Music | Pop Culture | 90s
Nsync Claims They Were Better Than The Backstreet Boys And We Are Not Okay With It
When I was growing up, there was one band that was my one desire. That's right, Backstreet Boys were my everything. I knew every word, I knew a lot of the dance moves, and I could still tell you all of their full names.
However, the 90s were a troubling time. Everywhere you looked, people were trying to make something controversial. They didn't want to just enjoy that glorious pop music, they wanted to pit the bands against each other.
When *NSYNC entered the pop music game, everyone had to pick a side. Were you loyal to BSB, or were you really into this new group *NSYNC?
Personally, I stayed with BSB, but a lot of my friends ected to the other side, and claimed that their band was just better. Obviously that was nonsense, because I knew the truth even though I never said it out loud: both bands were very good.
In the safety of my bedroom I could switch between "Quit Playing Games With My Heart" and "It's Gonna Be Me" as much as I wanted, and the only person who would know was my cat, who I am pretty sure thought I was insane.
The thing was, the groups themselves always said that they got along fine and they didn't really believe that there was this big beef that everyone was giving them. The boys were all so sweet to each other, but recently it got a little bit controversial.
In an interview celebrating the 20th anniversary of *NSYNC, the band members seemed to have some questionable opinions and maybe cloudy memories of their stardom...
You might say that I am being dramatic when I say that *NSYNC is full of lies, but just wait and hear me out. While being interviewed by Billboard, they started off by saying that they didn't have any resentment towards "other boy bands" (which obviously meant Backstreet Boys, who are they kidding) and that it was all healthy competition.
But that's when things take a turn. First JC Chasez tried to play it cool...
"My perspective was, 'All right, they got it first, but that doesn’t mean anything in the grand scheme of things, as long as you can back up what you do.' So our goal was, 'You gotta be good,'" Chasez said. "We can’t control how people are gonna take it. All we can do is control how we give it. The doors are open — we just focus on making our shows good, making sure we sound good, and making sure the records were good."
But then Joey Fatone took the "friendly competition" to a new level...
"It created a friendly competition. There's nothing wrong with friendly competition — even though we are, of course, better than any of those boy bands. Maybe not right now, a little rusty."
Excuse me.
I know you need to think that you're good if you want to succeed, but there's something called sportsmanship and I don't think it is very nice to say that you are "better than any of those boy bands," Joey. That's not very friendly at all!
Chris Kirkpatrick was quick to jump in, I assume to try and salvage the disaster that Fatone just created.
"To us, there wasn’t a competition. We just thought we needed to be the best," Kirkpatrick said. "To them, there was, because they came out and we came out, and they’re like, 'Man, we have to be better than them!'"
Sure... Try to play it off. We're onto you.
Fatone later said "now we're really good friends," but honestly I don't know if I can forgive him. I mean, I still love *NSYNC music, of course, but why did they have to go an pretend like they were the best of all time?
Every band had their strengths and weaknesses, but I thought the polite thing to do was to pretend like you value all of your competition equally and let your fans do the bickering?
Do you see what you've started JOEY!