Track #37 - “SexyBack” by Justin Timberlake (2006)
From the album FutureSex/LoveSounds
Music and lyrics by Justin Timberlake, Tim Mosley & Nate “Danja” Hills
Performed by:
Justin Timberlake – lead and backing vocals
Timbaland – co-lead vocals, sampler
Nate “Danja” Hills – programming
Bill Pettaway – electric guitar
Darryl Pearson – bass
US Billboard Hot 100 - #1; US Billboard Adult Pop - #18; US Billboard Dance Club Songs - #1; US Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs - #11; US Billboard Hot 100 Year-End - #9
49th Grammy Awards – Best Dance Recording
I’m bringin’ sexy back (yeah)
Them other boys don’t know how to act (yeah)
I think it’s special, what’s behind your back (yeah)
So turn around and I’ll pick up the slack (yeah)
Take ‘em to the bridge (that’s it)
Dirty babe (uh-huh)
You see these shackles baby, I’m your slave (uh-huh)
I’ll let you whip me, if I misbehave (uh-huh)
It’s just that no one makes me feel this way (uh-huh)
Take ‘em to the chorus
Does anyone remember when flying on an airplane was actually fun? Try to think back to your first time on a plane and try to recall that first time in the airport; all the people bustling around, trying to make flights, pulling their suitcases behind them, or looking for their loved ones whose flights have just arrived. There used to be a time when whoever was dropping you off or picking you up could hang out at the airport. Ever see the movie Love Actually, when Hugh Grant’s character, the Prime Minister of the UK, says he reminds himself that love exists in the world by going to the airport and seeing all the people there, waiting for their parents or children or significant others to arrive, holding funny signs and all the anticipation and then the moment when they’re reunited, and how beautiful it is? Well kids, you can’t f***ing do that anymore; now you have to circle the airport and hope your person arrives on time because you can’t even park outside the arrival gate. When my son picked up my wife and I at LAX recently, I didn’t even hug him when he pulled up; we were all like, “Yeah, yeah, great to see you, get in the damn car before we get honked and cursed at!!” Sorry, Mr. Grant; no more love at the airport. Remember going through security and leaving your shoes, jacket and belt on? And then the flight itself; I’ve seen those old airline ads, with people in suits, sipping drinks from real glasses, their legs leisurely crossed because of all the legroom they had on those older planes, instead of what we get now, all crammed in so the airlines can make a few more bucks. There were no unruly passengers taking their shoes off or trying to make phone calls or complaining about the wi-fi. It all seemed like a very classy experience; now, it’s a pain in the ass that sometimes takes all day. But we do it, right? Because we want to see the world, see our families and succeed in our careers if we need to travel for work. We do it, but I would hardly call flying fun. At least they still serve alcohol, and you can grab a nap during your flight. However, there is a better and cheaper way to travel. If you have patience and if you get creative and if you can get along with your fellow travelers for several hours you can avoid TSA, and the guy sitting next to you with his shoes off who keeps falling asleep on your shoulder. I’m talking about a road trip! So, I was late to the road trip thing. My family was not a road trip family when we took vacations; I seriously don’t think my dad had the patience, God bless him, so we flew everywhere. We drove to New Jersey a lot when I was little to visit my aunt and uncle, but two hours across the George Washington Bridge is not a road trip (it’s torture). It wasn’t until I was in my twenties and then later when the boys arrived that I started to drive outside my comfort zone of the tri-state area. Road-tripping with small children is interesting and a challenge; you hope they sleep most of the way, but if they don’t, the pitstops are mandatory, and yes, they will ask you, “Are we almost there?” many times. But when Christine and I got together I truly embraced the glory of the road trip; we drove everywhere. Sure, we flew places, but between her friends in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, ski trips, and her introducing me to the