NSNYC – Interview [2001]

What is happening with ticket prices and did you guys have any input in the ticket prices for the Pop Odyssey tour?

Chris Kirkpatrick: Yeah, I mean we want to keep our ticket prices pretty reasonable. I think the most expensive one is like maybe fifty dollars or something like that.

JC Chasez: I think sixty-five.

Chris Kirkpatrick: Sixty-five?

JC Chasez: Yes.

Chris Kirkpatrick: Well, really, the price of the tickets kind of has to do with the size of the stage and everything like that. The cost of the ticket has to, you know, what it costs to run the show is definitely reasonable. That and it has to do with I guess inflation. You know, everything kind of, the prices are going up.

Whose idea was it to get Stevie Wonder to play in Something Like You? Who actually made the call? And did you give him any direction in the studio?

Chris Kirkpatrick: That was I think between Justin and Robin’s idea to get Stevie Wonder. They had a harmonica in the beginning, but the minute they wrote the song they said it would be perfect if Stevie would play on this song. And from what Justin told me about the session, Stevie would just like listen to the track like two or three times without the harmonica, then he would just play his part. And then it was like almost identical to what they, or he listened to it one time I think with the harmonica and then he played it like almost identical except better when they actually did the album. But Justin said he was really intimidated because if something was a little bit long, he had to say, ‘Yeah, Stevie, could you do this just a little bit different?’ And then he’d get off the talk back and say, I just told Stevie how to do something, which I shouldn’t. So it was kind of cool.

How are you dealing with the expectations for the new cd, not only artistically but sales wise, and how do you feel you’ve kind of dealt with that?

Chris Kirkpatrick: All we can deal with is artistically. That’s the only way we can deal with this new cd.

Lance Bass: I think probably one of the best things about being on tour is that we are so wrapped up in the tour we are not really thinking about, I mean, we are thinking about the release of the album and everything like that, but right now we are so wrapped up in the tour, it’s not the only thing on our mind. I think we’d probably be more obsessed with it if it was the only thing on our mind. Right now, you know, we are just kind of hoping it goes well. We are kind of getting the audience reactions because we are playing half the album on the tour before it came out. And we are kind of looking at the audience and seeing if they are digging it. And so far we like the reaction we are getting. As far as breaking the record, I don’t know if we are going to break the record. I mean, but then again it’s kind of a nice position to be in that you don’t have to break your own record.

Do you feel limited by the genre that you are in, by the teen pop sort of genre?

Lance Bass: Actually I think we get just the opposite. I don’t think we are limited at all because we play pop. Pop extends into every style of music. We have done songs with so many different styles of artists, you know, anybody from…

Chris Kirkpatrick: Phil Collins.

Lance Bass: Yeah, Phil Collins, Gloria Estafan, to Brian McKnight to Stevie Wonder to Richard Marks. I mean, we are actually very, very lucky that we get to play pop, because pop crosses over into R&B, pop rock, dance pop, you know, everything. So we are actually in the driver’s seat as far as stretching out musically.

Chris Kirkpatrick: We are just trying to keep the sound innovative too and keep it interesting. You know, we don’t want to be stuck with the sound that we had five years ago or two years ago.

Lance Bass: We don’t want to do “Bye Bye Bye” part two.

Chris Kirkpatrick: Yeah, we want to keep changing our sound and changing what the album sounds like so people are interested in coming out and buying it again or coming out and listening to music or moving on with us. And hopefully a lot of other people will start to go in our direction.

JC Chasez: And we also know that our core audience out there, we wouldn’t do songs with explicit lyrics and that type of stuff. So we do feel that we have that obligation to appeal or at least make the parents happy so they will let the kids listen to our music.

Do you guys think you’ve reached the limit of what you can do onstage live?

JC Chasez: Well, we’ve definitely thrown around a bunch of different ideas about what we are even going to do next. Because this is, I mean, it’s the largest stage production of all time. It’s bigger than anything that’s ever been out, so yeah, we are going to have to downsize, but I don’t think that’s going to limit the show at all. Right now it’s kind of like the stadiums are big so we have more space to run around. But I still think we can always have the gags and everything like that. I think that we will be able to fit tricks in whatever songs that we want. We’re just going to have to be creative. And instead of playing like maybe one or two nights in a stadium, maybe we will play like three nights in an arena or four nights in an arena just because it is easier to move. The one thing that we noticed this summer is that we beat our crew up really bad traveling with three different stages. And, you know, our crew didn’t get a day off for like two months. And that’s pretty rough on them. And so there was a lot of things to take into consideration. We did it because we wanted to say we could do it and that we did it. But yeah, we’ll definitely downsize. And as far as playing raw shows, there is definitely going to be some of that in the future as well.

