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Justin Timberlake · S4 E4
2.4 Million in One Week
The sales record that stood for 15 years
March 21, 2000. By the time the sun sets on release day, 1.1 million copies of No Strings Attached have crossed retail scanners, and the Backstreet Boys' sales record is already dust.
*NSYNC, It's Gonna Be Me (2000). Director Wayne Isham turns the group into action figures trapped in their boxes inside a toy store. They break out, dance across the shelves, fight off army men, and compete for the attention of a girl played by Kim Smith, the same actress who pulled the strings in Bye Bye Bye.
Release Day Chaos
Jive Records shipped 4.2 million copies of No Strings Attached to stores across the country. By midday, Target had ordered another 75,000 copies and Walmart called in for 60,000 more. At the Virgin Megastore, 8,000 fans showed up and 250 of them had slept outside overnight. The store was forced to shut its doors twice in the same day just to manage the crowd.
It's Gonna Be Me, *NSYNC (2000)
Max Martin, Rami Yacoub, and Andreas Carlsson wrote this in Key West, Florida, right after finishing "Bye Bye Bye." The melody was born when Carlsson started whistling a tune and Martin told him to build it into the track. Yacoub's production layers a stuttering synth riff over a four-on-the-floor beat, but the hook is all in Justin's vocal: the way he stretches 'me' into 'may' is a Swedish pop trick Martin had been perfecting since Britney's debut. Listen for the key change in the final chorus, a classic Cheiron move that lifts the whole song by a half step and makes the ending feel like a victory lap.
TAP TO REVEAL: How many copies did fans actually need?
Virgin Megastore, Times Square, New York
Where 8,000 fans descended on release day, forcing the store to close its doors twice. The same block where TRL fans had been screaming at the MTV studios for two years straight.
No Strings Attached by the Numbers
Whose first-week sales record did No Strings Attached break in March 2000?
This I Promise You, *NSYNC
Written and produced by Richard Marx, this ballad became the album's emotional anchor. Marx originally wrote it for a three-person girl group, then reworked the harmonies specifically for *NSYNC's five voices. It peaked at number five on the Hot 100 and spent thirteen consecutive weeks at number one on the Adult Contemporary chart, proving the album had staying power far beyond the uptempo hits.
This I Promise You, *NSYNC (2000)
Richard Marx wrote every word, and you can feel his fingerprints in the phrasing. Underneath the pop harmonies, this is a classic adult contemporary ballad wearing a boy band costume. The kind of earnest songwriting that groups like *NSYNC rarely got credit for, even when they sang it perfectly.
The Record That Stood
No Strings Attached finished the year as the best-selling album of 2000 in the United States with over eleven million copies sold domestically. The first-week record would stand untouched for fifteen years. Nobody in pop music, not Eminem, not Jay-Z, not Kanye, could touch 2.4 million in seven days until Adele finally did it in 2015.
The record is set. The album is everywhere. But inside the biggest band in the world, one member is already dreaming about what he could do alone. Next: the cracks begin to show.
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