nothing is sang passively everything is chopped and punched. one 'n sync member says: ``this album is really in-your-face. in the interview to rolling stone, the group members sound as though they are such vulcanized, gritty acts as `rage against the machine' or the `stone temple pilots'. having successfully jumped labels, they now have creative control over their albums and no string attached - the title reflects this new found independence for the group. the five are naturally joyful since in the past year, they won an out-of-court royalties settlement with their former management company - the renowned lou pearlman. even that revered bible of rock and roll, rolling stone featured the five on their recent cover in glittery silver suits and silver dust. they stare at you from the covers of practically every pop magazine and on radio stations, there is no refuge from the auditory assault of ``bye bye bye''. on mtv, they seem to have taken up permanent residence.
switch on a talk show, and there are the five clean cut fellas who don't drink or smoke or do drugs, happily indulging in horse play with the host. if you think the group's music stinks, like this writer does, then there is no escape. but for a group that is re-writing pop charts and for their legions of fans, such cavilling hardly matters. and in that free-wheeling hell called cyberspace, it is studded with ``i hate 'n sync'' sites and the most popular epithet is `n stink'. one in the washington post called them a group of ``modestly gifted suburbanites''. here's a piece of lyric that apparently is meant to reflect teen angst: ``take it from me, it's a lesson to be learned/even the good guys get burned''.and naturally, the five singers have got ``burned'' at the hands of music critics everywhere. if you express your disgust and distaste for such look-alike, sound -alike acts like 'n sync, their over-wrought fans will inform you that their brand of music is more ``edgy'' than other boy bands. and record companies have shown prodigious resourcefulness in packaging other cutesy boy bands like backstreet boys, 98 degrees and female teenaged stars such as britney spears and christina aguilera. the syrupy lyrics will make your toes curl but who cares - their hordes of female fans can't seem to get enough and are prepared to spend all their pocket money on hunting down 'n sync memorabilia. the same marketing savvy was in evidence also on the internet. but the album was marketed with devilish cleverness and mtv actively aided the process by giving it constant play and cataloguing the frenzied lives of the five `cute guys' - joey, lance, justin, chris and jc. now record industry executives are scratching their heads and wondering what on earth triggered this ``buy buy buy'' frenzy? its hit single bye bye bye - if attentively listened to - is nothing but a routine song sung in a michael jackson-ish style set to a throbbing techno beat. at the rate at which it is selling, it could scale unheard of peaks. and for the statistically-minded, according to soundscan magazine, until march 26, no strings attached album blitzed the combined sales of no 2 to no 25 and it is poised to outpace the biggest selling album of 2000 - santana's supernatural. the previous biggest sale for a seven day period was a distant 1.1 million and guess who held that record? 'n sync's biggest rivals the backstreet boys. no artiste or group has ever sold that many albums in a week. in the process, they re-wrote pop statistics and obliterated records held by luminous names from pop's pantheon. 'n sync made pop history when they sold in a span of seven days, a stupefying 2.4 million copies. what happened subsequently staggered pop historians and social analysts alike.
this was the morning in which the boy band pop sensations, 'n sync were releasing their newest album, no strings attached. instead of severely conservative business suits, throngs of abercrombie & fitch and gap clad teens, mostly female between the ages of 13 and 16, chattering like magpies, were thronging the door of a record store two hours before opening hour.
Washington: on a typically pre-spring day in washington late month, the decibel level and the dress code on a busy downtown street seemed strikingly different.