* NSYNC’s album No Strings Attached has turned 20 years old, and the artists are now looking back on the album that made them in the stars we know today.
No Strings Attached was released by Jive Records on March 21, 2000. The project featured some of America’s all-time classic singles “It’s Gonna Be Me,” “Bye, Bye, Bye” and more, selling well over 2.4 million copies in its first week, and ultimately 11 million. The album eventually became Billboard’s album of the year. However, the journey to creating No Strings Attached was filled with ups and downs, as well as some major influences from fellow artists at the time, like Destiny’s Child.
In an interview with Entertainment Tonight, managers and music producers for NSYNC’s Justin Timberlake, Lance Bass, Joey Fatone, Chris Kirkpatrick, and JC Chasez, opened about the era of No Strings Attached. “None of us knew that was going to be the album of our lifetime,” Bass, 40, told ET. At the time, Destiny’s Child’s 1999 hit album Writings on the Wall inspired the boy band to make “Bye, Bye, Bye.” “There are always links with other songs that were popular at the time. Like, we did our Swedish version of those songs. ‘Bye Bye Bye’ would probably be ‘Bills, Bills, Bills,'” said music producer and songwriter, Andreas Carlsson. “We were like, ‘We want to do R&B too. Here’s our version.’ But it sounded nothing like R&B in the end. It became something else.”
While the group was on top of the world, a legal battle between the group and their manager and founder Lou Pearlman and RCA were tearing at their creative process. However, music producer Alex Greggs said the lawsuit “made everything great.” “We lost some songs, but those songs were written for a different group — they weren’t meant for a group that had just gone through this battle,” he said. “The environment changed into a more aggressive and positive one of, ‘Let’s go out there and really do what we want now that we’re not being held back.’ It took the reins off, and Jive was very open and supportive.” He added: “There was definitely a cloud that went away — and it was a cloud that nobody knew was there until it was gone and the sun came out. Once we were in the studio, there was a whole new energy. There was some fight in them.” After the drama, the band kept their manager, Johny Wright, who still managers Timberlake today, ET reports.
But, RECORDS CEO and former Jive Records president, Barry Weiss said the lawsuit was more beneficial to the band than detrimental. “It was the marketing/press campaign money couldn’t buy,” said Weiss, now CEO of RECORDS. “It created an inordinate amount of pent-up demand in the marketplace, so when the album came out, it was a volcanic explosion of sales. Bye Bye Bye,’ the American Music Awards performance of ‘Bye Bye Bye,’ the video for ‘Bye Bye Bye,’ MTV and TRL [helped],” he says. “But ultimately, the lawsuit was the biggest driver.”
Greggs also mentioned that the late and forever missed Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes, was a talent he’d never seen before. The producer said the rapper-songwriter knocked out her guest verse on “Space Cowboy (Yippie-Yi-Yay)” in one take. “She knocked it out in 15 minutes. It was insane. She walked in and was like, ‘OK, mic check, yada yada yada, record,’ and I think we did two takes and used the first one. Then she was like, ‘OK, bye!’ It was over before it happened, but a lot of things with the band during those days were like that — a whirlwind. She was such a cool person. Later on, watching *NSYNC at their peak [we saw] how valuable every minute of the day is, so for her to come in, knock it out and walk out of the studio was nothing odd,” said Greggs.
One of the last topics to be addressed was the alleged beef between *NSYNC and the Backstreet Boys, which was never a beef at all. “They weren’t at all in competition mode with Backstreet,” Greggs said. “That was a fan-built thing, and the label loved it because it drove record sales. The Backstreet guys would hang with us all the time. I remember one time we were all hanging out with Howie [Dorough] and JC, and somebody pulled me aside and said, ‘I can’t believe those guys are in the same place! Don’t they hate each other?’ I was like, ‘Absolutely not.’ I know in the beginning, Lou played them off against each other. The only time they weren’t [friendly] was when Lou was involved, and that was part of the all-round weirdness of Lou. He would always be telling you secrets, and they were meant to separate as opposed to [unite] everyone. He made it, so you didn’t want to talk to the other guys.”
“It’s been fun going down memory lane because [there are] so many stories we just forgot. When you’re in the middle of it, you don’t know what’s going on — you’re just so busy doing what you’ve got to do that you don’t see what’s really happening,” said Bass.
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