Here we go-o-o-o-o

“Sirius is saying that nsync is going to appear on the vmas.”

That’s how all of this started. One text, and the entire context of my day…nope, week…hell, LIFE has changed.

My boys are back.

It’s not a secret that when I took my *NSYNC vows fifteen years ago, I meant them. The past few days have been nostalgic for a lot of people who have revisited their lives and mindsets circa the turn of the millennium, sharing the ways that *NSYNC sculpted their childhoods, their high school dances, their college years.

I love it. It’s given me a chance to tell stories that no one has wanted to hear for ten years. Tales of roadtrips, and lucky chances, and some of the luck that we made ourselves.

Life has changed for all of us since the last time we saw *NSYNC on a stage together, and even more since we first heard them sing. We’ve all loved, we’ve all lost, we’ve all experienced some of the best and worst the world has to offer.

I delved into my boyband treasure chest (it is definitely a real thing) for some perspective about how my life (and yours) has changed since *NSYNC came into it.

My first blog EVER - Teen People Online

The internet? Yeah, it was probably AOL, it was probably dial up, and if your mom picked up the phone to call your aunt? You were probably getting disconnected. Web pages looked like this (except in color…because back in 1999, our printer did NOT have that expensive color ink.)







Here’s our digital camera circa 2000. It holds a 3.5" floppy disk, to give you an idea of how large it is. 


We never used it for *NSYNC it because the memory “stick” held about four pictures, at a quality of a whopping 1.6 megapixels! 

So we shot regular film at every concert, which meant some pictures looked like this:   

But most of them were more like this:

Not only did it cost a fortune, but you had no idea if any of your pictures were any good until three days later. 

Here’s my adorable cell phone. Not from 2003…this was a phone from the FUTURE. My 2003 phone is on loan to the Smithsonian. So we all get the picture of what my 2003 cell phone looked like. Or, rather, we don't. Because my phone definitely didn't have a camera back then. On the bright side (no pun intended), we also didn't have thousands of screens lighting up the venue back then.

I have an iPhone now. It's also my digital camera.


 
This was how we DVR’d things. And there was no YouTube or streaming, so if you forgot to set your tape? Or someone changed the channel after you set it? NO TRL FOR YOU!

I tried watching some of them two nights ago. It infuriated me that I couldn't skip to the next chapter. Definitely need to transfer these bad boys to DVD soon.

Speaking of which, this is the first DVD I ever owned, and I bought it in 1998 not because we had a DVD player (we didn’t), but because our new GATEWAY COMPUTER (you know, in the cow box?) had one.

The Music of My Heart

It took about three days to download a song over the internet, so all the music I bought came packaged like this. I still have all these cds, in alphabetical order when they're not in a pile on my floor, because every time I migrate to the latest ipod, my *NSYNC playlists have to come with me, and iTunes has a habit of losing precious cargo. 

"Some Dreams," for example. The b-side of a 1997 single released exclusively in Germany. 

You can't find that in the iTunes store.


 
If you wanted to be the first on your block to hear Bye Bye Bye from an actual cd instead of just the radio? You better be sleeping outside FYE when it opened at midnight. And we did.

Lots of us wanted to be the first, as over ONE MILLION copies of the cd sold that first day, and another million that firstweek. It’s a record that still stands today, so SUCK IT BACKSTREET. (Sorry…sorry, that was 2000 Kylene talking. We love you BSB fans, and yes, *NSYNC's numbers are domestic while BSB kills them worldwide, so let's just call it even, shall we?) 

Here's a fun fact. MySpace was founded in 2003. Facebook didn’t even come into existence until a year later, and it would be a few more years before social media would change our landscape of connections. Tonight? I will be live tweeting the hell out of this reunion with my closest *NSYNC friends, and we’ll all be in different states sharing the moment instantly. "Digital Getdown", indeed.
 

Back in 2003, MySpace made me choose a Top 8. If I made a Top 8 of 2013, I'd see exactly one person who would’ve made the list in 2003. Four of the people on my list would be complete strangers back then. And the remaining three? We didn’t talk much ten years ago, but I don’t go a day without talking to them now. Of those people in my 2013 Top 8, there have been six marriages, eleven babies, and two green cards since *NSYNC went on hiatus.

 The funny thing is, even though a lot of changes have been technology the same way any decade will see those things evolve, the ones that really hit you are the changes in lives. The graduations, the marriages, the babies, the moves, the jobs. And I think that’s why everyone is so excited about this reunion. It’s a chance for all of us to revisit the times in our lives when the most important thing in the world was being the first person on your block to hold No Strings Attached.

You're all we ever wanted. You're all we ever needed. Thanks for coming back, *NSYNC.

With Love, Ky Ky Ky