By Joan Anderman, Globe Staff, 06/01/2001
Once upon a time in pop's Pleistocene era - circa 1990 or so - a 4-year-old band would be just getting ready to hit its stride: honing songcraft, building an audience, perfecting the live show. In the age of factory-assembled superstars and instantaneous fame, the boys in the 4-year-old band called *NSYNC are global icons to a generation of youngsters spoon-fed the corporate musical agenda of the moment.
Hence we have "Celebrity," the name of *NSYNC's forthcoming album, due out in July, and a tour called Popodyssey that takes the notion to unprecedented heights or depths, depending on your perspective.
Frankly, they did it justice last night, during a 90-minute show at Foxboro Stadium for 42,500 fans who erased entirely the line between song and spectacle.
It helped to have a colossal chrome habitat of a stage that spanned the width of the stadium field, with a three-pronged mast jutting over the audience, countless moving ramps, sky-high cables to transport the fivesome at warp speed from stage-top to a glowing, midfield pod, and a giant catwalk to strut back on.
And if the biggest musical production in concert history wasn't persuasive enough, the quintet offered an audiovisual aid in the form of a short film that chronicled *NSYNC's humble beginnings and quickly segued into a guided tour of the band's astonishing success, which includes selling a record-breaking million copies of 2000's "No Strings Attached" in one day.
And that was all before the first song even started.
Dressed in graffiti-splattered outfits that screamed "street" way too loudly - right down to Justin Timberlake's "Boy Bands Suck" T-shirt - the boys in the band opened with "Dirty Pop," the first single from the new album.
In all they debuted four new tracks in and among hits from their two previous albums, and the word is *NSYNC isn't so squeaky-clean anymore.
They're making a move away from overbearing dance beats and soppy ballads toward the au courant sound in R&B: itchy, pared-down dance tracks that are contemporary but hardly fresh. The exception was "Just the Two of Us" - a snappy, light-hearted departure.
If elaborate equals impressive, *NSYNC scaled the peak of performance values. They spun on immense, futuristic mechanical bulls during "Space Cowboy," and rose heavenward on individual cylinders for "God Must Have Spent a Little More Time On You."
"It's Gonna Be Me," which featured a daring (read: not on the record) shift into double time, was preceded by a grand frolic with oversize stuffies, giant crayons, scooters, and waterguns.
Point taken: They've retained their innocent hearts. They even read letters from fans, which led them to poignantly dedicate the new song "Something Like You" to the four Newton middle-school students killed in a bus crash recently.
But *NSYNC's professional toy chest, chock-full of the playthings only celebrities can buy, has some sharp edges.
"Do you want me, or do you want what I can buy you?" asked J.C. Chasez of his gold-digging girlfriend in one of many video skits.
Happily, they've dispensed with much of the shlock from last year's tour like the faux "Who Wants to Be A Millionaire" show and living-room sets for the love songs.
For all the over-the-top pyrotechnics, the fact is these five sing fine, strong harmonies, pull off appealing dance moves, and are down with the whole amazing idea of *NSYNC, which has far surpassed the plain old music of *NSYNC.
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