Celebrity

Pop Muzak
by: tom reiter

By now, "*NSync" and "Pop Music" are synonymous, and you can toss "boy band" in there too. With Celebrity being their third album release (not including special / holiday releases), it would be an understatement to say the boy band has established a foothold in the music industry. Celebrity remains a hot commodity as fans are barely settling down from No Strings Attached. Still, the same formula that has proven to work on their previous releases may be showing signs of flaws.

The boys dish up an attempt to hush all the nay-sayers of pop music on the first track (and single), cleverly named "Pop." The real talent lies behind the scenes in the mixing, done by non other than BT. The final product is radio and high school dance friendly, and may even get the attention non-Pop fans. *N Sync follows up "Pop" with "Celebrity." Besides sounding like a glossed over Busta Rhymes rip off, it asks the question "If I wasn't a celebrity, would you be so nice to me?"

They might not want to know the answer...

The offbeat R&B motif is used for most of the tracks that aren't ballads, making each song sound like the next to the casual listener. An *N Sync fan will think this is another way they are pushing the pop envelope, but the latter half of the album is dominated by downbeat and ballads which ultimately leads to the all too familiar track skipping. It boils done to whatever is your cup of tea: pop or artistic quality.

One note, however, is many of the tracks have production influence from a couple of the boys, err, men. While Celebrity has already seen the success of its predecessors, the question that arises is whether there will be any signs of slowing by *N Sync, and if that time is now. 29-Oct-2001 11:00 AM