beauty of Maine, over the years we have driven tens of thousands of miles together. And that’s not counting the trips with the boys; Great Wolf Lodge, Acadia National Park, Lancaster PA, Vermont, upstate New York, college visits all over the northeast, and the granddaddy of road trips, five treks to Montreal over the years to ski at Mont Tremblant. The SUV would be packed with ski gear and winter clothes, and we put a Thule on top to hold all the groceries for the weeklong stay. While we were on the road, we’d play license plate games, or the boys would sleep or read, and we’d make a stop at the Panera in Plattsburgh right before we got to the border. It was an all-day drive, but it was worth it. It would have taken us all day to fly to Montreal anyway, and it would have cost us an arm and a leg to fly all the ski and snowboard gear on a plane. Plus, we got closer as a family, and I am forever grateful for that time we had together. So, I am a big fan of road trips. Christine and I still drive everywhere, but now it’s mostly just us. When we’re not chatting away or enjoying the scenery, we’ll listen to Sirius or a playlist, but we also use that time in the car to catch up on podcasts. You don’t need me to tell you that there are a lot of podcasts out there, almost too many. Everyone has a podcast; my brother has a podcast (it’s very good). Someday this blog will be a podcast (hopefully). But my wife and I have settled on a couple that we listen to regularly when we’re together in the car, and one of them is one I’ve mentioned frequently here, Hit Parade, hosted by Chris Molanphy. Molanphy is a music writer and chart analyst who has written for Slate, Rolling Stone, and Vulture, among others, and his podcast is gloriously dense with chart facts, music clips, history and trivia. It’s a perfect road trip podcast if you’re music obsessed like we are. So, on one of our most recent four-hour drives to Maine, Christine chose a Hit Parade episode we had not listened to yet, the “Be My Baby-Baby-Baby Edition”, which delved into the evolution of the girl group and its impact on rock, soul, R&B, and the music charts. Somewhere in between the Ronettes and Shangri-Las in the 50s and 60s, and TLC and En Vogue in the 90s, the episode touches on the “freestyle” sub-genre in the 80s, and groups like The Cover Girls and the group Molanphy calls the “queens of freestyle”, Miami trio Expose. I used to love Expose. I had their cassette, Exposure, in my car during my senior year of high school and I wore it out. So, when the Expose clip of their hit “Come Go with Me” began to play, I immediately started to tap on the steering wheel and sing in a ridiculous high-pitched voice. My wife, turned to look at me like she did not know who I was: “You like Expose?!?”
“Oh my god, of course! They were all over the radio when I was a senior…I played that tape all the time!”, was my reply. I swear I don’t think she believed me at first. But then I told her how Darren and I were in the old Tape World store in Smithhaven Mall, and he basically tossed the Exposure tape at me and said, “Buy this for me.” So, I did, and the tape ended up staying in my car and we listened to it constantly, so I knew those songs backwards and forwards. When I finished my little story, her reply was “I just can’t see you listening to something like Expose,” to which I replied, “Well, call it a guilty pleasure.” Christine then declared, “When this podcast is over, we’re playing that Expose album,” and we did in fact play Exposure right after the podcast episode ended. And as I tapped my fingers on the steering wheel and sang along, I started thinking about some of my other musical guilty pleasures, specifically one song, which at that moment, if she knew that it made my 50 At 50, I think she might pass out or accuse me of being a liar. In fact, when I found out who performed this particular song, I accused that person of lying to me. There was no way I loved a song by a boy-band pop idol…but I did, and I seriously couldn’t help myself when I first heard it. And I first heard it at a bar in Chicago of all places, after being across the street at Wrigley Field that afternoon at a Cubs game. It’s a weird trip to the king of all musical guilty pleasures, but let’s start in the mid-90s, in Orlando, Florida.
