3. NSYNC - "No Strings Attached"(Jive, 2000)
Here it is: the album that needs no introduction, and the one against which all other boyband albums would be measured. (Funny, they probably said the same thing ten months earlier about Backstreet Boys' "Millennium"!) "No Strings Attached" was delayed for almost six months by NSYNC's legal battle to free themselves from control of their money-grubbing overlord, Lou Pearlman -- an eventually successful effort which inspired the album's title. Their newfound contractual freedom suited them well, resulting in an album whose creative energy and sonic momentum carried from the opening of "Bye Bye Bye" to the final harmonies of the sumptuous a cappella closer "I Thought She Knew". To say that every track could have been a single really is no exaggeration. In every sense -- creative, business, and otherwise -- boyband pop would never be the same again.
2. ESPEN LIND - "This Is Pop Music"(Universal/Norway, 2001)
He's helped write for some of the most popular artists around -- Leona Lewis, the Jonas Brothers, David Cook, Beyoncé, Ne-Yo, Jordin Sparks, and Train -- but what a lot of people don't know is that he's also a superb pop musician in his own right. This is his third album, and I dare say there's not a thing about it that isn't great. The songs are well-written and balanced nicely between the slow ("Everybody Says"), the energetic ("This Is The Time! This Is The Place!"), the in-between ("Everything's Falling Apart"), and the indescribable ("Pop From Hell"). Lind's vocals are as flawless and beautiful here as they always are, but the most interesting thing may be the instrumentation. I've listened to this album over a dozen times, and on every listen I pick up little intricacies buried in the mix that I didn't hear before. That fact alone makes this his best and most entertaining album by far.
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