. The image of Nick Carter leaning against a baggage carousel, mouthing “You are my fire,” became a generation’s shorthand for longing.
However, a very plausible link: The co-writer of "I Want It That Way" was (not Fuentez), but if you’re thinking of Johan "Jones" Wetterberg — no. Could it be Espanola/Fuentez from fan fiction or a tribute act? Or perhaps you mean Daisy Fuentes (TV host, not songwriter)?
Musicologist Nate Sloan calls this “emotional prosody mismatch”: the music says I love you , the lyrics say This hurts . That tension is why the song works as both a swooning prom slow-dance and a cathartic breakup anthem. It’s a Rorschach test in 3/4 time. Backstreet Boys - I want it that way -Fuentez -...
A more romantic theory: “Fuentez” was a pseudonym for , the co-writer of “Quit Playing Games (With My Heart).” Crichlow is of Trinidadian descent—not Spanish—so unlikely. Or perhaps “Fuentez” refers to Martin Fuentes , a sound engineer at Cheiron who allegedly added the reverse reverb on the final chorus.
In 2017, a Reddit user claiming to be Fuentez’s nephew posted: “My uncle Carlos played the arpeggios. He said Max Martin made him redo it 40 times until it ‘felt like a heartbeat.’ They paid him $800 and a pizza.” The post was deleted, but screenshots remain. Brian Littrell once joked in a 2014 interview:
But its true power emerged later: in memes. The “I Want It That Way” lyric mishearing (“I want it that way / I want it that gay”) became a running joke. The song’s use in Brooklyn Nine-Nine (Captain Holt’s “Oh my god, I’ve been saying it wrong for years!”) introduced it to Gen Z. And in 2023, a slowed-down reverbed version went viral on TikTok as the “sad realization” sound. If Carlos Fuentez (or whoever) existed, he never saw a royalty statement. Max Martin’s production team was famously insular; session musicians were paid flat fees and rarely credited. But the persistent rumor of Fuentez’s guitar part has taken on a life of its own.
In early 1999, before the final version was recorded, a session guitarist named (according to uncorroborated forum posts from ATRL and UKMix) was brought in to play the song’s clean electric guitar arpeggios. His contribution, some claim, was the “spark” that turned the demo into a hit—adding a Latin-tinged warmth to the sterile Swedish production. However, a very plausible link: The co-writer of
Whether fact or fiction, the Fuentez myth serves a larger truth: “I Want It That Way” was not the work of a single genius but a collision of talents—Swedish precision, American soul, and one anonymous guitarist whose three minutes of work helped define a decade. In 2024, the Backstreet Boys performed the song on their DNA World Tour. Nick Carter, now 44, introduced it: “This song has no real meaning. That’s why it means everything.” The crowd roared.
Twenty-seven years later, “I Want It That Way” has been streamed over 1.5 billion times, named Billboard’s #10 greatest boy band song of all time, and inspired countless parodies, memes, and wedding first dances. But beneath its glossy, radio-friendly surface lies a tangled story of creative conflict, accidental genius, and a ghost credit that fan forums still argue about: the mysterious “Fuentez.” To understand the song, you must understand the factory that built it: Cheiron Studios in Stockholm, Sweden. In the late ‘90s, producer Max Martin and his team—Denniz Pop (RIP), Kristian Lundin, Andreas Carlsson, and Rami Yacoub—were refining a formula that would dominate pop for two decades. Their method: write 50 choruses, keep the catchiest one, and prioritize melodic “hooks” over lyrical coherence.