In 1992, Queens businessman and aspiring music mogul Lou Pearlman placed an ad in the Orlando Sentinel with the intention of forming a new vocal group. Pearlman had been obsessed with the late 80s mega-success of boy band New Kids on the Block and was now looking to duplicate that success with his own band, a group with “The look of New Kids on the Block with a Boyz II Men sound.” Those open auditions resulted in Pearlman finding five young male vocalists, and the formation of the Backstreet Boys, named after an open-air flea market in downtown Orlando. The new group, AJ McLean, Kevin Richardson, Nick Carter, Howie Dorough, and Brian Littrell would play shows all over Florida in 1994, before going to Sweden to record with famed producer and songwriter Max Martin. The Backstreet Boys would release three of the bestselling albums of the 90s before the end of the decade: Backstreet Boys, Backstreet’s Back, and Millennium, which sold a combined 50 million copies worldwide. The group quickly became a phenomenon, their faces plastered on the covers of teen magazines and posters, and their videos in heavy rotation on MTV. It would appear that Pearlman had fulfilled his dream and attained the fame and popularity he so coveted from his fascination with New Kids on the Block. However, sensing he could fill a void in pop music left vacant by the popularity of grunge and alternative in the 90s, he quickly set out to form another vocal group, and was introduced to singer Chris Kirkpatrick in 1994, while Kirkpatrick was performing at Universal Studios. Pearlman was so impressed with Kirkpatrick that he promised to manage and finance any group Kirkpatrick put together, so the young singer set out to find four others to join him. Over the course of a year, Kirkpatrick was able to recruit the members of what became *NSYNC: JC Chasez, Joey Fatone, Jason Galasso, and Justin Timberlake. (Just as the new group was about to make their debut, Galasso quit and was replaced by Lance Bass.) Much like the Backstreet Boys, *NSYNC would follow the same blueprint to record their debut album in 1997; fly to Sweden and work with Max Martin, and release the album internationally at first, then re-issue it in the US. So, effectively Pearlman had created an environment of competition by managing and controlling two very similar groups, a competition that he couldn’t lose. It’s like putting two Starbucks on opposite corners; if you own both, it doesn’t matter which one people stop at to buy their coffee. And of course, the media created the requisite drama over which group was better and who was more popular. We’ll leave the rest of Pearlman’s story here, but we’re not done with him; this is not the cut and dried success story that it seems. *NSYNC released their debut album, *NSYNC, in the US in early 1998, a year after it dropped overseas. It peaked at #2 on the Billboard Album chart and has since sold 10 million copies worldwide. Their next album though, No Strings Attached, released in March of 2000 would prove that *NSYNC was not a clone of their label mates the Backstreet Boys. Co-produced by bandmembers Timberlake and Chasez along with several other collaborators, the album was praised for its R&B, dance, and pop influences, and for its deft crossing of genres throughout. No Strings Attached sold 2.4 million copies in its first week of release, a record that stood for 15 years until Adele’s 25 broke it and sold 2.433 million copies in its first three days. The album debuted at #1 and remained there for 8 consecutive weeks; it was the #1 album of 2000, and according to Billboard, the top selling album of the decade. In all, No Strings Attached has sold over 14 million copies worldwide. The album Celebrity followed in March 2001, and *NSYNC almost broke their own record, moving 1.9 million copies in its first week, eventually selling 6 million copies. And their rivalry with the Backstreet Boys continued, fueled by the fans and the media, with record buyers snatching up multiple copies of their favorite band’s CDs to boost sales. *NSYNC would go out on two enormously successful tours overlapping 2000 and 2001, to promote Celebrity. And when the tours were over, at the peak of their popularity, arguably the most talented member of either band suggested they take a break, mostly because he wanted to work on a solo record. The rest of the members of NSYNC agreed, however the “break” turned out to be anything but; they wouldn’t record or tour together again for over 20 years.
Justin Timberlake began his musical career in Memphis, Tennessee, surrounded by a family of musicians and singers, and influenced by the R&B of Stevie Wonder and Al Green, and the rock sounds of the Eagles. He appeared on Star Search when he was eleven, the 80s and 90s version of America’s Got Talent, and was famously a cast member on The All-New Mickey Mouse Club alongside Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera and Ryan Gosling in 1993 and 1994. During his rise to fame in *NSYNC in 1994, Timberlake would share lead vocal duties with JC Chasez, and it soon became clear that Timberlake would eventually have a career beyond that of his bandmates. By the time he decided to ask the group for a hiatus to record a solo album, he had a lot of the material already prepared, and the album was recorded and completed during a six-week period in 2002. Justified, released in November of that year, and featuring collaboration