We’re celebrating the 15th anniversary of “No Strings Attached” because NSYNC FOREVER!!!

This week we’re celebrating the 15 year anniversary of NSYNC’s “No Strings Attached,” the top-selling original album of the first decade of this century with 11, 113,000 copies sold (the #1 album overall, according to Billboard, was the compilation Beatles album “1.”)

You guys, 11 MILLION of us danced alone in our bedrooms to “Bye Bye Bye.” If this album is not an anniversary worth celebrating, I don’t even know WHAT is worth celebrating anymore. So let’s take a time machine back to the year 2000 and remember the awesomeness that was “No Strings Attached.” Specifically, let’s finally get to the bottom of a mystery that’s been plaguing me since my preteens: what was up with the whole puppet thing?

Well, as it turns out, the album title/cover of “No Strings Attached” was ACTUALLY A METAPHOR.

The Pinocchio motif alluded to NSYNC “cutting the strings” and breaking free from Louis J. Pearlman, who produced their first album (Backstreet Boys also had unfortunate dealings with Pearlman and also named their subsequent album, 2000’s “Black and Blue” as an allusion to their fraught relationship.)

“Bye Bye Bye” INDEED.

As far as we can Google, there’s no hidden meaning behind “Space Cowboy (Yippie-Yi-Yay)” or “Digital Get Down” (the meaning in the latter is pretty much the OPPOSITE of hidden). We are, of course, so glad that NSYNC cut the strings and got to bring more of their awesomeness to us.

“No Strings Attached,” you are one for the ages.