Music Review

Artist: NSYNC

Album: Celebrity

I was searching for my Bible in the box. I kept it together with my old photocopies so I had a hard time looking for it. As I took all the photocopies, a cassette tape fall and landed on the Bible. It was my ultimate crush, Justin Timberlake on the cover of the tape. I realized that it was NSYNC’s Celebrity album, the album that I junked in the box two years ago. I took it and I decided to listened to it.

The first song “Pop” was the first song in the album. It was Justin and JC’s angry voices accompanied by fractured drum machines and gritty guitars in the song. I tried to sing with them but I already forgotten the lyrics, so I ended up stamping my feet because though I last played that song two years ago still its beat made me want to dance. It was so NSYNC but with electronic guitars on the background. Then Celebrity, a song wherein there were scratching in the background, the sound effects of the camera and the crowd noise, followed it. I thought that NSYNC intended to include those backgrounds because celebrities were very often have their photographs taken. It was again Justin and JC’s voices that could be heard. It was followed by another dance song “The Game is Over” where bells, whistles, vocoder of a man and computer game blips were the background. The band wail “ how could you think that you do me like that?” over a mental breakdown bit which collapses. I was fascinated by the fact that in this album NSYNC didn’t sing like a typical boy band. I mean, though there were still dance tracks, the songs were not that cheesy anymore. After those dance tracks, RnB, hiphop and ballad songs followed then dance tracks. There were songs entitled “Tell me, tell me baby…” and “Just don’t tell me that” which reminded me of Backstreet Boys’ “The Call” minus the shouting and wailing, computer blips and electronic guitar. The beats were the same, in fact. Another song was played entitled "Selfish", as JC's voice started the song, i realized that this was my most favorite song in the album because it was very sentimental and backed up by JC who sounded like he was crying when he sung the line "Selfishly, i'm in love with you coz i've search my soul i now that it's you... what's wrong with being selfish...". When the song ended, i didn't cry like i did before instead I hated it because it was very cheesy... the cheesiest of all the songs. I didn’t finish listening to the songs in the album because though the songs used modern electronic guitars, with all those computer blips, and the wailings and cuss words, the boyband flavor was still there. They were trying to get away from the boyband brand but its useless because their songs were still very boyband and it was irritating to hear. I couldn’t imagine myself being an obsessed NSYNC fan years ago. I was ashamed of myself.

Lyrically, every track, I guess, on Celebrity was about love and fame. And of all the songs that I’ve heard, I was looking for the other three member of the band’s, Lance, Joey and Chris, voices because only Justin’s and JC’s that I heard. It seemed that they were for chorus only, chorus boys in short.

After listening to some of the songs, I threw it in the box and took my Bible. I couldn’t imagine that the guys from NSYNC were my Gods and their albums were my Bible years ago. I saw that I had NSYNC-featured-magazines in the box. I hurriedly closed the box and started to read the Bible.

Brecil Kempis