and production by Timbaland, Pharrell and Chad Hugo, among others, would prove that Timberlake was a bona fide pop star. Anchored by the singles “Rock Your Body” and “Cry Me a River”, Justified received generally positive reviews and would go on to sell 10 million copies worldwide. After a successful tour co-headlining with Christina Aguilera in 2003, Timberlake was exhausted and took a break from writing and recording music to focus on film roles, and was also a host on Saturday Night Live, a gig he’s had four more times since. In 2005, Timberlake wanted to get back in the studio but with Justified having set a high musical bar he felt he didn’t have the right inspiration to begin writing and recording the follow up. After reaching out to producer Timbaland and his collaborator Nate “Danja” Hills, the three went into the studio and began to listen to Prince and David Bowie on a loop, and Danja came up with a guitar riff that would become “What Goes Around…Comes Around.” After Timbaland wrote the melody, Timberlake wrote the lyrics in his head (he does not write lyrics on paper), recorded them, and they had their first song. With “What Goes Around…Comes Around” as the seed, the sessions continued with no real direction, with the thought that the new songs would come in the moment, with a lot of experimentation and improvisation. This became the recurring theme and vibe of the album that would become FutureSex/LoveSounds. Within three weeks, they had several songs completed, including a track that almost defied genre. Was it dance? Pop? Techno? Could it be rock? Influenced by David Bowie and a desire to sing “like a rock and roll singer, not an R&B singer,” Timberlake and his producers recorded a song that, as Timberlake and Timbaland both said repeatedly during recording, “went left”. There were synth and sample tracks, a pulsing drum beat, and Timberlake sang his vocals through a distortion machine which completely masked his distinctive falsetto. FutureSex/LoveSounds was completed in the summer of 2006, but would not be released until November of that year. That one song, the one that didn’t sound like Justin Timberlake and sounded like a genre mashup? That was released in July, on the 18th to be exact, about a week before I first heard it. And where did I first hear that guiltiest of all musical guilty pleasures? We’ll have to go to Chicago, specifically to the neighborhood near Wrigley Field.
I’ve never considered myself a big traveler. When I hear people say they love to travel, I think it’s awesome because I think it takes real patience, passion and probably some serious funds to travel extensively in the world we currently live in. I’ve never been to Europe or Asia, and when I’ve traveled outside the US, it’s been the usual suspects: Canada, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and Aruba, so nothing I would call especially exotic. I’ve been to Disney too many times to count, California several times, Texas once for work and as I mentioned earlier, my wife and I have road-tripped it all over New England and a lot of the east coast. But back in 2006, I suddenly had some opportunities to travel to places I had never been, mostly due to one of the guys on my team at work; you may remember me talking about Chris way back when we discussed “Be Yourself” by Audioslave. Chris was hired about a year before me and lived practically around the corner from me. He taught me a lot when I first began my new career, and we hit it off right away and became fast friends. In early 2006 he let me know one of his friends from high school was getting married and they were taking him to Las Vegas for a few days, and would I want to join for a weekend of golf and other excursions. Vegas…. hmmm. Never been but it was on the bucket list for sure; gambling, drinking, good food, maybe a show…sounded good to me. So I went, and of course had an amazing time with Chris and his buddies. On that trip, Chris let me know he and some of these guys, including his brother Mike, were planning a semi-annual trip to Chicago, to see a Cubs game that summer, and once again he invited me. How could I refuse a chance to be at Wrigley Field, one of the oldest baseball stadiums in the country, and see a city I had never been to before? So, I agreed to go, and once again found myself at MacArthur Airport in Islip, boarding a Southwest Airlines flight to Midway Airport in Chicago at the end of July. We arrived on a Thursday evening; we’d be heading out to Wrigley the next day. When I inquired about tickets the week before, Chris just told me not to worry, that we’d be buying tickets at the stadium. The Cubs were playing the Cardinals that weekend, and I wondered what the atmosphere would be like with the home team playing a Midwest rival, but Chris and his friends laughed and let me know that Chicago was not like New York, where the Mets fans ridicule the Yankees fans, and vice versa. “It’s a different vibe here, there won’t be any fan brawls.” We jumped on the “L” and headed up to Wrigley from our hotel in the River North area that morning so we could scout for tickets and basically walk around the neighborhood. Wrigley Field is located on the north side of Chicago, in the Lakeview neighborhood, and the area itself is actually called Wrigleyville. The stadium is surrounded by bars and restaurants, and other touristy stuff. Now I could see what Chris was talking about; there was definitely a