You’ve had enormous commercial success and it seems lately the critical tide has started to turn and you are starting to get some critical praise as well. Could you compare the two and what they mean to you, the commercial success versus the critical success?

Chris Kirkpatrick: The commercial success is awesome. I mean, that comes from mostly our fans and their willingness to go out and buy things like t-shirts, the posters, come out to the shows and being able to sell out stadiums. I think, you know, from the press it is, we have been just laughing at it all along. We take everything that people say about us with a grain of salt whether it is good or bad. You know, we’ll read all the reviews, but we never listen to it when they are telling us we are doing good, and we never listen to it when they tell us that we’re doing bad. We’re just mostly interested in what the critics are saying. I know we’ve always had for the most part good reviews. Sometimes they’ll throw in some little things here and there. But that is part of them being a critic. And it doesn’t bother us. We are just out here to perform, have a great time. And when people will realize that we are musicians first, I think that’s when a lot of people will stop, you know, hating us just for the fact that we’ve had such a great commercial success. You know, like JC was talking about with the venues. You know, if we move back to just do a theater tour, it would be great for us because then we can say, ‘Look, we are musicians.’ This is why we are doing it. This is what we love to do.

JC Chasez: What cracks me up is that we already did theater tours so it’s not like we didn’t do them anyway. You have to get there by doing the small venues as well. And people kind of take that away from you once you are already in a big place. We did club tours. We did state fairs, you know. We did it all just like everybody else.

What are the challenges of playing outdoor stadiums, like rain, versus playing indoors?

JC Chasez: But for the most part that’s our first stage we’ve ever had that we got rained on.

Lance Bass: The only toll it took is that, you know, our clothes were wet. We actually had a great time. The only thing was we kind of had to ask the audience, hey, hang out for a minute, we’ll let the lightening pass and we’ll come back out. We wouldn’t want to do it every night of course. But, I mean, we had a lot of fun. You know, it’s one of those shows that we’ll never forget because we kind of kicked around and splashed in puddles on stage.

Chris Kirkpatrick: I think another one of the coolest things is the fact that like I have a lot of family out there. And like they all came to the show and they said it was the most fun show because it wasn’t us up onstage in an environment that we were used to. You know, we were used to sunny shows, everything going right, everything working. But the fact was we got up onstage. We had a blast in the rain. And we weren’t going to let anything stop the show. And we wanted the fans to know we were out there for them and we were out there to perform and have a great time. I mean we lost like, I lost two microphones myself to the rain and like a pack because of…

Lance Bass: We lost over two hundred lights.

Chris Kirkpatrick: Yeah, and it was just a great time. And I think people got to see that, you know, it is fun for us. It’s not a job where we would have just said, you know what, it’s raining. We don’t want to get wet. We’re too good for that. We’re going to cancel the show and come back another time. It was a show. And I think the people that stayed enjoyed it and had a great time because they were getting just as wet as we were.

JC Chasez: And about mounting a stadium tour compared to an arena tour, this one, we have three different crews that set up the still for our shows. And so we don’t get to see them to every three shows, most of the people. But it takes I think three days to set up the steel in each city. And then we come in and they build the stage around the steel. And then it takes about two days to take it down. So the crew works really hard because they are having to dodge the like baseball games and other events that are happening in the stadium. It’s definitely a hard one.

What are your thoughts on what is going on with AJ (Backstreet Boys)?

JC Chavez: You know, I don’t know what to say about that except right now I hope he gets better. It’s kind of sad that he’s got a problem like that. And I wish the guy the best. I hope he pulls it together. At least he has admitted to himself that he has a problem and that’s pretty much the first step.

Lance Bass: Our prayers are with him, you know.

Chris Kirkpatrick: Yeah, man. That sucks.

What was that like working with the Neptunes? And talk about what they brought to you guys.

Chris Kirkpatrick: Those guys were hilarious. I have never seen anybody dis on each other as much as them. They do it for like a living. They’ll sit in there for like twenty minutes and just snap on each other like the whole studio session. And to watch them, you know, go from being such cut ups to being so professional in the studio, it was just like, it was like us. We’re real corny and we make fun of each other more than anybody. And then when it is time to work, we work. They’ve got the sound right now. Every year or two somebody comes along that has figured it out, and right now it’s them. And they are living it up. And they’re making some great songs not just for us, but I mean, I think they’ve got like five of the top twenty hits right now, or at least they’ve got a lot of them.

