Tracks 4, 5 and 6  from *NSYNC's No Strings Attached (2000)

Tracks 7 and 8 from *NSYNC's Celebrity (2001)

Tracks 13 and 14 from Justin Timberlake's The 20/20 Experience (2013)

Tracks 15 and 16 from Justin Timberlake's The 20/20 Experience - 2 of 2 (2013)

Tracks 17 and 18 from Justin Timberlake's Man Of The Woods (2018)

"Giddy Up" was the only song with writing credits by the members of *NSYNC on their first album, and definitely indicated the more R&B-heavy direction they'd push towards later. Timberlake says "we gon' get dis crunk" on the outro, which is pretty easy to make fun of, he sounds ridiculous. But I have to hand it to him, I sure as hell didn't know the word "crunk" in 1997 (Andre 3000 said "crunk" on "Player's Ball" in '94, and Three 6 Mafia first used it in a song title in '96, but I don't remember being conscious of the term until "Get Crunked Up" by Iconz in 2000 and a lot more people didn't know it until Lil Jon blew up around 2003). 

A few years ago I wrote a Billboard piece for the 20th anniversary of No Strings Attached and its pivotal role in the way pop and R&B were merging in the Y2K era. As I mentioned in that article, "It Makes Me Ill" was interpolated on Ariana Grande's hit "Break Up With Your Girlfriend, I'm Bored." By far my favorite *NSYNC deep cut, however, is the a cappella album closing ballad "I Thought She Knew," I remember being really impressed by the group's harmonies when they performed that on "Saturday Night Live" instead of a single. It's a rare song where almost everybody in the group sings lead, and Chris Kirkpatrick sounds great. Mostly, though, these songs remind me how great a singer JC Chasez was and how he deserved a great solo career too. 

Max Martin only wrote five *NSYNC songs -- three were massive hits, "I'll Never Stop" was a moderately big hit outside the U.S., and "Tell Me, Tell Me...Baby" was a deep cut on Celebrity, a pretty good song in the "Bye Bye Bye" mold that was ignored in favor of the group's edgier new direction. I remember "Pop" was a pretty exciting moment, my brother bought Celebrity when it came out and it sounded great in his car, "Girlfriend" was such a good transition into the Justified era. The Neptunes were working with everybody at that point but it definitely felt like Pharrell had a lot more chemistry with Justin than the other pop acts he worked with in that era. 

It was revealed years later that Pharrell and Chad refused to work on Justin's second album because the same label, Jive, was holding up Clipse's second album, which is still kind of enraging for me to think about. If I could go back and change pop history at will, I would suggest Justin insist Jive release Hell Hath No Fury so that he could get back in the studio with the Neptunes. Timberlake eventually reunited on Man of the Woods, and while I like "Higher Higher," it just wasn't the same as the Justified era. In fact I've found most of Timberlake's solo career to be a disappointment, FutureSex/LoveSounds had some great singles but I don't really rate it as an album, and the records since then have been a drag, although it was fun to pick out highlights here. People still talk about Man of the Woods as if it was a full-scale turn to acoustic country. But I think they just got scared off by the marketing and never listened so it, because that album sounds 80% just like other Justin/Timbo/Neptunes records, and the three songs co-written with Chris Stapleton, including "The Hard Stuff," are integrated pretty well into Justin's usual sound.