vibe here, sort of like a small neighborhood with this giant iconic baseball field in the middle of it. And I was in awe of the stadium once we got there; opened in 1914, Wrigley was one of the oldest stadiums in baseball, and the last to install lights to play night games, in 1988. I seriously could not wait to get inside and see those famous ivy-covered walls in person, but first we had to get tickets. Apparently back then it was OK for all these scalpers to be outside the stadium, just selling tickets. They even had seating charts printed on these giant canvases hanging up so you could choose your seats. It reminded me of a flea market. While I was staring around in disbelief, Chris and his brother Mike secured our tickets. Wrigley Field was everything I imagined, right down to the ivy-covered walls and the fans perched on the rooftop seats in the outfield. And the Cubs fans were fraternizing with the Cardinals fans; it was not like the Yankees/Mets rivalry at all. We ended up with pretty good seats as I remember, but by the 5th inning, we just started to hang out in the standing room only area, which was marked off by a white line on the floor that encircled most of the stadium right behind the field level seats. As long as you stood within the confines of that line, you could stand there with your beer and security left you alone. It was an awesome time, but when the game ended (a Cubs’ victory, 6-5), the afternoon was far from over; we still had to make the obligatory walk across the street to the Cubby Bear, the iconic bar across the street from Wrigley. The Cubby Bear opened in 1953; besides being a bar and restaurant, it’s also a music club. When we walked in, I noticed the stage in the back right away, a stage that has featured the Pixies, Dave Matthews Band, Soul Asylum, No Doubt and the Foo Fighters, among others. But on this day, there would be no live music. The space was huge, with a bar running almost the entire length of the place on the left side, high top tables scattered throughout, and a big dance floor. When we arrived, the party had already started, and just like at Wrigley, the Cubs fans were drinking with the Cardinals fans. The DJ played a lot of 80s and 90s dance music, so everyone was singing along, dancing and spilling the occasional beer. And sometimes he threw in a current song, like “Crazy” by Gnarls Barkley, Shakira’s “Hips Don’t Lie”, and what was touted as the song of the summer of 2006, Nelly Furtado’s “Promiscuous”. Then, the DJ put on a song with a basic “4 on the 4” floor beat, and a minimal synth riff that I had never heard before…and before the singing started, the crowd went crazy; I mean everyone was into it before it even got going. Then the verse kicked in: “I’m bringing sexy back…them other boys don’t know how to act…(Take ‘em to the bridge!)…Dirty babe, you see these shackles, baby, I’m your slave…” Whoa, what was this?? I did not recognize the voice, but admittedly did not know everything new and what was on the radio like I once did, so it certainly could be a new band or artist. But it seemed like everyone in that bar at that moment knew this banger of a song. The chorus continued: “Come to the back (go ‘head, be gone with it), V.I.P. (go ‘head, be gone with it), Drinks on me (go ‘head, be gone with it)…so this continued for two more verses, and the choruses, with the two voices going back and forth, and that pulsing beat and synth riff never stopping. I had not heard a dance song like this in years, and it brought me back to weekends in Hampton Bays when I was younger, when my friends and I hung out at these clubs with just a huge bar and a dance floor. And I can’t say this enough: everybody there knew this song, and it packed the dance floor. I had to find out who this was, but in my somewhat inebriated state I knew if I asked around now, I may not remember, so I let it go. In fact, I kind of forgot about that song that everyone seemed to know but me, and I never brought it up the rest of the weekend. But on the plane ride home on Sunday, that pulsing beat and synth melody popped back in my head on a loop, along with the “Go ‘head, be gone with it” refrain; I had to find that song on iTunes and get it for myself. But first, I needed a nap to recover so I could function at work the next day.
Chris and I dragged ourselves into the office on Monday, looking haggard but in some ways glad to be back and eager to recap the weekend. After morning meetings and getting settled back in, the conversation turned to the weekend in Chicago, the Cubs’ game and the Cubby Bear afterwards. I remembered the song, that insane dance track and the crowd’s reaction, and the need to listen to it again. “Yeah, we heard this song, I think it was new…” Our team admin, Aimee, who was a few years younger than me, asked me to sing a little of it; here’s what ensued:
“Yeah, I think was ‘I’m bringing sexy back, them other boys don’t know how to act’, and then there was ‘V.I.P, drinks on me’, something like that….it was awesome! What is that song?”
Aimee: “Dude, that’s Justin Timberlake, that’s his new song “SexyBack”…
Me: “No way, that is not Justin Timberlake! That was too good to be Justin Timberlake! Besides it didn’t even sound like him!”
Aimee: “John, trust me, that is Justin Timberlake…it just came out, it’s all over the radio!”
Me: “Aimee, I don’t believe you, you’re f***ing with me! There is no way I would like a Justin Timberlake song!!”