Lance Bass: And the one thing that people are going to be surprised at is I think these guys are going to be some of the guys that stick around, because they are way more musical than people think. I mean, a lot of people think that these are just beat guys because they’ve been doing a lot of stuff in hip-hop, but we got to sit down and be with them. And people are going to be surprised how musical these guys are. When they start lacing chords and things like that, these guys are really talented. And I think people are gong to enjoy what they did with us. I can’t say enough about them.

This question is for Chris just because you are the, I guess, the older one of the group. Well, I mean, you’re not that old, but Mtv is about to celebrate their 20th anniversary. So Chris, I was wondering if you would like to recall your early memories of Mtv in the early days?

Chris Kirkpatrick: My early memories of Mtv were like Billy Idol, a lot of those old Cindy Lauper, Michael Jackson, Madonna, you know, it was crazy to me to see like all of them out there and on Mtv so much. Because it’s like when I was little, I listened to the Beatles. Growing up, I always listened to the Beatles. And there weren’t any Beatle videos really. There was a movie. And there was a couple things like “Yellow Submarine” and the Sergeant Pepper’s movie and things like that. But there wasn’t any real videos. And then suddenly when videos came into play in the ’80’s and it became such a big deal, it was cool because now you could actually start watching, you know, the artists that you were listening to. And you could put a definite face and idea. Because Mtv has taken it beyond just their music video, and they’ve also started so you can get to know the artist. I mean, in the ’90’s and lately they’ve had all these shows like Cribs and things like that where you get to go in and see where the artist lives or meet the artist, and you feel that much closer to the artist. And it’s amazing to watch it go from, you know, an artist who could sell a record and not get arrested on the street to an artist who can’t order room service without somebody knowing exactly who he is and what type of dog he has or whatever.

JC Chavez: What kind of dog he has? (laughs)

Chris Kirkpatrick: That was just a metaphor. I just wanted to throw that in there, bucko.

JC Chavez: Yeah, that sounds real good. Are you still sore? I thought you would be.

Lance, you talked a little bit earlier about critical approval versus public acclaim and taking things with a grain of salt. On the new album, as you guys get more and more involved in the songwriting and production et cetera, especially the new single, “Pop”, sounds like you guys feel like you have something to prove. It sounds like you are looking a bit for respect. And I guess the question would be, since you guys sell zillions of records as it is, why is respect important to you?

Lance Bass: Well, it’s not one of those things where we are going out there like complaining, oh we need respect. It’s one of those things where we are basically making fun of the whole thing. You know, we get respect from a lot of people and a lot of our peers. And it makes us happy, but we just do what we love to do. We make the music that we like to listen to and that we like to perform. And if people like that and people want to respect that, that’s great. If they don’t, then that’s their own opinion and we respect that, their opinion. But I think every artist, you know, wants their music…

JC Chavez: Even if you don’t like it, to be respected because you put so much work into it.

Lance Bass: Right, and it’s a personal thing. But I think with “Pop” the reason Justin wrote that was not to complain or, oh, we just need our space. That was really to get the word Pop out there. Everyone was so afraid of the word Pop. You know, every time you say it someone would cringe. So he decided to write a song named Pop and just to get it out there and explain exactly what Pop is. And that’s what the song does. It explains what the word means and don’t be afraid of it. Enjoy it.

Years from now when you end up on Behind the Music, what do you hope they leave out?

JC Chavez: The time that I was a crack addict.

Chris Kirkpatrick: Everything about me.

Lance Bass: You know, when I woke up in the streets every morning, you know. No, I don’t know. I mean, we’re pretty cool.

Chris Kirkpatrick: Don’t leave anything out. We’re ourselves. I think that’s the appeal. You know, we don’t get up there and preach to people and say do this, do this, do this. We just say we’re human. We make mistakes. We screw up. We never go out and tell people not to do anything. We’re clean-cut to a point, but we like to have fun too, just like everybody else. I think we are basically five of the most average Joe’s you’ll ever meet in your life. I mean, the coolest thing is people meet us and go, ‘I didn’t realize you guys were just so cool.’ It’s just like we’re not trying to be anything we’re not. We just have a good time. We enjoy people. We enjoy hanging out with everybody. We enjoy our music. We enjoy what we do. We enjoy touring. We enjoy every aspect of our job, so why not just have fun with it? If we are getting paid to do what we absolutely love to do, why would be ever cynical about it or why would we need anything else to make us any better people? We just enjoy ourselves.

