PopOdyssey

While promoting their performance at Rock in Rio in 2001, the band stated production was underway on their forthcoming tour. Following the performance, SFX Entertainment announced the band was planning a summer concert tour to promote their upcoming album. Band member Lance Bass said the inspiration for the tour's concept was the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, saying, "We wanted to do 2001: A Pop Odyssey and pay tribute to pop icons. So the whole tour revolves around the meaning of pop and what was popular from the '40s til today." Initially, the tour was expected to begin May 12, 2001 at the Pro Player Stadium in Miami, with English pop group BBMak slated to be the opening act. PopOdyssey was considered "the largest production for a pop concert", as the stage was five stories tall and included three video screens and five mini-stages. The tour was then postponed to May 23, 2001, to ensure that the crew was able to complete the stage construction. NSYNC's third studio album Celebrity was initially planned to be released on June 26, 2001, but was moved to July 24, 2001. As a result, NSYNC decided to perform new songs from Celebrity on the tour before the album was released. Additional tour dates were cancelled due to weather conditions in the South. However, PopOdyssey was one of the most anticipated tours of 2001. Two months into the tour, the band expressed hopes of later bringing their shows back to Europe, where they first toured before their American breakthrough, in addition to Australia; this did not come to fruition. The opening of PopOdyssey was held at Alltel Stadium in Jacksonville, Florida to positive reviews. They were joined on tour by several pop acts including: Christina Milian, Samantha Mumba and Deborah Gibson. During the show, public service announcements were shown for an anti-drug campaign with the Office of National Drug Control Policy, along with promotional spots for On the Line, a film starring band members Bass and Fatone which was to be released theatrically in the fall of 2001. The band also partnered with the Candie's Foundation to help prevent teen pregnancy. The tour also opened the newly built Heinz Field. Celebrity peaked at number one on the Billboard 200, setting the second-highest record for first-week sales after their previous album No Strings Attached (2000). The tour ended in the Caribbean islands of Turks and Caicos. Synopsis The show begins with a short film that spells out the definitions of the words Pop ("music popular with the general public") and Odyssey ("a long series of travels and adventures") on a typewriter. The words are combined to form PopOdyssey: "an adventurous journey towards popularity, beginning as just a dream and ending in reality.” Joey Fatone, dressed as a professor in a classroom, appears in the video and plays a montage that details NSYNC’s journey from their origins to the present. Fatone then scrawls the phrase Dirty pop on a chalkboard. Hooded figures appear on the main stage in a nod to NSYNC’s previous tour entrances. This turns out to be a misdirection, as the band instead emerges from a midfield stage which connects to the main stage by a long ramp. After kicking off with “Pop," they perform a mash-up of old favorites from their debut album. After performing newer song “The Two of Us”, a film segment of Lance Bass and Chris Kirkpatrick in cowboy attire prefaces “Space Cowboy.” The video directs the audience to look upwards, and the guys appear on the rafters of the stage. Harnesses take them flying above the crowds and to the midfield stage. They return to the main stage and each guy rides a futuristic-style mechanical bull. The high-tech villain figure Mobius 8 appears midfield playing remixed snippets of NSYNC songs. The guys shoot out onto the main stage from unseen elevators and sing “The Game Is Over,” with the screens showing video game effects. The group engages in a video-game “battle” with Mobius. The show ends with “Bye Bye Bye.” Each band member goes inside a cage that is covered in drapes. The drapes are then dropped, revealing the cages to be now empty. ==Personnel==

NSYNC • JC Chasez – Lead Tenor Vocals • Justin Timberlake – Lead Tenor Vocals • Chris Kirkpatrick – Backing Countertenor Vocals • Lance Bass – Backing Bass Vocals • Joey Fatone – Backing Baritone Vocals Band On this tour, all six accompanists returned from the No Strings Attached tour. Two new additions would join the ranks, however • Kevin Antunes – Music Director, Keyboards • Troy Antunes – Bass • Billy Ashbaugh – Drums, Percussion • Greg Howe – Lead Guitar • Ruben Ruiz – Rhythm Guitar, Keyboards • David Cook – Keyboards • Paul Howards – Saxophone, Percussion, Keyboards • Juan Sepulveda – Percussion Dancers • Kristin Denehy • Chantal Robson • Annalisia Simone Fergason • Diana Carrendo • Michele Martinez ==Opening acts==

