The Backstreet Boys' musical style has evolved over the years. On their debut and second album, they sang a Hybrid of R&B and dance club pop mixed with new jack balladry and hip-hop. With Millennium and Black & Blue, they started to abandon R&B and shift more toward pop and pop rock, as demonstrated on songs like "I Want It That Way", "Shape of My Heart", "Larger than Life", and "Not For Me". The group drastically changed their style in 2005 with their comeback album Never Gone, which is an adult contemporary record featuring only live instruments, a departure from their previous pop sound that features a lot of synthesizers. Compared to their previous albums, Never Gone is "more organic, more stripped-down, less harmonies, more instrumentation". Their first album without Richardson, Unbreakable, is similar to Never Gone. It leans toward adult contemporary and contemporary pop music and features interwoven choral harmonies, piano, strings, guitar, and drums, with a little bit of hip-hop and reggae elements on some tracks, such as "One in A Million". With their seventh studio album, This Is Us, they went back to their original dance-pop beats combined with electropop. It also contains a more R&B sound compared to Unbreakable. The group's first independent album, In A World Like This, which is also their first album back with Richardson, is a mixture of modern pop, adult contemporary, and dance music, with a hint of singer-songwriter genre as demonstrated on "Try", "Madeleine", and "Trust Me".