Lance Bass: We’ll have the most boring Behind the Music special.

JC Chavez: Probably.

Chris Kirkpatrick: No, not really. We’ll have some good juice.

Lance Bass: We need not create some drama.

Chris Kirkpatrick: We have drama. I’ll make some drama.

Lance Bass: Alright, you do it. I’m leaving.

Chris Kirkpatrick: We said drama, Lance, not excitement.

Lance Bass: Oh.

Could you each pick one or two of your favorite tracks and tell us why they are your favorite tracks?

Lance Bass: Okay, one of my favorites is “Gone”. It’s a ballad that Justin wrote. And I think it’s just something very, very different that I don’t think anyone has ever heard. It is very eerie sounding and very just plain. There is no, you know, huge sound effects and all that type of stuff. It’s just very bare. It goes back to where we kind of started. You can hear all five voices and it’s lot of harmonies and that type of stuff. So I think that’s one of my favorites.

JC Chasez: Give him two, man.

Lance Bass: I’m trying to think of another one.

JC Chasez: Give him two.

Lance Bass: “Just The Two of Us”. I like that one. JC wrote that one. And it’s cool because it has that two-step vibe to it. And I don’t know, it just really stands out to me. It’s just a fun track. You can dance to it and just have a lot of fun with it.

JC Chasez: Chris?

Chris Kirkpatrick: Go ahead.

JC Chasez: Okay, I’m going to pick “Pop” as one of them just because it’s got an energy that I don’t think anyone has captured. To me it’s the one track, even on the radio, that just stands out. It is so unique. It’s got a mixture of everything. It goes from, you know, it’s got rock guitars with a dance beat with harmonies and aggression in the vocals as far as like the chanting. And I think it’s just got an energy that nothing has right now. I love that track. And I think I like the last track on the album, it’s called “Do Your Thing”. And we worked with a group of guys named Pajam. And they kind of got their start doing gospel and things like that, and the vocals on that song are just great. When you listen to the harmony, there is just something really special in them and they’ve got a great feel.

Lance Bass: True. Christopher?

Chris Kirkpatrick: I don’t have one. I like them all. I think every song on the album is awesome. I could tell you great things about every single song on the album. It’s hard for me. This is going to be a great album because people aren’t going to fast forward because you are going to find something interesting about every song. And even if it is not your favorite, you’ll find something interesting about it and still enjoy listening to it. And there will be an occasion where you can play every song on our album.

JC Chavez: I concur, sir.

Chris Kirkpatrick: Yeah, I know. You have to. I’m older.

Lance Bass: Okay.

How you deal with pressures and what is your anti-drug?

JC Chasez: Well, first of all, dealing with pressures we kind of lean on each other. And we’re not really phased as much by pressure. We’re pretty strong-minded and things like that. I mean, we’ve gotten into a place where we have a decent amount of self-esteem and things like that. And we lean on our friends, which are us, you know, if we do get bummed out about something. And as far as anti-drug, my anti-drug is sleep man because I don’t get enough of it. So I need it. And whenever I have a free minute, I sleep. Lance then?

Lance Bass: Oh, I don’t have time for drugs. Everything is my anti-drug. I just work. Christopher?

Chris Kirkpatrick: I don’t have time for anything.

Lance, can you tell us a little bit about On The Line and when can we expect to see it? And I understand that there is going to be some of your songs on the soundtrack, maybe some hard to find tracks or something. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Lance Bass: Yeah, I think we are going to release it in October now, early October. We are still editing it right now. It’s going through a couple of screen test already. And so I don’t know. I’m very excited about it. It was something that I always wanted to do and it was my first time producing also. So it was something fun and enjoyable and something I did for our fans because I think they’ll enjoy it. But the soundtrack is going to be great. We have two songs on it. I think Chris wrote one called “Fallen”. And what’s the other one? I don’t even know what the other song is.

Chris Kirkpatrick: Is it “That Girl”?

Lance Bass: Yeah, it’s “That Girl”. Who wrote that? Christian London wrote that one.

Chris Kirkpatrick: He did “Bye Bye Bye”.

Lance Bass: And those are two songs that you can’t find anywhere except on soundtrack. So it should be very exciting.

