A Midnight Date with 'N Sync
At 12:05 a.m. last Tuesday, the floor of the Media Play between the cash registers and the video section of the Sheridan location was strewn with dozens of DVDs. A gray-haired man in a Media Play vest was bent on the ground, picking up copies of "Gladiator" and "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon." Looking at the mess that awaited him to be replaced upon the store's wire shelves, he shook his head slowly in despair.
As I looked at him and a severely damaged sign featuring a sale for "Sugar and Spice" videos on the ground, I, too, shook my head in despair, the kind of despair that only a diehard Backstreet Boys fan who has just been pushed and shoved by hundreds of girls yelling and screeching for 'N Sync can feel.
Standing beside a four-tier steel cart that moments earlier was full of the pink-and-white-colored CDs of 'N Sync's new album "Celebrity," I could not help but recognize the force that 'N Sync has become.
I hate the idea that 'N Sync has overtaken the Backstreet Boys, but even I must concede that the Boys are no longer America's favorite boy band. Even if 'N Sync's second Rolling Stone cover for August declaring them "The Biggest Band in the World" was not convincing enough, the fanaticism that anxiously awaited the appearance of "Celebrity" and that finally let loose inside Media Play when the CD was brought out certainly was.
At midnight last Tuesday, girls unified by their shared adoration of band members J.C. Chasez, Lance Bass, Justin Timberlake, Chris Kirkpatrick and Joey Fatone stampeded past me to get their pink and blue nail-polished hands as soon as possible on "Celebrity." All I could see left and right were the moving blurs of summer color and youthful hair, and all I could hear were the endless peels of laughter and squeals of joy. Girls had one, two, five, 10 copies of "Celebrity" as they ran past me back to their friends and moms in line. Even boys were excitedly bouncing to the registers with copies of the CD in hand.
When the first sale was rung up, the whole store cheered in hopes that their midnight purchases would mark the beginning of a record-breaking week of sales for "Celebrity."
'N Sync set the industry standard when its March 2000 "No Strings Attached" sold 2.41 million copies in its first week, breaking a record previously held by my beloved-but beleaugered-Backstreet Boys. And although 'N Sync and 'N Sync fans alike have insisted that it is only the critics and the media who exert pressure for the band to sell a record-breaking number of albums in the first week, the great expectations evident in the shining smiles and glowing skin of the girls around me told me that the success of first-week sales was certainly on everybody's minds.
When I reached my car early that morning, two girls were sitting inside a dark green Jeep parked across from me, eyes closed, dreamily singing. They opened their eyes momentarily to look at each other in delight and soon closed them again to return to the world in which their newly purchased copy of "Celebrity" ensconced them. Record or no record, these girls were falling in love with 'N Sync again.
