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Interviews(2)
Here are going to be articles or interviews of the band, many will be humorous, so get ready to laugh.
Now find out
exactly what happened behind the scenes at our
cover shoot...
Alarm calls
We're all set up and ready to photograph *NSYNC in
their hometown of Orlando, FL. The lights,
backdrops, clothes are all in place. Only one thing is
not in place. The band. They are nowhere in sight.
Turns out it's harder for them to roll out of their own
comfy beds than it was for them to jump out of the
back-breaking ones they'd been using on the road.
Their publicist and manager have it covered,
though—they're speed-dialing each of them to make
sure they're on their way.
Lance, a businessman through and through, is the
first to arrive. "Time is money, and I hate wasting
either," he says.
JC is next with his new "just rolled out of bed"
hairstyle, though we later learn it takes about half an
hour to achieve that messy look.
Soon after, Chris blows through like a bat out of
hell—literally. He's wearing strange bat wings and
flapping into walls and people as he makes his way
into hair and makeup. Seconds later he's pretending
to be Bruce Lee and busting kung fu moves on
everybody in sight. All this and he hasn't even had
his first Mountain Dew of the day.
Joey, with his new cheetah-print hair, walks past
everyone in a hurry to get to the rest room. His new
'do is for the movie, 'On the Line,' which he's making
with Lance (look out for it this fall). He plays a
drummer in a grunge band. Even though Joey has
spent some time behind the skins, it's kind of a
stretch, since he's more Boyz II Men than Nirvana.
Justin's the last to arrive, in his new Cadillac
Escalade. As he rounds the corner to the studio, we
actually think the booming bass from his jacked-up
sound system is a thunderstorm rolling in—even
though there isn't a cloud in the sky. He should pass
out earplugs to anyone who rides with him.
Now that they're all here, we can finally start the
shoot. First up: the Beatles-esque black turtleneck
shots—the boys love how clean these pics look. Next
come the custom-made graffiti outfits—JC jokes that
he feels a little weird having *NSYNC on his ass.
(Each of the guys' suits is spray-painted with their
names and the name of the group.) Everyone has a
blast in the limo shots. Joey gets so silly he even
moons us! Then the guys put on the fluorescent
outfits—but they let us know they aren't really feeling
the look. Once they see the Polaroids, though, they
quickly change their minds, because the colors look
so cool on film.
After a whole day of acting like total pros—we're
starting to believe we're seeing a new, more mature
*NSYNC—Joey lets out a monstrous burp and
everyone laughs. Then Chris makes fake farting
noises and Justin starts an R-rated sing-a-long (sorry,
the lyrics are too rude to print). In unison, the rest of
the guys join in. "When we get really silly, you know
two things," says Chris. "We're done with the shoot,
and my Mountain Dew has kicked in."
Rolling Stone Article
True Tales of the Pop Life
Ride with Justin at seventy mph! Experience Joey's brush
with death! Sip red wine with JC! Console a heartbroken
Chris! Wheel and deal with Hollywood Lance!
By Touré
Picture this: a bunch of guys sitting around talking about girls. Just
a normal guys-talking-about-dream-women sort of convo, one man
dropping the name of some goddess, and the others cheering in
response. Beyonce Knowles, Janet Jackson, Jennifer Lopez and
Lucy Liu all get their props. But we're in Orlando, Florida, in a
recording studio, tinkering with a song called "Girlfriend," for an
album called Celebrity by a quintet called 'NSync; so these guys
talking goddesses are young and paid with the style, fame and looks
to actually nab one of these goddesses, which changes the dynamic
of the conversation from abstract dreaming to abstract planning.
There's a valley of knobs and red, green and yellow dots of light, a
bank of speakers, a recordable CD on which someone has written
"'NSucks" and a slew of Aeron chairs, but the whole room is
probably smaller than your bedroom if you live with your parents.
To the right is producer Pharrell Williams of the Neptunes - who
has worked with Jay-Z, Mystikal and Ol' Dirty Bastard - leaning
back in a white Polo shirt with a pink Ralph Lauren logo. To
Williams' left sits Chris Kirkpatrick of 'NSync. His hair is maroon
and spiky, and he wears baggy orange Abercrombie and Fitch
cargo shorts and Air Jordans. And next to Chris is Justin
Timberlake, sporting paint-splattered jeans, a plain white T-shirt, a
big diamond stud in each ear, a Top Gun-ish crew cut and
blue-tinted sunglasses resting at the base of his neck. (Lance Bass
and JC Chasez will show up in a few hours to contribute their
vocals, and Joey Fatone will come in tomorrow.)
Justin's dinner, a small Denny's chicken-fried steak with runny
cheese eggs and something resembling mashed potatoes, is waiting
nearby. He's restless, driven, polite and pleasant - especially
pleasant, positive and encouraging when coaching Chris on his
vocals. He's not a goody-goody, though he calls his mom his best
friend. "There's nothing in this world that I've done that my mother
does not know about," he says. He spontaneously launches into
songs by Bill Withers or Missy Elliott, or paeans to his
grandmother's cooking. "Once you've had my grandmother's peach
cobbler, you are saved!" Imagine one of those highly energized kids
who go to church camp, then add a healthy dose of hip-hop
flavoring.
You probably already know that Justin is dating one of the
goddesses (Britney Something-or-other). That explains why he's
been pretty quiet through most of the goddess praising, up until
now. "I think my girl is fine," he says without arrogance, just pride,
a blond goatee barely visible against his manila-colored skin. "I
scored. What can I say? The thing is, so many girls you meet in this business are so into themselves, and
Britney is not. She's as down-home as she was before she got into this. That's the best thing about her. I
got the cream of the crop, man!" No one argues with that.
