Fatone and Lance Bass are hosts of the new E! series ‘Cocktail Wars’
Credit: Jamie McCarthy/Getty
NEED TO KNOW
- Joey Fatone and Lance Bass open up about the unreleased album *NSYNC recorded before their 2000 hit No Strings Attached
- The group lost rights to the songs after parting ways with their former manager Lou Pearlman and record label in the late 1990s
- Fatone and Bass say some tracks may still exist on CDs or in vaults but are unlikely to be released
*NSYNC said “Bye Bye Bye” to a number of recorded songs after parting ways with their label and management in the late 1990s — but will those songs ever see the light of day?
Joey Fatone and Lance Bass — who are hosting the new E! series Cocktail Wars — tell PEOPLE that the lost songs have “never been released,” and were recorded before the group put out their hit record No Strings Attached in 2000.
“There’s a whole CD, because after we dispersed from [former manager Lou Pearlman], he owned the rights to the whole album that we recorded, and that’s why we didn’t get any of those,” Fatone, 49, explains. “That’s why we started with [the] No Strings Attached album, we had to redo and just do a whole new album.”
It worked out for the group, as No Strings Attached became one of the best-selling albums of all time thanks to hits like “Bye Bye Bye” and “It’s Gonna Be Me.”
Credit: Bob Berg/Getty
But Fatone says there are still 12 or 13 songs floating around, some of which he may have on a CD somewhere.
“There’s copies floating around and… the writers have either released it or put it somewhere,” he says.
Bass, 47, adds that many of the songs *NSYNC recorded but never released are “probably just lost” in a vault somewhere, including one called “Tanya,” which he says “would’ve been a banger.”
“[It was] a song that had different names every chorus,” says Fatone. “It wasn’t that good. It made it nowhere.”
In an old interview clip from the early 2000s shared on social media, Bass spoke to a journalist about the lost album, saying they’d had it just about done, but couldn’t use any of the songs after leaving their label.
“We had to totally start over and recreate a new album,” he said. “So we have several, several songs that are demos that will probably never ever be released.”
Credit: Craig Barritt/Getty Images for Bilt Rewards
In 2014, the group — which also included Justin Timberlake, JC Chasez and Chris Kirkpatrick — released a compilation album called The Essential *NSYNC, which included a number of B-sides and rare recordings, though the band was not told of its release ahead of time.
*NSYNC released just four albums together from 1997 to 2001 before breaking up. They have reunited a number of times over the years, most recently in 2024 during Timberlake’s concert at The Wiltern in Los Angeles. The group performed “Girlfriend,” “Bye Bye Bye” and “It’s Gonna Be Me” as well as the new song “Paradise,” which was included on Timberlake’s sixth studio album Everything I Thought It Was.
When asked about a future reunion, Bass says there’s “always a chance,” though “nothing [is] being planned right now.”
For now, he and Fatone — who is currently starring in & Juliet on Broadway — are focused on Cocktail Wars, which premieres Aug. 18.
The series teams the pair up with mixologist Melissa Brooke and guest judges like Lauren Graham, Rachel Maddow and Seth Green.
“Each installment showcases a fast, fiery battle of skill, creativity, humor, and flair,” a press release says. “From playful flavor combinations to eye-catching technique, the focus is on having a good time, taking risks, and serving up drinks with personality.”
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