20 *NSYNC Secrets That Show What They Really Got Up To Behind The Scenes

It seemed rather shocking when, in 2012, Justin didn’t invite his old bandmates to witness him tie the knot with Jessica Biel. But the boys have nevertheless claimed that they didn’t feel snubbed at all. Rather, they understood a reunion of the band would have caused a complete and total media frenzy that would distract from the blushing bride. "[Justin] wanted that wedding to be about Jessica," Lance later explained.

While Justin may have had the golden curls and JC the bedroom eyes, it was Chris Kirkpatrick who was the real stud of the group. In an appearance on Watch What Happens Live, Lance Bass revealed that Kirkpatrick was a bit of a player – although things have changed for the ladies' man since his boyband days.

Perhaps even more memorable than their music were *NSYNC’s, questionable fashion choices. From music videos to red carpets to concert stages, the boys weren't afraid to experiment when it came to fashion. Patterned suits, snakeskin pants, and rainbow-hued trench coats, anyone? The band’s fashion was so bad, in fact, that in a 2017 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Timberlake made a humorous apology for inspiring some truly hideous ’90s trends.

The song “Up Against the Wall” appeared on the hit record Celebrity, but the band members really found themselves up against a wall when they were slapped with a lawsuit by musician Troy Alexander. Alexander claimed that he played *NSYNC's record label a demo of a song with a similar melody and the same name back in 1990.

Fans weren’t the only ones upset when Timberlake broke up the band. In his memoir Out of Sync, Lance Bass admitted that he had been really hurt when Justin walked away from the group. “I felt completely betrayed,” he wrote. “Why couldn’t Justin keep the franchise intact while he also did his own thing?” It was a question lots of people were asking at the time, and years later, Justin gave an answer.

“Gone” was one of *NSYNC’s most memorable hits, but what many don’t know is that Timberlake actually wrote it for his idol Michael Jackson instead. With his showmanship and impressive high notes, we can see how MJ influenced Timberlake's musical style! Timberlake was undoubtedly crushed when MJ’s management team ultimately passed on the tune. But Timberlake still got to make his Michael Jackson dreams a reality, albeit in a strange way.

Timberlake made it very clear just how crazy he was about his then-girlfriend Britney Spears. But in case you weren’t convinced, he apparently wrote the almost-MJ-tune “Gone” while she was away and he was missing her terribly. Now that's love! She must have been on tour halfway around the world, right? Nope! Apparently, she was taking a little too long… at the hair salon.

One of the producers of Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones had daughters who were huge *NSYNC fans. And so Chasez, Kirkpatrick, Joey Fatone, and Fatone's brother Steven got to don Jedi robes and swing sabers. Alas, the scene was eventually axed from the film – allegedly due to protests from hardcore franchise fans.

While the *NSYNC footage was ultimately cut from Attack of the Clones, the story of Fatone’s brother Steven lives on in infamy. Steven was so incredibly excited to be swinging a lightsaber that when he went to do a scissor kick, he actually lost control of his bowels. "It was pretty embarrassing," Steven later admitted. But he ended up being able to turn a negative into a positive.

Lance Bass is now out and proud, and his wedding to Michael Turchin even got its own E! special back in 2014. But back in his boyband days, the singer kept his sexual preference under wraps for fear that it would destroy the group if he came out. At the Hollywood Walk Of Fame ceremony, Bass said, "I'm gay! And at the time, I thought that I would never be able to tell anyone."

Lou Pearlman was the brains behind both The Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC, but his relationship with the latter soured in 1998. That was the year in which *NSYNC sued Pearlman for fraud, claiming he had stolen half of their earnings. In the end, the case was settled out of court; Pearlman, however, was eventually convicted of money laundering and passed away in prison in 2016.

Pearlman's bad behavior seemingly knew no bounds, as Lance Bass let it be known that in their younger years, he and other bandmates had received some unwanted attention from their manager. He told The Hollywood Reporter that while Pearlman never fully “crossed that line” with him, he had heard stories of his lack of boundaries with other young boys.

What else would you expect from a bunch of teenage boys trapped on a tour bus? Bass once revealed that when the band toured, they would hang out in their bunks and play games from the Halo franchise against one another, sometimes for hours at a time. "We had a different console in every bunk, so we'd play Halo against each other in our bunks," Bass told Travel + Leisure.

Apparently, dancing and singing in front of millions of screaming fans isn’t the best way to catch some peaceful Zs. Bass revealed that after shows the band would be left completely hyped up. Plus, he said that so many nights on the road have now permanently conditioned him to need background noise in order to sleep. "If anything is moving, I'll fall asleep immediately," he told Travel + Leisure.

Both Timberlake and Chasez went on to pursue solo careers, but while the latter’s fizzled out, Timberlake, of course, went on to become one of the biggest pop stars in the world. That said, it may surprise fans to know that even Timberlake himself believes Chasez to have the better voice. He said so outright in a 2016 interview with MTV.