Aimee: “Serino likes Justin Timberlake! You gonna grab a Backstreet Boys CD too??”
Me: “Knock it off, I do not like Justin Timberlake!”
Aimee: “You do too!”
Me: “I do not!”
It was like a scene from a playground. After the laughter died down, I just shook my head and decided I would figure it out for myself when I got home; this was before smartphones and streaming music kids, so I couldn’t look up “SexyBack” at that very moment. But that evening, I launched iTunes and I didn’t even have to search for it, because there it was on the homepage: turns out, I did like Justin Timberlake. Shit! For years, I eschewed boy bands, saying it wasn’t real music, just handsome dudes singing other people’s songs and not playing any instruments. Just because one of the members of a boy band put out a solo album didn’t mean the music was going to be any different than the boy band music; at least that’s what I thought. Much like Wham! in 1985, dismissed it, until I finally realized what a genius George Michael was a few years later, and began to take his solo music seriously. Once again, I was wrong; Justin Timberlake was to be taken seriously, and maybe I should give this a chance. It’ll be a guily pleasure for now until I (maybe) hear the rest of the album. I stared at the screen and sampled the song, and there I was, suddenly back at the Cubby Bear, hearing it for the first time again. “SexyBack” was so good, and there was no doubt this was not the boy band pop of *NSYNC. I downloaded the song, put it in my iPod and listened to it…a lot. It became my song of that summer, and after a while I totally leaned into liking a song by a guy who used to be in a boy band. When the full album, FutureSex/LoveSounds came out that September, I couldn’t believe it when I bought it and downloaded that onto my iPod as well. I had to admit, it was great; it was not the boy band pop I scoffed at in the late 90s. There was R&B, dance, even rock and rap; it was not my favorite album ever, but I did listen to it a lot back then. “SexyBack” will always remind me of that Chicago trip and that summer. Did it make me want to go out and buy Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC CD’s? Um…no. But if my wife are listening to the SiriusXM 90’s station and they play a boy band song, I leave it on…I chalk it up as a guilty pleasure; just don’t tell anyone, OK?
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Here is the official video for “SexyBack”; it’s a spy, Mr & Mrs Smith type vibe. It’s also censored with the F-words garbled, but you can fill those in. Enjoy 😊
Next time…a 90s power ballad by one of my favorite bands and how I almost got sick of it, until they stripped it down and played it on MTV’s Unplugged series.
P.S.
“SexyBack” would hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in September of 2006 and remained there for seven straight weeks. The week before it went #1, it was at #31, so it jumped 30 spots in one week; it would remain on the Hot 100 for 36 weeks. The song divided critics with some saying it was the weakest song on FutureSexy/LoveSounds, with one critic saying it was the most annoying song to hit #1 since Gwen Stefani’s “Hollaback Girl”. But the public didn’t care, and “SexyBack” would be certified three times platinum in the US. The album itself received mostly positive reviews; it appeared on Rolling Stone’s Top 50 albums of 2006 (#26), be nominated for Album of the Year at the Grammys and debuted at #1 when it was released. It has sold almost 5 million copies in the US to date. From 2008 to 2012, Timberlake took a break from music to focus on acting, and other projects, appearing in The Love Guru with Mike Myers, the Oscar-winning The Social Network, as well as Bad Teacher and Friends with Benefits. He hosted Saturday Night Live for the fifth time in 2013, joining the so-called “Five-Timers Club”. Steve Martin presented him with a commemorative jacket, and they were joined by other “Five-Timers” Tom Hanks, Alec Baldwin, and Chevy Chase, among others. Timberlake also appeared with Jimmy Fallon in some of SNL’s best sketches; you can see bits of some of them here. It was during this hiatus from music that Timberlake truly showed his versatility and established himself as an all-around entertainer. In 2013, Timberlake released his next album, the two volume The 20/20 Experience, which featured 21 songs in total, including “Suit & Tie”, a collaboration with Jay-Z, “Mirrors”, and “Take Back the Night”, the first two being Top 5 hits in the US. It was an ambitious project, with an extensive tour and multiple collaborators. The first volume was Billboard’s #1 album of 2013, and both volumes have sold about 4.5 million copies in the US. I remember my wife playing The 20/20 Experience in the car on repeat when it first came out, and many of the songs grew on me, but to me it just didn’t have the same energy of FutureSex/LoveSounds, and it didn’t grab me like that record did back in 2006. Christine also saw the accompanying tour in the summer of 2013, and she said it was one of the best shows she’s ever seen. In 2016, Timberlake provided the voice