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Justin Timberlake · S3 E4
Exiled to Germany
Malls, cheap hotels, and 30 people in the audience
A shopping mall in Munich, late 1996. Five Americans stand on a makeshift stage in front of an audience of thirty, singing choreographed pop in a country where nobody knows their names.
Backstreet Boys, As Long As You Love Me. This is the competition. While *NSYNC plays to thirty people in a Munich mall, the Backstreet Boys are on every television screen in Europe.
The German Grind
BMG Ariola Munich signs *NSYNC and sends them to Germany with a simple strategy: play everywhere, meet everyone. Shopping malls, teen festivals, small radio stations, school assemblies. Budget hotels, shared rooms, two or three guys to a bed. Justin is 15 years old.
Munich, Germany
The city where it all starts for *NSYNC in Europe. Late 1996, performing in shopping malls and teen festivals, sleeping in budget hotels, building a fan base one handshake at a time.
TAP TO REVEAL: How old was Justin Timberlake during *NSYNC's first European tour?
“We didn't speak the language. Nobody knew who we were. We just showed up and sang.”
— JC Chasez, on *NSYNC's early days in Germany
Sailing
A slower, melodic deep cut from *NSYNC's European debut era. Gentle and wistful, it captures the strange loneliness of being teenagers in a foreign country, far from home, singing for strangers who don't speak their language.
How did *NSYNC build their early European fan base?
Audiences get bigger each week and teen magazines show up at appearances. Then a radio station in Munich plays a new single, and everything accelerates.
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