*NSYNC, Backstreet Boys, 98 Degrees All Recall Obsessing OverTRLEvery Day to Find Out Who Was More Popular

Mar. 15, 2025

Backstreet Boys (left), NSYNC (center), 98 Degrees in the late 1990s.Photo:Fryderyk Gabowicz/picture alliance via Getty; Jason Buckner/Mirrorpix via Getty; Ron Wolfson/Getty

Fryderyk Gabowicz/picture alliance via Getty; Jason Buckner/Mirrorpix via Getty; Ron Wolfson/Getty

If you were rushing home to catchTRLevery day, you weren’t the only one.

Nick Lacheyof98 Degreessays he’s tried to explain the “interactive” show, where now-wifeVanessa Lacheywas once a host (or VJ), to their three kids.

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*NSYNC during Teen People’s 1st Anniversary Party in 1999.SGranitz/WireImage

SGranitz/WireImage

The show, which had a music video countdown that was ranked based on fan votes for the day, helped fuel the feud between the different groups.

“It gave the fans a way to show you, quantify, which one was the biggest right now,” *NSYNC’sLance Bassnotes.

“It was like, ‘All right, who’s going to be No. 1 today?’ It fueled this giant energy of competition andTRLwas the gasoline.”

“Every video we put out was No. 1 or No. 2, No. 1 or No. 2. And then *NSYNC came out and you had 98 Degrees. It was just this battle,” acknowledgesBackstreet Boys’AJ McLean.

“If any group is telling you they didn’t want to be No. 1 on the countdown, they’re lying to you,” Lachey says. “Of course you wanted to be No. 1. We took notice of where we were on the countdown every day.”

“I thinkTRLwas definitely the nail in the coffin for the fandoms to be at each other’s throats,” Bass adds, noting fans got all the way into it.

98 Degrees in 1998.Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic

For 98 Degrees in particular, going onTRLled to “almost like an overnight change,” saysJeff Timmons.

“We went from driving ourselves around in a Winnebago that we had wrapped to not being able to get out of the Winnebago. Literally fans everywhere, wherever we pulled up. Fans would sneak on our tour bus and we wouldn’t even know they were there until the next city,” he says.

Hear more about the competition between boy bands and how they all rose to fame inLarger Than Life: Reign of the Boybands, now streaming on Paramount+.

source: people.com