Half an hour later, slicing through a near-empty Orlando highway at seventy miles an hour in his
blood-red Plymouth Prowler with the top down and the setting sun painting the sky with brilliant orange
and pink, Justin continues gushing about his sweetheart. "When we get together, that's just my girl, and I
love her, and that's it. I don't think about what everybody's thinkin' about. She makes me happy. She's
like salvation." Being a good friend to her is important to him. "All she has is me. I'm the only one in her
life she wants to talk to about stuff. If I have a problem, I have four guys I can talk to, and I can go
directly to them. She has to call me on the phone, and it's hard." He's helping her move from bubblegum
to more rockish stuff. "I'm givin' her some ideas." You just know that someday they'll do a song
together. "The timing has to be right for both of us," he says. "I want it to be somethin' new that they
haven't heard us do, that they didn't think we could do. I feel like we still have artistic growth to show,
and maybe after that, then I'll think about it. It definitely would be a spectacle. It would be huge."
All those still wondering if the coupling of America's two cutest teen-pop idols is some sort of publicity
stunt, please see Lance Bass: "I think it's the coolest relationship ever," he says. "They're so perfect for
each other, it's scary. They were girlfriend and boyfriend at ten or eleven, and it was his first kiss, her
first kiss. They don't have hardly any time together, but that's what keeps it kinda fresh. You see those
types of things and say, 'Oh, that's so fake, they probably hate each other.' But, no, it's real. Kind of
gives love a hope."
Together, these two lovebirds are responsible for the sales of some 40 million copies of five records,
according to SoundScan - roughly, that's one CD for every man, woman and child in California and
Massachusetts. Add the other two teen-pop titans - the Backstreet Boys and Christina Aguilera - and the
number jumps to 76 million, or more than a quarter of the U.S. population.
'NSync are top dogs in the world of teen pop. Their last album, No Strings Attached, set a sales record
for most copies sold in a single week: 2.4 million, 1.1 million of which were sold the first day the album
was released. And in a business where most acts make the majority of their money from live
performances, not record sales (which, surprise, make money for the label, not the artist), their concerts
pull down the biggest paychecks: an average gross of $2.5 million a night for their current PopOdyssey
stadium tour (for which they'll play forty-four dates, wrapping up in August in El Paso). They are riding
high, and they are enjoying it. "We've always been the redheaded stepchild," Lance says, "the underdog
in everything we've done, and to finally feel we're on top is very emotional."
But they are also at a crossroads. Since 1997, when the Backstreet Boys first broke big, teen-pop acts
have ruled the land. 'NSync were started in the wake of the Backstreet Boys by the same manager as
BSB, and, just as the Backstreet Boys did, they broke their contract when they felt they were getting
ripped off. "I hate when people take advantage of us," says Lance. "That's when I really go off the deep
end. That's when I get to yell. It's like one of those demon things comes out of me." With No Strings
Attached they pulled themselves out the Backstreet Boys' shadow. But now other shadows are looming:
Much is being made of the return of rock, of bands such as Staind, Tool and Weezer, who are neither
teen nor pop. And with 'NSync's audience growing up, the biggest shadow they must contend with is
their own.
"I went to our label and said, 'Can we release, like, 2.3 albums so it won't break the record?'" Lance
says. "If we don't break it this time, it'll be so nice because the next album won't be a competition. If we
break it this time, then it's gonna start all over again."
"You think that this album we're out to break our record?" Chris says. "No. We're out to have another
great album. That's our goal. We don't determine album sales; people do. We determine how good the
record is."
On Celebrity, 'NSync try to push their boundaries beyond what you'd expect from a boy band. The lead
single, "Pop," sounds little like 'NSync's past stuff, and little like anything on the airwaves right now.
Justin co-wrote the song with the group's choreographer, Wade Robson, then enlisted
twenty-eight-year-old techno producer BT, who has worked with Madonna, Tori Amos and Seal. The
idea was to create a song that echoed BT's "Hip-hop Phenomenon," from the U.K. version of his album
Movement in Still Life. "I'm like, 'If you seriously wanna do something experimental, I'm down to do
that,'" BT recalls. "'But you guys have to let me treat your vocals so irreverently, it's not even funny.'
And they're like, 'No problem.'"
BT wanted to do "a frackle-stutter-edited Michael Jackson" track. But the song took on another life when
one day he heard Justin beatboxing under his breath. "I'm like, 'Dude, that's dope. You gotta go in there
and do that!'" says BT. "He's like, 'No, I never put that on our tracks.' I'm like, 'I don't give a shit, dude!
Get your ass in there.' So we took a pair of broken headphones and used 'em as a mike, and I recorded
four tracks of him beatboxing." BT took the track and did about 1,200 edits, "like, Max Headroom-style
frackle-stutter edits" and buried them within the track. When Justin and JC came by his place, he played
them the song, then soloed the track of Justin beatboxing. JC flipped out. So did Justin. "He was like,
'Oh, my God! You have to make a mix for my car of this track with the beatboxing at the end.'" Justin
fell in love with the mix, and even though it was made just for his personal use, he submitted it to the
label, and that's the mix of "Pop" that you hear now.
That sort of experimentation is why 'NSync feel that Celebrity - featuring co-production by the
Neptunes, R&B star Brian McKnight and Rodney Jerkins (as well as Swedish teen-pop architect Max
Martin) - shows them as more mature, more musically diverse, and more themselves. But freedom's
Siamese twin is responsibility. 'NSync are no longer employees; they're owners who must accept any
potential blame. Rejecting Celebrity means rejecting them. "We totally took control of this," Lance says.
"It's written and produced mainly by us." Eighty percent of the album was written by the guys - up from
fifty percent of No Strings. "It's not like, 'Oh, Max Martin didn't write us a good song this time.' It's us."