My Unwritten Bestseller: A Boy Band Deep Dive
The one thing I wish I could write is a New York Times bestseller. As someone who isn’t an author by trade I know it’s a foolishly ambitious thing to wish for, but it’s what I want. To be more specific, I wish to turn some independent research into a book that becomes a New York Times bestseller. My work fits into an unusual niche but I believe it would be an interesting read. The book would be a Y2K nostalgia piece without the rose-tinted aviator glasses: a deep dive into how one of the biggest music groups of the early 2000s fizzled out under the guidance of their management.
In the summer of 2020 I created Riddle On Her Mind, which is a visual archive documenting public information about how the boy band *NSYNC broke up. (No, I’m not calling it a “hiatus” anymore. After 2 decades I think it’s more than okay to call a thing a thing). What started as a group chat debate became the foundation of my foray into investigative online journalism. I’ve been working on this for 18 months but it was only recently that I started to appreciate what I’m uncovering with this project. Taking the time to wipe the dust off and lay out the pieces presents a more intriguing picture than any of the neutralized takes on *NSYNC’s breakup that have been written in the past few years.
A 6-month ‘break’ was stretched to more than 2 years while the group’s next album was continually postponed. Enterprising young men who started exploring other avenues of celebrity had side hustles that were leveraged against them. Inequitable career management meant that some members were encouraged to pass on opportunities while others were not. Certain long-term plans were unknown to most of the group and weren’t intended for their benefit. And while all of this is happening within the group the landscape of mainstream music was changing — teen pop was winding down as its core consumers were getting older and increasingly gravitating towards more mature sounds like R&B, rap, and garage rock.
*NSYNC wasn’t in a unique position since the Backstreet Boys faced similar challenges at the time. But BSB managed to come out of the other side of the 2000s as a going concern, whereas *NSYNC did not. Also, BSB’s troubles are better documented because the Boys have been more transparent about their growing pains. An unfiltered account of how *NSYNC broke up has yet to be told; instead, a mix of benign neglect and revisionism have distorted perceptions and covered up an interesting chapter of pop music history in the process. Riddle On Her Mind allows me to uncover the buried story and capture the breakup as it was still unfolding. This project is far from finished but the material I’ve covered to date are a solid foundation for what’s to come — answers that lead to more questions, more questions that reveal new answers, and a complete project that eventually becomes my bestseller.
