Consider "This I Promise You."

A year or two ago, watching them perform TIPY at the Fox Family Music thing and in the MTV studios, one of the most prominent aspects of their performance, I felt, is that for most of the song, Joey Lance and Chris just sit there. They come in for the chorus, the bridge, and that's it. This was before they redid any of the harmonies or added the Grammy performance a cap interlude, it was album version, without any of the added itty-parts. So the basic gist of the song is that Justin does his quiet thing at the start and the end, Joey Lance and Chris voice the two lines of chorus plus the bridge and one background "give you my heeaaaart" during the second verse, just sitting there bopping their heads for the remainder of the song, which JC owns. Yes, JC owns the bulk and the heart of the song. I have no doubt in my mind that Dickie Marx didn't write TIPY with a five-part harmony in mind, instead for a solo singer.

To this day, no one gave a rat's bass of an objection to this. Not *NSYNC fans, not non-*NSYNC fans, it was just accepted that this was the way the song went, with JC and his backup parts. I was going to mention this at various points before, but even I didn't deem this all that important, and after all no one seemed to care. There were more interesting aspects of *NSYNC to focus on.

Now consider Gone.

Joey, Lance, and Chris. In Gone, they have almost twice the amount of voice time as they did in TIPY. Almost twice the amount. Whereas in TIPY, head-bopping on stools took up the majority of their performance area before the Grammy remake, watching Gone live you see and hear the microphone constant at their lips, their voices constant at work. As I said it is my thought that Dickie wrote TIPY as a solo song...with Gone however, my impression is that when Justin was working this out, he had every intention of writing it for the group to sing and did so, keeping in mind melody, harmony, and everything in between. He wrote it as an *NSYNC song, with *NSYNC in mind.

But for some reason, moreso than any of their other songs, Gone is criticized and berated, by their own fans moreso in fact, as "Not being a real *NSYNC song" and is composed of "Justin and the Timberlakes." Why is that? Given that absolutely no one raised any amount of objections towards actual *NSYNC-voice time in TIPY and the abundance of it in Gone, how is it that Gone is suddenly categorized as such a drift from the *NSYNC norm?

Oh yeah, because JC gets no solos.

Which goes all the way back to the subject of Justin the diva or whatever...I don't see it so much as Justin stepping into the spotlight since he's always been there, I see it more as JC stepping out a bit and makes it easier to pinpoint it on CurlyBoy.

In the past, in times of their debut and especially with NSA, JC was the local artisan in the fans' eyes. He was the song-writer, he had the soul and strength in his voice, and he was mature and composed. And yet? Doesn't he have all those qualities still? From my point of view, it's really that Justin now has those qualities as well, which makes it just a bit threatening and seen as a shift in the group dynamic, which really, it isn't.

And there ya have it, my Gone vs TIPY theory.

Thank you! I'm in pain now from typing all that out.

I really don't like this whole obsession with solos that fans of *NSYNC and other groups seem to have. I totally see why we would care, don't get wrong...I do see the merit in solos. But what is with this...obsession? What, are we keeping score now? Justin in the lead, Chris had better start catching up soon before the third quarter? It's so ridiculous, this isn't a competition. This is *NSYNC. If *NSYNC were a competition between five members to see which ones could sing more often, I wouldn't have ever started liking them and I certainly would not have remained a fan for so long.

What really gets to me is when people say that Gone isn't a real *NSYNC song yet say that Sailing, Bringin' Da Noise, The Lion Sleeps Tonight, and the first rendition of For the Girl Who Has Everything are. I mean can you be any more critical and vindictive towards Justin for no good reason at all!?

Important note: I DO NOT DISLIKE THIS I PROMISE YOU!! I love it. I love it just as much as Gone if not a little more. I could care less about the parts in it, it's a beautiful song, even before the remake, Dickie did a great job, *NSYNC did a great job. I'm just using it as a basis of comparison with what people seem to be caught up on these days between the shift in group dynamic, which is Gone. Thank you.

Because in the end, it should be be about the five of them. And it is.