You guys and Britney and Christina and a lot of the teen pop groups are heavily marketed on stations like Nickelodeon. And I was wondering if you think the images and the subject matter are always appropriate for young kids and pre teens?

Chris Kirkpatrick: Well, Lance, you kind of hit on that earlier.

Lance Bass: I mean, we definitely know that a lot of our fans are Nickelodeon, Disney.

JC Chasez: That’s where we got our start, our first big break.

Lance Bass: And we had to respect that in the fact that, you know, that we do appeal to the younger market. We appeal to everybody. And we don’t want to offend anybody out there, especially the parents and the kids. There have been, you know, we get every day people coming up to us saying, ‘Thank you so much for making great music that I can actually listen to and I can actually let my kids listen to.’ So it’s something that we look at. And we definitely don’t I mean that’s not our main focus when we write a song or something like that.

JC Chasez: We just make music that we wouldn’t be ashamed to play in front of our parents or something like that. I mean, we’re just kind of not like that anyway. And it just kind of happened the chips kind of fell into place where a lot of our audience were young people and things like that. And that’s fine with us. And you know, you don’t bite the hand that feeds you in a way. I mean, like we said, Disney gave us our start with our first record and everything like that. And as far as like messing with ideas and things like that, there is really no reason for us to do something totally ridiculous anyway. We’re all suburban kids. I mean, it’s not like we’ve lived that street crazed life with whatever. You know, we just kind of draw on our experiences.

Chris Kirkpatrick: I think one of our major points is that we don’t, when it comes to the kids, we never teach them or say things that we think that they should learn.

JC Chasez: We don’t push our views, yeah.

Chris Kirkpatrick: But at the same time we never talk down to them like they are little kids. You know, we’re adults. We’re singing about problems and that’s what kids like. Kids don’t like it when you go up to them and go, ‘Hey, little boy. Are you five years old? That’s great.’ You know, kids want to be treated like a grownup even though they are a kid. There are certain responsibilities that you can’t give them yet because they haven’t learned, and that’s the way we look at things. There are certain things that we can’t say because they haven’t learned about these things yet, but at the same time we’re not going to sit there and sing about purple dinosaurs.

We live in an era where the attention span that people have is constantly diminished because there is so many things being thrown at them. Yet at the same time, if you step out of the limelight for even a few months then it’s like five years.

Lance Bass: You’re gone. Out of sight, out of mind.

Do you worry about a backlash from overexposure on the one hand but not wanting to be out of sight, out of mind on the other?

Lance Bass: It’s weird, man. We try not to think about that. We just kind of go to work everyday. It’s strange. Everything kind of happens in cycles. And what we do is we just ride our cycles. It’s not on purpose. But when you are in the studio you are usually out of the public eye and that gives us, it has in like at least the past two records, the perfect amount of time to be out of the public eye for a couple of months. And then all of s sudden we’ll pop back in. When the record is done we start promoting it. And then after we finish promoting it we go right out, we go out on tour. It’s just a cycle. We’re just riding the cycle wave. And it seems to work out pretty well. I mean, it’s pretty convenient.

Chris Kirkpatrick: Well, one good thing that we have is we are pretty much the poster children of overexposure because we definitely get overexposed a lot. And I think the cool thing about it is that we change ourselves so much that people realize that it is still the same group but it is such a new direction or it is something so interesting that they are still interested in us. They still find things to come back to the stores and buy the albums. Or they still find things to come out to the show and see our stage performance. You know, we reinvent ourselves all the time. And that to us is the key to longevity. Because if you look at Michael Jackson, Madonna, the people that have really done it and figured it out, they have changed themselves. They have reinvented themselves after every album. And every time, people know it’s Madonna, but it is so different that they want to come out and listen to it or they want to come out and buy the record or see her show again. And that’s just what we are trying to do.

Certainly Madonna and Michael Jackson are about the only two superstars from when you guys were growing up in the pop realm who have staying power. You know, she is out trying to do it again on tour these days. Do you think she kept her relevance? Do you guys still listen to her?

Lance Bass: Oh yeah.

JC Chavez: Absolutely.

Do you think she’s kind of been eclipsed by you guys, Britney, Christina?

