Andy Hutchins: This I Promise You by ’N Sync Can we talk about...

Feb 3, 2012
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This I Promise You by ’N Sync

Can we talk about how perfect this song is?

I mean, sure, it’s basically “You Belong With Me” sung by a man, and it’s got a whole lot of Your Life Sucks Because You’re A Woman overtones because I can’t imagine “And all that surround you / Are secrets and lies” being sung to a man, but there are no fully-gendered nouns anywhere in here. (As someone who’s been called both, “baby” and “babe” don’t count for me.) And the lyrics are the exact sort of thing a young person in love wants to hear, what with the fatalistic bits (“Battle we’ve won / Forever has now begun”) and the all-consuming idea of love forever (“I’ve loved you forever / In lifetimes before”). Lou Pearlman is probably not the best human being, but he knew who to have his bands work with; Richard Marx wrote and produced “Promise.”

I’m pretty sure this is the first pure pop ballad I loved, considering how much country I listened to on our old, two-foot-long radio before my family bought us kiddos our first CD player for Christmas in 2000, and it’s got all the hallmarks of dedicated, painstaking songwriting that I love to this day: There’s a chorus change that says almost the same thing differently, the soft-loud-soft build that everyone uses because it works, a bridge that opens things up even more, and a split-second drop before the last, most dire/passionate choruses.

And, of course, there’s the brilliant switch from Justin’s sweeter tone to J.C.’s more powerful singing and back that makes the soft-loud stuff even better; it works best for the very last phrases.

I’d talk about the track, but, well, it’s better if you hear it, in all its “we are strolling through a meadow just after sunset” glory. I love this song so much.

(Source: 00sjams, via sunforallofflorida-deactivated2)