It made history as the first album to sell over 2 million copies within its first week of release (a record later broken by Adele with 2015’s 25), and birthed three top five singles (“Bye Bye Bye,” “It’s Gonna Be Me” - which topped the Hot 100 for two weeks - and “This I Promise You”). That experimentation led to immediate success.
We recorded songs that we don’t love and ones that we do, and that’s just a part of the experimental process.” “We always had our opinions about our music and tried to be open-minded. “From a business standpoint, this is exactly when we became far more involved and took control,” Chasez tells Billboard, as *NSYNC had to delay the album’s original fall 1999 release due to a messy legal battle with former manager Lou Pearlman. He stretched his talents to co-write and co-produce four songs, with assistance from songwriter Veit Renn and production duo Riprock ‘n’ Alex G: “Space Cowboy (Yippie-Yi-Yay)” featuring Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes,” “Digital Get Down,” “Bringin’ da Noise,” and the title track. Helping to lead the charge was JC Chasez who, along with fellow *NSYNC lead vocalist Justin Timberlake, earned his first official album credits on No Strings Attached. The end result? Millennial interpretations of New Jack Swing, and staccato rap-adjacent flows that were previously made mainstream by Destiny’s Child and TLC. The album (which turned 20 on March 21) saw the quintet transitioning from the thumping, Swedish synth-heavy jock jams of 1998’s self-titled album to exploring their urban influences. *NSYNC was one of the sonic spaceship’s main navigators, thanks to the group’s sophomore album, No Strings Attached.
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Y2K’s apocalyptic frenzy signaled a shift where pop singers became more defiant in taking risks with digitized sounds - from Aaliyah going full futuristic acid-rap fusion on “Try Again” to Britney Spearsturbo driving her dance-pop into outer space with “Oops!… I Did It Again.”