Chris Kirkpatrick: No. I think Britney’s got her own thing. Christina’s got her own. You know, the girls that are out now have their own identities and they are doing their own style of pop. I don’t think anybody will ever be able to touch Madonna. I think Janet has done it too. Janet has been able to transcend the ’80’s, then the ’90’s, and now the new millennium. It’s just a matter of being out there and reinventing themselves so well. And I think of everybody, Madonna is definitely the queen of it. She knows, she just knows. She’s got like some kind of, I don’t know if it’s a telegraph thing or somebody is telling her what is going to be cool or not, but she’s all over it. She sees trends. She knows what people are interested or where they are going in their minds.

Lance Bass: Her new record is great. I’ve picked it up and, you know, the production that she did with Mirwais, she’s found something different. Her record right now does not sound like the last record and so on and so forth. When you listen to something like “Justify My Love”, it doesn’t sound like anything like “Like a Prayer” and it doesn’t sound like anything like “Music”. And yet they’ve all got her personality in each one of them. It’s just kind of different sides of her. And she is great at reinventing herself like Chris said. She’ll do it again for sure.

Backstreet Boys seem to be succeeding in trying to make the transition to get an older age group at their shows. Do you guys have any kind of a long-term strategy in relation to that type of thing?

Lance Bass: We’re not aiming at a certain age group. The only thing that we do is kind of make sure that we are doing something respectable. But as far as like catering, we don’t make an album and say we’re going to hit the older kids. We’re not going that. The only thing we are going to do is make the music that we like to make and roll the dice. That’s just not us really. You know, we’re not trying to cater to anybody. We are just trying to use our talents to the best of our abilities.

Chris Kirkpatrick: Yeah, the cool thing is to us our fans are being born every minute. You know, we’re very, very excited about the fans we have now because they’ve been incredible to us. And we always try when we make our music we know they are going to like it because it’s the stuff that we like. And then we’ve got to also, you know, take into consideration that there is going to be little kids coming out that are three, four, five years old, that it’s going to be their first show is to get to go to an NSync show. And that goes all the way back to the reason why we keep everything that we do all, you know, clean cut and down to earth. I mean, like I said, we’re not perfect, people make mistakes. But for the most part we know our fans. As long as we make the music that we love, it’s usually the music that they love.

People are saying there is no way that you guys can match the success of No Strings Attached. Does that bother you and do you think pop is dying?

Lance Bass: I don’t think so. I mean, first of all, we didn’t really make it a commercial single. We didn’t really put it out there on sale. So that kind of has to do with it not cracking the top ten. “Bye Bye Bye” wasn’t like a number one single when it comes out and yet everybody knows the song. We kind of take all the different things into consideration. If we released it as a commercial single, then we might think that. But then at the same time we’re selling out stadiums. So we’re kind of one of the biggest tours of the summer. So we don’t really think about our popularity dwindling or anything like that. And like we said before, we’re not going to try and break our own record.

Chris Kirkpatrick: Yeah, if people don’t think we’re going to break our record, that takes the pressure off of us.

JC Chavez: The truth of the matter is if we don’t, we don’t. If we do, it’s great. But if we don’t, we’re not going to complain about it. Music really is in a different place in the sales market, period. Nobody is doing the numbers that they did last year really. Music was just selling at an all time high last year.

Chris Kirkpatrick: I think the best thing about it is the fact that we could sell a million and a half records in one week’s time and suddenly we’ll be falling off. Of course to us, that won’t bother us at all. Because we’ve put together such a solid album that if we sell one hundred thousand albums our first week, in our eyes, according to this album we could sell one hundred thousand albums for the next four years every week because we are so confident in the album. We are so confident in what we do. You know, and…

Lance Bass: As far as the popularity dwindling, it’s like if the scene is kind of dwindling with having fifty types of this band out for us, even history shows that even when that style fades, a few always remain because they, I guess they are the chosen few. When kind of grunge faded out, Pearl Jam is still doing their thing in a great way. And they are still selling a ton of records. You know, when all the ballad divas were doing their thing, Celine still rises to the top. You know, it seems like…

JC Chavez: Toni Braxton.

Lance Bass: Yeah, so it’s like with every trend moving and everything like that, you know, pop is the thing to do right now. And it’s like, yeah, maybe the scene, you won’t have as many actually trying to do that scene as much, but it seems like the good ones will stick around. And that’s what we’re hoping for. You know, when rap was the big thing in the 90’s, you know Snoop Dog is still doing his thing, and in a major way. So we hope to kind of be a part of that. You know, we hope that we are one of the quality bands that stick around through whatever different kinds of trends just because people will respect the music and the show that we do.

+ charlie craine