of the lead character in the animated film Trolls and contributed “Can’t Stop the Feeling!” to the soundtrack; the song debuted at #1. Since then, he’s released two more studio albums, performed at Super Bowl LII, and collaborated on or produced projects by numerous artists. He remains one of the most popular and recognizable entertainers in the world. In September 2023, *NSYNC appeared together for the first time in a decade on the MTV Video Music Awards and released a new song for the Trolls Band Together soundtrack. In March of this year, they performed a new song, “Paradise”, which ended up on Timberlake’s new album, Everything I Thought I Was. Will there be a full reunion, and a new album from the legendary boy band? The world waits, although I will probably not line up for tickets (ha-ha). While I was researching the post and listening to Justin Timberlake’s music I thought a lot about how he and George Michael broke away from the pop bands that made them stars and how great their first two solo albums are. I also remembered how much I eye-rolled Wham! in high school, and by the time I was in my twenties I had done a complete turnaround on my opinion of George Michael. I still listen to Michael’s first two albums and think they’re perfect; two of the best records of my lifetime. Not sure I feel the same about Justin Timberlake, but I do like his first two solo albums, and I see a lot of similarities; maybe JT had some more help than Michael, and had more collaborators, and didn’t play a lot of instruments like Michael did on his records, but his first two solo albums made people take him much more seriously than the singer and dancer he was in *NSYNC. They got me to change my mind about him, that’s for sure, much like George Michael did almost twenty years before.
OK, so I said we’d get back to the whole story of Lou Pearlman. Pearlman created and managed both The Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC, but he also paid himself as a sixth member of each band, plus took management fees, defrauding them out of millions of dollars. Members were given small daily allowances, and never saw most of the money they earned, despite being two of the biggest selling artists of the decade. Finally, between 1998 and 1999, both groups decided they had enough, and they sued Pearlman in separate lawsuits for back revenues, and to be released from their contracts. In 2007, after a lengthy investigation, Florida law enforcement announced that Pearlman was operating one of the biggest Ponzi schemes in US history, defrauding investors out of almost $1 billion by having them invest in his TransContinental family of companies. Pearlman fled and was arrested in Indonesia in June 2007. He would eventually be convicted of money laundering and conspiracy and was sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2008; he died in 2016. It’s a sordid tale, but the extent of which was not fully understood until recently; it’s been called “one of the great untold scandals of the music industry.” There’s a great article in The Guardian which links to a YouTube documentary called The Boy Band Con: The Lou Pearlman Story, created by Lance Bass and director Aaron Kunkel. And there’s also a brand-new Netflix documentary, Dirty Pop: The Boy Band Scam that I have not been able to watch yet, but plan to. As more years have passed since The Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC were megastars, critics and writers have acknowledged how they and other artists like Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera saved pop music back then, and filled a huge void that artists like Prince, Michael Jackson and Madonna filled in the 80s. It's not debatable they were popular, but the music itself has become more highly regarded as more time has passed; “I Want It That Way” is often regarded as one of the greatest pop songs ever recorded, and those songs have influenced the current generation of pop. My wife fondly recalls playing the boy band CDs on a loop when she was in college; they were a big part of her life back then, and once in awhile I know she will play that music when she goes on her daily runs. Even my stance on the boy bands has changed; if it comes on SiriusXM’s 90s on 9 station, I just leave it on; call it a guilty pleasure. 😊 To think that these artists were discovered and managed by someone who didn’t truly have their best interests at heart and were taken advantage of is horrible and shitty. At least the music has survived; maybe that’s why I don’t change the station anymore.
What are your musical guilty pleasures? Do you have any songs that you turn way up when no one is around? Stuff you tell people is “just OK” but that you secretly love? Here’s a playlist of my biggest 35 guilty pleasure songs; I could have had more and maybe I’ll add to it, but right now it’s a pretty good playlist. There’s some pop on there, 80s hair metal, a lot of 90s dance and a couple of one-hit wonders, and I even dropped some Milli Vanilli on there (don’t judge!) Did I miss any of yours? Let me know in the comments! Enjoy 😊
See you next time…
JS
7/31/2024