*NSYNC first broke Europe before they made it big at home. And when the band arrived on foreign shores, they’d be greeted by thousands of screaming fans. It took a bit longer for them to break the U.S., however. In fact, Kirkpatrick admitted that in the early days the band would only have a few people waiting for them when they landed back in America: their parents.

You wouldn’t have known it to look at them, but back in the day, the boys ate a considerable amount of junk. Indeed, Fatone has said that their tour bus diet was fit for a four-year-old, containing lots of chicken nuggets, grilled cheese, and mac n’ cheese. No word on whether the nuggets were shaped like dinos, though. Nowadays, Fatone's tastes haven't evolved all that much, either!

While Kirkpatrick might have been the biggest player in the group, Fatone has named himself as the biggest flirt. In an interview with US Weekly, he said he was a pretty flirtatious guy back then. He maintained Chasez was as well, though, but that he was just more “stealth” in his tactics.

Life in a boyband may not be all it's cracked up to be. Sure, you have millions of adoring fans, but sometimes those devotees forget that you're still just a human being — and vice versa. Justin Timberlake and a — we can only assume, former — fan of his learned this the hard way. The normally-cool Timberlake was accused of losing it when a jokey comment didn't land right.

In 2023, the boy band who "temporarily" went on hiatus back in 2002 dropped some seriously exciting news: they're finally reuniting! Well, for one song, anyway. Yep, the group reunited to record a brand new track for Timberlake's film Trolls Band Together. The song, "Better Place", is the band's first tune in over two decades... and it may not be their only new release, either.

When “… Baby One More Time” hit the airwaves in 1998, it was like nothing else around. At the time, Aerosmith, The Goo Goo Dolls, and the Spice Girls were the ones to beat.

Then, of course, there was that video. You know, the one with 16-year-old Spears dancing about in a school corridor? It genuinely took the world by storm! However, not everybody was happy about it.

No matter what MTV’s idea of “cool” may have been before, Spears and “… Baby One More Time” redefined it. The song reached number one in multiple countries across the globe, fueled by rabid fandom and not a little controversy.

For its retrospective on “… Baby One More Time,” Entertainment Weekly spoke to John Ivey, president of CHR programming for iHeartMedia. He remembered, “Britney had the second level. People saw this video and thought, what is this girl? Because everybody latched onto this immediately,” he continued.

Spears had suddenly gone from being a complete unknown to one of music's biggest stars. The media swiftly dubbed her “the Princess of Pop,” and it was a title that seemed to suit her.

Times have, of course, changed a lot since 1998. “... Baby One More Time” is still a popular song — one of the classics of its genre — but the passing of the years has not been kind to Spears or her most famous track.

Much has been made about how much agency Spears ever had over her career, too. Some people wondered, was “… Baby One More Time” a hit because of her talent and media savvy, or because of external forces? Other commenters couldn't help but wonder if Spears was actually a carefully constructed product made to appeal to teenage girls by the music overlords.

In Entertainment Weekly’s 2018 piece about the creation of “… Baby One More Time,” the publication spoke to all of the people who’d had a hand in the song and video. The resulting oral history holds the key to understanding its appeal. Joe Levy, a Rolling Stone editor, said, “Britney Spears is someone who, from the time she was a child, wanted to be a star."

Weiss said, “[Spears] was wearing a black cocktail dress and high heels. She sang live for us: Whitney Houston ballads, Mariah Carey, Toni Braxton. She really was a good singer. She looked amazing.”

John Seabrook remembered to Entertainment Weekly, “Clive Calder — who was the head of Jive — signed her to a provisional contract. This was a very significant moment in pop history: the signing of Britney Spears as a sort of girl-next-door teenager – rather than as a Whitney Houston-esque diva.”

Jive hired Swedish producer Max Martin to create a song for their potential new star. He remembered meeting Spears for the first time in the Entertainment Weekly piece, saying, “She was 16. She thought I was a 50-year-old producer from the old school.”

Spears liked Martin upon meeting him as well. In 2018 she told The Guardian newspaper, "I was pretty young at the time, so I was nervous, but he was so nice and put me right at ease." She went on, "I think Max [Martin] is a genius. It all just came together and felt right."

But how exactly did the endlessly-catchy teenage tune come to be? Martin told Entertainment Weekly, “I came up with the melody first. I wrote the chorus; you just hum it in. Thanks to [my co-producer, Rami Yacoub], that song sounds the way it does.”

But did you know that the song wasn’t even intended for Spears at first? Weiss remembered, “[Executive] Martin Dodd had this demo, which was then called ‘Hit Me Baby One More Time,’ and he sent it into us.”

A backup vocalist named NaNa Hedin also spoke to Entertainment Weekly. She said, “I remember that I thought the song was for teenagers but the production was filled with a grown-up attitude and with sounds that I really liked.”

Of course, despite the title change, the bit of the song everyone remembers goes, “Hit me baby one more time.” TLC — the group the song was originally supposed to go to – was reportedly dubious about that lyric, too.

T-Boz continued, “Do I think it’s TLC? I’m not saying ‘hit me baby.’ No disrespect to [Spears], it’s good for her. But was I going to say ‘hit me baby one more time’? Hell no!”

