JC had the it factor. He was an amazing singer and dancer, but he was also insanely charismatic. He had that raw, unmissable, magnetic star quality. I know because my ears and eyes were just drawn to JC whenever I would watch NSYNC perform. Though I was a fan of the group’s vibe, the harmonies, and the choreos, for me, JC was the one. He was the Michael and the George Michael, the Beyoncé and the Freddie Mercury. I remember watching JC in NSYNC’s music videos on MTV as I fried my hair with a flat iron and thinking to myself if anyone had ever sounded this good while looking this hot. Yes, I was crushing hard. 

I was older than the average NSYNC fan (I was close to Justin’s age), and I could see how the group was being marketed to a younger audience. I loved the guys, but I was never going to get in line to buy the marionettes. Most of my friends were BSB fans. I guess this segmentation made sense from a business perspective, given that the two groups shared representation. Yet none of these friends ever denied JC his flowers. Real ones always recognized his value. 

NSYNC hit it really big when I was already transitioning to college, and after JC was sidelined during the Celebrity era, my interest in the group all but disappeared. I was excited when "Blowin’ Me Up" came out and devastated when it became clear that JC was not going to get the support from the label that he and we deserved. I stopped listening to NSYNC, told myself I had outgrown them, and drifted towards "cool" music. Still, when a guy I dated in my 20s gave me a burned CD that included NSYNC songs to play in the car (yes, this was a thing), I felt caught but enamored. He got me. 

I do understand why it became common among non-fans and even a section of the fandom to claim JC’s solo career didn’t work out because he lacked the it factor. This is the end result of a carefully constructed and well-oiled marketing push by Jive Records to frame JC (but also Lance, Joey, and Chris) as interchangeable backup singers and dancers, all in the service of boosting Justin’s credibility as a solo act. If you know anything about PR, you can recognize the heavy-handed obviousness of that push and how effective it was. I’ve also seen "lack of personality" branded as a culprit. To this I would say: if you’re deliberately mischaracterizing an earnest, warm, and quirky personality as having no personality and pretending that only a generic, attention-seeking one could succeed in the early 2000s music industry, you are willfully engaging in revisionism and lying to yourselves.

JC himself wasn’t at fault; the man clearly gave it his all until the label tanked his second album.  Neither were the fans. There is nothing we could have done at the time to prevent the protracted sabotage of his solo career by Jive. Much less so without social media. It’s a fantasy that we, the public, always decided who got the push and who made it big. The myth of meritocracy in entertainment requires that we believe that talent just rises naturally and that our investment as fans directly translates to industry backing and widespread success. I wonder if this plays into our need to be reassured that the world is ultimately a fair place and that we are mostly in control of what happens around us. It's a powerful human impulse to yearn for this, even when we are confronted with systems that operate on different rules.

Getting into the rabbit hole of old NSYNC YouTube videos these days feels like meeting with my long-lost tribe. The comments from today, 5 years ago, 10 years ago, are bursting with heartfelt praise for JC and with wishes for him to come back. And TikTok just adores JC. This grassroots outpouring of admiration and love is remarkable given how long he has been out of the public eye as a performer. The music landscape has changed a lot over the past 20 years. It has become more fluid, fragmented, and horizontal. The industry continues to gatekeep, but today we as the public have more of a say and a way to express our support for artists. I wish JC all the best with his current projects, and I am rooting for him; I will always celebrate him as an artist and hope he gets the level of acclaim he deserves. 



The JC Chasez of It All