• Not So Boy Band (North America—Leg 1,2, select dates) • BBMak (North America—Leg 1, select dates) • Christina Milian (North America—Leg 1, select dates) • Debbie Gibson (North America—Leg 1, select dates) • Dream (North America—Leg 1, select dates) • Eden's Crush (North America—Leg 1, select dates) • Li'l Johnnie (North America—Leg 1, select dates) • Meredith Edwards (North America—Leg 1, select dates) • Samantha Mumba (North America—Leg 1, select dates) • 3LW (Chicago, Jacksonville, Hershey) • Tony Lucca (Jacksonville, Tampa) • Lil' Romeo (Jacksonville, St. Louis, Houston) • Amanda (Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, Columbus, New Orleans, Jackson) • Tonya Mitchell (Oakland, Sacramento, San Jose, San Diego, Anaheim) ==Setlist==

The following setlist was obtained from the concert held on May 23, 2001, at the Alltel Stadium in Jacksonville, Florida. It does not represent all concerts for the duration of the tour. • "Pop" • "Tearin' Up My Heart" / "I Want You Back" • "(God Must Have Spent) A Little More Time on You" (contains elements of "Music of My Heart") • "The Two of Us" • "Space Cowboy (Yippie-Yi-Yay)" (contains elements of "Wild Wild West") • "This I Promise You" • "Gone" • "It's Gonna Be Me" • "See Right Through You" • "Up Against the Wall" • "Celebrity" • "Something Like You" / "Falling" / "Selfish" • "No Strings Attached" ;Encore • "The Game Is Over" (contains elements of "Can't Stop the Rocket", "Mars: The Bringer of War" from The Planets and "Bye Bye Bye") (featuring Mobius 8) • "Bye Bye Bye" ==Tour dates==

;Cancellations and rescheduled shows Box office score data ==Broadcasts and recordings==

The tour was documented for video during the concert at the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans. Bandmember JC Chasez mentioned the band chose to film at that venue because rehearsals were held at that facility. The VHS, entitled *NSYNC: PopOdyssey Live, was released on November 21, 2001. A DVD edition was released on April 23, 2002. The DVD featured the entire concert along with special features, which included: interviews with each bandmember, behind-the-scenes Easter eggs, photo gallery, profile of each musician, web links and a documentary. A special intro video was made for the video release to explain the meaning of the tour name. The original video shown at the beginning of each concert was made available as a special feature. For the Celebrity Tour, the concert at the TD Waterhouse Centre was filmed for a possible DVD release. However, the footage was deemed "unusable" and not released. Bootleg DVDs were sold on eBay in 2003 with amateur footage of the concert in Anaheim. A professionally filmed video montage appeared on YouTube in 2006. Before the group began the Celebrity Tour, they performed a few promotional concerts that aired on television. The first was a CBS Thanksgiving special entitled "*NSYNC: The Atlantis Concert". The show was filmed at the Atlantis Paradise Island on November 14 and 15, 2001. The concert was exclusive to guests of the hotel and featured duets with country recording artist, Tim McGraw. The special aired on November 23, 2001 alongside The Rugrats Movie. This concert was followed with another promotional performance. To celebrate the 2002 Winter Olympics, the band was one of the headlining performers for the "Olympic Celebration Concert Series". The concert was filmed at the Olympic Medals Plaza on February 23, 2002. The concert aired live on NBC. ==Critical reception==

The tour received generally positive reviews for its lavish visual effects, the band’s stage presence, and the group’s new songs from Celebrity. Scott Mervis of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette called the show at RFK Stadium the "mother of all stadium tours", and Jon Bream of the Star Tribune noted the effects were bigger, brighter and bolder than their last tour. For the debut concert at Altell Stadium, Nick Marino of The Florida Times-Union wrote that despite the massive stage, the band's stage presence was out of this world. Peter Debruge from Entertainment Weekly said the show at Hersheypark Stadium more closely resembled a Super Bowl halftime show than a traditional concert, saying, "Love them or hate them, you've got to admit NSYNC puts on a killer show". Jane Stevenson of Jam! gave the SkyDome show three and a half out of five stars. Though Strauss said the opening number "Pop" was not as strong of a single as "Bye Bye Bye," he commented the band showed a more aggressive side in showing they write their own songs. In a review of the Chicago show, Phil Gallo of Variety felt "many fans will have trouble digesting all the audiovisual information on offer" and that the production lacked cohesiveness. The band returned to a more stripped-down, less flashier setting when they embarked on the Celebrity tour in March 2002. ==References==