“… Baby One More Time” very nearly got sold to Cowell before it ended up with Spears. The mega-producer was managing the band Five at the time, and he thought it would be the perfect track to break them in the U.S. He told the Howie Mandel Does Stuff podcast how he begged for the song.

The “hit me” part of the song also apparently caused trouble, because it was constantly misinterpreted — and we can see why. Seabrook remembered to Entertainment Weekly, “Before the song came out, nobody in America liked the hook, ‘Hit me baby one more time.’”

Seabrook explained, “What it really was was the Swedes using English not exactly correctly. What they really wanted to say was, ‘Hit me up on the phone one more time’ or something. But at that point, [Martin’s] English wasn’t that great,” Seabrook claimed.

Barry Weiss told Entertainment Weekly, “I actually changed the lyric. I was concerned about going to U.S. radio with a song called ‘Hit Me Baby One More Time.’” He probably wasn’t alone in this concern, either. That's how the production team came up with the brand new title.

The song turned 20 years old in October 2018, and Cosmopolitan magazine ran a headline asking, “Just checking: do you know what ‘... Baby One More Time’ is really about?” As it turns out, most people are still in the dark when it comes to the song's true meaning.

When Spears appeared in Rolling Stone in 1999, the meaning of the lyrics to "Baby" came up. "It doesn't mean physically hit me," she said. "It means just give me a sign, basically. I think it's kind of funny that people would actually think that's what it meant," Spears claimed at the time.

Even if people don’t understand the “hit me” part of the song, they probably remember the music video. The making of it — and Spears’ role in that — also came up in the Entertainment Weekly piece.

Barry Weiss told Entertainment Weekly, “Nigel [Dick, the director] came up with an idea, like, [Spears] is in outer space. She comes and lands on Mars on a spaceship, and then she breaks into this dance routine.”

According to Dick, the whole school theme of the video was Spears’ idea. He told Entertainment Weekly, "Your initial reaction to this is, I’m being told by a 16-year-old girl what I should do...[But] this girl is 16 and I’m a grown man; perhaps she has a better perspective on her audience than I do."

Speaking to MTV back in 2009, Dick said, “My idea originally was just jeans and T-shirts, and we were at the wardrobe fitting and Britney holds up the jeans and T-shirts and says, ‘Wouldn’t I wear a schoolgirl outfit?’” Good point! “Every piece of wardrobe in the video came from Kmart, and I was told at the time [that] not one piece of clothing in the video cost more than $17,” Dick explained.

That 1999 Rolling Stone cover story described the video for "Baby" as showing a "17-year-old singer cavorting around like the naughtiest of schoolgirls." But Spears was quick to note that there was nothing revealing in the actual video. "All I did was tie up my shirt!" she said.

The rest, of course, is music history. As soon as the song was released, good reviews came flooding in. Billboard wrote “‘...Baby One More Time’ chugs with an insinuating faux-funk beat and super-shiny synths. Spears has a charming kewpie-doll voice that has a soulful quality.”

Such is the legacy of “… Baby One More Time” that in 2020 Rolling Stone named it the greatest debut single in music history. The famous publication said that it was “one of those pop manifestos that announces a new sound, a new era, a new century. But most of all, a new star.”

Spears told Rolling Stone in 2000 that her inspiration for the vocals was Softcell's “Tainted Love,” which she described as “a sexy song.” She said, “I wanted my voice to be kind of rusty. I wanted my voice to just be able to groove with the track.”

Spears was poised to become the biggest star in the world. Her first two albums, ...Baby One More Time (1999) and Oops!... I Did It Again (2000), are still two of the best-selling albums in music history.

Even though Spears didn’t write all of her most popular songs, many of them still seem to reference the troubles she was having in her life. When you look back on them, some lyrics could be foreshadowing what was to come.

And 2004’s “Mona Lisa” — which Spears co-wrote with lyricists David Kochanski and Teddy Campbell — hints at an unhappy state of mind as well. She was starting to shed her bubblegum-pop image at that point and aim for a more grownup market.

This was something Spears likely knew something about. The media spotlight she was under in the early 2000s was intense. Her relationship and subsequent breakup with Justin Timberlake made headlines — and not always good ones.

After leaving Timberlake, Spears married her childhood friend Jason Allen Alexander... for 55 hours. That's how long the annulment took to come through! The media had a field day with that one, of course, but Spears quickly found a new love in Kevin Federline.

It’s very well documented what happened next. In 2007 Spears had a very public breakdown, and she ended up being sent to psychiatric hospitals twice the following year. There was the infamous incident when she shaved her head.

Spears lost custody of her children to Federline in October 2007. And at the end of 2008, Spears’ father, Jamie, was granted a conservatorship over her. That meant she could no longer make legal decisions about her own money. Instead, the singer’s father and attorney Andrew Wallet would do so.

Interestingly, the conservatorship only came to an end in 2021 — 13 years after it was first put in place. But ever since the era of “… Baby One More Time,” Spears has had a vast army of fans on her side.