Hear Us Out: Ice Spice, Taylor Swift, and *NSYNC Should Collab
Taylor Swift is vibrating with joy. Ice Spice? She’s just chilling.
For those who missed it, Taylor Swift had a meltdown on television last night about the return of *NSYNC to the MTV Video Music Awards. Ice Spice, Swift’s date for the evening, clapped for the 40-somethings onstage and passed a polite glance to Swift to see what all the fuss was about. The fuss, just to be clear, is arguably the most famous boy band of the ’90s, who’ve sold over 34 million records combined. (Now excuse me while I crumble to dust over having to explain that.)
It’s obvious from the video feeds that Ice Spice eventually figured out what was going on, but the contrast in her mood and Swift’s was thrilling to witness. Swift sits squarely amongst fans who would have loved *NSYNC in the ’90s, well before Ice Spice was even born on January 1, 2000, having just escaped the Y2K disaster.
Later, when *NSYNC presented her with the award for Best Pop music video, for “Anti-Hero,” Swift swanned onto the stage and blurted out that she had collected *NSYNC’s dolls as a tween. “What’s going to happen now?” she demanded. “Are you doing something?” she asked, then turned to the audience: “They’re going to do something and I need to know what it is!”
Online, fans were quick to grab footage from the audience camera stream on YouTube.
AWW pic.twitter.com/G7W3mRbvO1
— ry ౨ৎ (@wiinestained) September 13, 2023
Some Swifties declared that, in light of Spice’s hilariously nonchalant attitude, the industry might be losing its touch with pop music history—are you even a millennial if you didn’t run crying and screaming into your local Target to buy Celebrity on CD 22 years ago? The boy band’s last full-length album together broke sales records even Swift herself would gawk at. Conversely, the Munchkins (Spice’s elite fan cabal) either asked who *NSYNC was, or cracked jokes about the “chill” icon.
Frankly, I’m somewhere in the middle. Like Swift, I’d have an extreme reaction to Justin Timberlake’s presence, if only to run up on him screaming “Justice for Britney!” Likewise, I vibe with Spice’s nonchalant approach to the presence of men in her vicinity, even pop legends like *NSYNC.
It was a troubled award show without any writers to steer the ship—after all, they’re all on strike—but if anything comes out of it, I hope it’s a sample of “Bye Bye Bye” on Spice’s next record.
Earlier in the night, Timbaland told interviewer Nessa on the pink carpet that “pretty soon, there’s gonna be no genre that’s not hip-hop related,” and he was right. What better full-circle moment would there be than for Spice, the current princess of pop culture, to sample the former princes of yesteryear? If she airdropped Swift on the track, it’s a guaranteed platinum hit, but I think there’s a more creative option. Should Britney Spears find herself on this fantasy draft single, it might break the music industry in half! (There are rumors swirling she’s back in the studio, after all.) Not to mention a Swift/Spice/*NSYNC collaboration would make much more sonic sense than a Bad Bunny and Taylor Swift duet.
But I’m not in the business of giving away my best ideas for free. Swift has enough VMAs to sort through from last night, and Spice just launched a flagship campaign with Dunkin’ Donuts and Ben Affleck. If either of their teams want to talk, they know where to find me.
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