Songoftheday 9/30/22 -Sick and tired of hearin' all these people talk about, what's the deal with this pop life and when is it gonna fade out?

 

 

"Pop" - *NSYNC

from the album Celebrity (2001)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #19 (three weeks)

Weeks in the Top-40: 7

 

Today's song comes from the vocal "boy-band" group *NSYNC, whose third studio album No Strings Attached became one of the largest-selling albums in American music history, selling over two million copies in its first week and eleven million overall. The set spun off three top ten pop hits with "Bye Bye Bye", "This I Promise You", and the #1 single "It's Gonna Be Me".  At the close of 2000, the quintet released a one-off holiday song, "I Don't Wanna Spend One More Christmas Without You" for their label's Platinum Christmas collection, which went to #24 on Billboard magazine's Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") radio chart.  

In the summer of 2001, JC Chasez, Justin Timberlake, Chris Kirkpatrick, Lance Bass, and Joey Fatone returned with what would end up being their final album, Celebrity. Hitting that period where prefab acts try to mix things up to counter accusations of relevancy, the album was all over the map in styles, including what would be released as the lead single, "Pop". Written by Timberlake with dancer/singer Wade Robson, the track was produced by then-hot DJ Brian "BT" Transeau, who by that time had gone to #1 on Billboard's Dance Club Play chart twice with "Blue Skies" with indie-rock darling Tori Amos and "Remember" with British trance music singer Jan Johnston. The result is definitely boy-band "product", but interestingly executed. Editing the track into a jillion shards of sound, "Pop" is throwing the entire sonic kitchen sink at you. Lyrically, it comes across as an "angry" song, much like Michael Jackson's "Bad", where silly posing as "hard" from a superstar act comes off pretty stiff, especially with the Jackson-esque "dirty pop" tag. Nevertheless, the group's rabid fanbase ate it up, though with the record company selfishly holding back a single release to boost sales of the upcoming album, relying on radio to pick up the slack proved to be a fatal mistake, as station soured on this rather quickly - perhaps the record was too loud and busy for them? Nevertheless while the album boost did occur, the relative failure of the single would be a blow on the reputation they craved in the first place. The big-budget music video barraged us with dancing and images and special effects to the point where I wondered if this was an ad for a department store (I mean, it starts out like one). It's hilarious that they sing "it doesn't matter about the clothes I wear" and going through as many fashion changes in less than three minutes than I've done in the past year, as well as having Wade Robson fill in for Fatone (who had hurt his leg on tour) and the editors transposed Joey's face on Robson's body only half the time...

While "Pop" leaped in to become *NSYNC's lucky seventh top-40 pop hit in America in June of 2001, it didn't even last two months in that part of the chart. On the radio, the song made it to #5 on Mainstream Top-40 and #23 on the dance-oriented Rhythmic format, but didn't stay on either very long. Internationally, where the physical commercial single was released, "Pop" went to #1 in Canada and Croatia, and made the top ten in Portugal (#6), Norway (#7), the United Kingdom (#9), and Australia (#10). It also reached the top-40 in Spain (#11), Belgium (#14W/#39F), Sweden (#19), New Zealand (#19), Ireland (#21), Germany (#30), the Netherlands (#32), Italy (#34), and Switzerland (#40). The (greedy) decision to hold "Pop" from an American single release worked in the short run, as the first-week sales of Celebrity were close to two million copies, though the set only stayed a week on top of the Billboard 200 sales tally, going on to sell over five million copies (half of their previous set). At the Grammy Awards in 2002, Celebrity was nominated for Best Pop Vocal Album, losing out to the more "adult" Lovers Rock from Sade. But they weren't down yet, both *NSYNC and the Celebrity album will return to the series.

(5/10)

(Click below to see the rest of the post)

Here's NSYNC promoting the single on The Tonight Show...

Next up, live in concert, behind the album...

and finally, at the MTV Music Video Awards, where Michael Jackson himself joined them in what would be the most "extra" performance in the history of the VMAs...

ED NOTE: I've been doing this series mostly seven days a week from all the way back in 2012 (when I began at 1982). I'm going to experiment now with taking the weekends off, to give me more time as well as try out writing again about newer music, with my picks for the best debuting singles and albums on the charts, and see how that flows. I hope you stay on with me, and discover some music you may not get exposed to otherwise (I hate when people say "there's no good new music anymore"). 

On Monday: This blonde bombshell is hard to pass up.