Saw this on Yahoo Music News this morning and my jaw dropped. N'Synch was the most popular record (read top selling) of the decade!

Methinks it has more to do with the death of the medium rather than the substance and quality of the music.

'N Sync's 'No Strings' Decade's Most Popular Album

NEW YORK – The top album of the decade came from an act that's not even around anymore — 'N Sync.

Billboard magazine says the boy band led by Justin Timberlake had the decade's best-selling album with "No Strings Attached," which sold more than 10 million copies.

The most popular song of the decade was Mariah Carey's ballad "We Belong Together."

Eminem was named the top artist of the decade, while Nickelback was named top group.

For 2009, Taylor Swift had the best-selling album with "Fearless," while the Black Eyed Peas' "Boom Boom Pow" was top song.

Billboard released those chart-toppers plus others for the decade and 2009 on its Web site on Friday.

It's really not wack.

It was amazing, that even as popular as boy bands were around the turn of the millennium, that Nsync sold what they did. When No Strings Attached was released on March 21, 2000, it sold a record 2.4 million in its first week of release. Most reports say that just over 1 million of that number was its first day of release, both of which were one for the record books. At the end of 2000, it had sold 10 million records. According to SoundScan, it's the 8th best selling album since SoundScan has been in existence. It also has a Diamond Certification, because it's sold over 11 million copies. According to Amazon.com, it also broke sales records on that site too.

To put this in perspective, let's not forget this is smack dab in the middle of Napster, and the plethora of people downloading free music on the internet, religiously and endlessly (me being one of them).

Now, whatever you want to attribute all that success to is fine, but the fact is it happened. Even in 2000, I remember hearing about the first week sales, and thinking "What the shit? That's amazing!" I was happy for them. Whether you like boy bands, Nsync, or not, the fact is there was a market for them, and people loved them. I loved them. I never listened to ALL of the boy bands, but I did love Nsync for whatever reason. It was just pure pop fun.

Let's also remember that boy bands, and pop Princess wannabes were a relief answer from the previous grunge era. Music has dips and peaks and valleys. It's an ebb and tide kind of thing. An inhale and exhale. The same thing happened in the 50's. Music was upbeat, innocent, fun. Sock hops and school proms were the places to be. Then the war happened. The 60's was full of anti-war and political music, pushing for piece, screaming for equality, freedom, and a vilification of "the Man". A very heavy era, indeed. Then the 70's came along, and bands just want to have fun again. Disco, and dance music, and R&B soul like Earth Wind Fire, Gap Band, Parliament, etc, and so much more came to the forefront of music. It was a breath of relief from the heavy nature of the 60's. Although some of that music was political or social, it was still more FUN, than not. (Nothing is FUN about listening to Dylan or Hendrix sing about war or society's short comings.) Then in the 80's, music leveled out. Even with hunger and AIDS, music still maintained a middle road approach for the most part. It evened itself out.

All that happened again after the mid 90's and all the pop and hip hop that came to the fore front. Nirvana and Pearl Jam happened. Seattle happened. Things got very emo for a very long time. Everyone took some sort of honor in a bleeding heart, and suffering for the sake of it (it seemed). Then you had Aguilera singing "My Reflection" from the movie Mulan, and it went from there. Britney, Blaque, 702, Aguilera, Backstreet Boys, Nsync, O-town, Boyzone, etc etc.....all a relief from grunge. Music has leveled out about, again...for now.

Even Rolling Stone magazine called them the People of the Year in 2001. Later, they did a multi-cover issue with Nsync, one cover w/ the band, and one cover for each group member, naming them The Biggest Band In America. And at that time, they were. 5 years later, someone else was. Right now, someone else is. It's all relative, but let the facts be the facts, and put personal judgments aside for a hot second.

So all that said, Nsync probably does have the biggest selling record of the decade, and quite an accomplishment considering they were one of many boy bands (but only 1 of 2 MAJOR boy bands), and that it happened right at the start of the decade. Kudos to them for it. If it weren't Nsync, it'd be someone else we'd be discussing.

As a foot note, their last album together (so far), Celebrity, holds the record for second highest selling album in the first full week of sales.

I mean, it was 2000/2001. You'll have to get used to recalling this sort of thing when looking back at the decade as a whole.

Teach, Ernest!

That was a very insightful and well written post.

Good schoolin' for an old fart like me.

I'm still blown away by it though and suspect that if the info about specific winners for each successive year of the decade were overlaid on a graph of CD sales performance in general we'd see an ever downward trend.

I've seen a lot of articles about the disappearing medium of CDs and increasingly dismal sales but has anyone done any units tracking on BOTH download and CD sales?

I think that's where you might find the "truer" sales info.

Or maybe not because most downloads are singles and not album sales like CDs are.

"Bye Bye Bye" is the only song I've ever heard from this album.

DakutiusMaximus said:

Define "old". I'm not exactly just out of high school myself.

Militant said:

If you're heard "Bye Bye Bye", then you've heard this one:

This article is just about the US, right?

Because Shania Twain's "Up!" (2002) did more than 16 million worldwide.

Militant said:

That was the song released in January which built up anticipation for their colossal March album release.

Bye Bye was N'Sync, I always thought tat was the BAckstreet Boys.

ernestsewell said:

and "This I Promise You" - I won't make anyone watch the video

I think it has more to do with the fact that it was the biggest selling album of 2000 and cd sales are just dropping since then (and no downloads don't make up for it because as someone already pointed out they are mostly directed towards singles). Just look at the list of the Top 10 of the '00s: no less than 7 albums from 2000 are among the Top 10 of the decade and then 1 each from 2002, 2003 and 2004. But there is nothing from 2005 onwards.

ernestsewell said:

Question: What does Justin Timberlake say on April 30?




















Answer: "It's gonna be May!"

This was the beginning of the end of sales. It showed where the focus was, after this happend everyone wanted that "record" everyone wanted the number one debut, the "diamond" sales this and that, but this was the industrys peak and it was the end, this will never ever happen again, case closed, it will never recover to a point where sales are even a Fraction of this, peeps need to start rethinking their ways of thinking of sales and shit.

NSUCK

japanrocks said:

clever.

AlexdeParis said:

InsatiableCream said:

lastdecember said:

I wonder what the last few diamond-selling albums were?

Cinnie said:

I think Norah's Come Away With Me did 10 in the states, i know it did 20 worldwide.
But on the Nsync think, i just recently watched the performance of "this i promise you" when they had their special on Fox, and Richard Marx (who wrote it) played the piano for them on the special, Richard got to sing the Bridge of the song on the show, and fucking "schooled" them!!

Cinnie said:

indeed

InsatiableCream said:

that was all i had

sorry