JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE ACCOMPLISHMENTS!!
- 1989- Taste of Fame.......Singing as a warm-up act at a local lip-synching contest, 8-year-old Timberlake wows the crowd with his version of a New Kids on the Block tune. "Little girls in the sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth grades just surrounded him," Timberlake's stepfather, Paul Harless, later tells PEOPLE. "It was like something out of a Beatles movie. They had him pinned against a wall. Some wanted to get his autograph; some tried to give him money."
- 1992- Star Burst........Wearing a cowboy hat and western shirt, 11-year-old Timberlake sings Alan Jackson's "Love's Got A Hold On You" as a contestant on TV's Star Search. He loses.
- 1993- Mousing Around......Plucked from a Nashville cattle call, Timberlake wins a prized spot on Disney's TV show The New MickeyMouse Club, joining Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera,Ryan Gosling, and future 'N Sync band mate, JC Chasez. The show is canceled two years later.
- 1995- The Boys Are 'N Sync.......Timberlake, 14, teams up with Chris Kirkpatrick and dancer Joey Fatone before recruiting former Mouseketeer Chasez. Timberlake's vocal coach suggests daycare-worker Lance Bass, rounding out the quintet. The boys become 'N Sync, a name coined by Timberlake's mother, Lynn Harless, who rearranged the last letter of each member's first name. Boy-group wranglers Lou Pearlman and Johnny Wright, the same duo that launched the Backstreet Boys and late '80s group New Kids on the Block, manage the group.
- 1996- Tearin' Up the Charts......'N Sync scores a recording contract with German label BMG. Their self-titled debut album is released in Europe and becomes an instant phenomenon thanks to singles "I Want You Back" and "Tearin' Up My Heart." 'N Sync spends the next two years touring abroad before the album's U.S. in 1998, where it sells 5 million copies by the year's end.
- 2001- A Turn Toward Hip-Hop....'N Sync releases its fourth album, Celebrity, and though it never reaches the success of No Strings Attached, the album does peak at No. 1 on Billboard's 200 chart. The key singles are the breakup ballad "Gone" and the heavily R&B-influenced "Girlfriend," which signals the group's turn toward hip-hop and gets them airplay on urban radio stations.