Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Tuesday Special: NSync, "Pop"



"Hey now, cut that out, Scotto. Quit posting lame old '90s boy band songs. You love rock, you love Arcade Fire and Nirvana!"

Yes. Absolutely, and I wouldn't be caught dead holding an NSync CD, but y'know, I was not in their market so they probably would've been okay with that. If you had told 14-year-old me in 2001 that in ten years' time I would think Justin Timberlake was a pretty all right guy, that I would look forward to his appearances on Saturday Night Live or that he could go on TV and perform Eminem and Jay Z (and the Digital Underground!!) with utter impunity I would be shocked. Shocked, I tells ya! But here we are, it's 2011, I write about music, and Justin Timberlake seems like a really cool dude.

I don't have to like old Boyband songs, but they were exactly what they needed to be: groups of dudes singing and dancing in unison, to make girls between the ages of ten and 17 scream. And sometimes, it was better than it needed to be.

"Pop" is exactly what it claims: three-odd minutes of undiluted musical candy (plus a tag of weird beat-boxing thing.) But "Did you ever wonder why this music gets you high?" Sometimes, yes. I know now that Timberlake has a sense of humour about himself. What I couldn't have figured was that the whole NSync project had a vague air of self-awareness about itself, that they knew what they were doing was maybe not a stab at great art, but it was effective and fun. They took not taking themselves seriously pretty seriously, and it resulted in, yes, fairly disposable dance pop, but nothing you would look back at ten years later and recoil in disgust.

This type of music will always make up a certain segment of the musical tapestry. At times bigger than others. At the time I was very much of the opinion that none of it could ever be good. That's wrong. As with anything, it absolutely can be good, when you take care over it.

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