Lance Bass
James Lance Bass is an American singer, actor, and producer. He grew up in Mississippi and rose to fame as the bass singer for the boy band NSYNC. The band has sold over 70 million records, becoming one of the best-selling boy bands of all time. NSYNC's success led Bass to work in film and television.
He starred in the 2001 film On the Line, which his company, Bacon & Eggs, also produced. Bass later formed a second production company, Lance Bass Productions, as well as a now-defunct music management company, Free Lance Entertainment, a joint venture with Mercury Records.
After completion of NSYNC's PopOdyssey Tour, Bass moved to Star City, Russia, in a much publicized pursuit of a space tourism seat on a Soyuz space capsule. Bass was certified by both NASA and the Russian Space Program after several months of cosmonaut training and planned to join the TMA-1 mission to the International Space Station. However, after his financial sponsors backed out, Bass was denied a seat on the mission.
In July 2006, Bass came out as gay in a cover story for People magazine. He was awarded the Human Rights Campaign Visibility Award in October 2006 and released an autobiography, Out of Sync, in October 2007, which debuted on the New York Times Best Seller list.
Early life and education
James Lance Bass was born in Laurel, Mississippi, to James Irvin Bass Jr., a medical technologist, and Diane, a middle school mathematics, English, and career discovery teacher. Along with his older sister, Stacy, Bass grew up in adjacent Ellisville, Mississippi, and was raised as a Southern Baptist. Bass has described his family as devoutly Christian and conservative, and has said that his childhood was "extremely happy".As a young boy, Bass developed an interest in space, and at age 9 traveled to Cape Canaveral, Florida, with his father to watch his first live Space Shuttle launch. Of this experience, Bass said, "I was certain from then on that my future was to be involved with space." Shortly after, Bass attended space camp in Titusville, Florida, and aspired to attend college and study engineering, with the hope that he would one day work for NASA.
When Bass was 11 years old, his father was transferred to a different hospital, and the family moved to Clinton, Mississippi. Bass began singing in his Baptist church choir and was encouraged to audition for local performance groups by his childhood best friend, Darren Dale, the youngest child of former longtime Mississippi Insurance Commissioner George Dale. Bass joined the Mississippi Show Stoppers, a statewide music group sponsored by the Mississippi Agriculture and Forestry Museum, and the Attaché Show Choir, a national-award-winning competitive show choir group at Clinton High School. He was also a member of a seven-man vocal group named Seven Card Stud, which competed at state fairs and performed at several social and political events for Senator Trent Lott.
At Clinton High School, Bass was elected vice president of his junior class and has said that he performed well in math and science. However, Bass later said that his primary focus during high school was singing, and when reflecting on it, he remembers "hardly anything" about academia.
Career
Music
NSYNC
In 1995, during his junior year of high school, Bass received a call from Justin Timberlake and his mother, Lynn Harless, who asked Bass if he would be interested in auditioning for the pop group NSYNC after the group's original bass singer, Jason Galasso, had quit. Timberlake's vocal coach recommended Bass as a replacement. Bass was accepted into the group after auditioning in front of the other bandmembers, and soon left school to move to Orlando, Florida and rehearse full-time. Bass has said that he did not know how to dance before he joined NSYNC, and therefore found much of the group's choreography difficult to learn.According to an episode of VH1's Driven, Jan Bolz, president of BMG's German division, offered NSYNC a recording contract under the condition that they replace Bass, whose dancing, he felt, "wasn't at the same level as all the others." However, Chris Kirkpatrick refused to accept the contract without Bass. The group's manager, Johnny Wright, convinced Bolz that Bass's dancing would quickly improve. Bolz conceded, and the group soon moved to Munich, Germany to record their first album with BMG. NSYNC began extensive touring in Europe, and Bass's mother quit her job to tour with the group as a chaperone, as Bass was still a minor.
After gaining significant notability in Europe, NSYNC was signed to the American record label RCA in 1997. The group's first single, "I Want You Back" began receiving major radio play in the United States, and NSYNC soon found themselves becoming an "overnight sensation", a period which Bass describes in his autobiography as "the death of my own innocence". Along with increasing fame and recognition in the United States, the band also experienced a highly publicized legal battle with Lou Pearlman, who originally put the band together, due to what the group believed were illicit business practices on his part.
NSYNC sued Pearlman and his record company, Trans Continental, for defrauding the group of more than 50% of their earnings, rather than his original promise of receiving only one-sixth of the profits. The group threatened to leave and sign with Jive Records, which prompted Pearlman and RCA to countersue NSYNC for $150 million US, citing breach of contract. The injunction was thrown out of court and, after winning back their earnings, NSYNC signed with Jive.
In March 2000, NSYNC released No Strings Attached, which became the fastest-selling record of all time, selling 1.1 million copies in its first day of release. In 2001, the group followed up with their Celebrity album, which scored the second highest first-week album sales ever, trumped only by the group's previous album. NSYNC went on to sell over 56 million records worldwide. In 2002, the group announced that they would be taking a "hiatus", during which Timberlake began to record solo material. NSYNC has not recorded new material since, and Bass has stated that he feels the group has officially disbanded.
In 2007, Bass said he had faith Timberlake would return after six months off to record another album with NSYNC, and that he felt betrayed by Timberlake's 2004 decision to pursue his solo career instead. Bass has also said he has little hope for a reunion since Timberlake has "made it clear that he wouldn't be interested in discussing another album any time soon." Despite these statements, Bass has denied that he harbors any ill feelings towards Timberlake, saying: "At that time... it did feel like betrayal. I felt heartbroken. All these emotions went through me. Today, I'm really happy, and Justin and I are really great friends. I don't hate him at all. And I understand what he was going through, and it was as hard for him as it was for any of us."
In September 2023, a new NSYNC song, "Better Place" was announced following a reunion of the band at the MTV Video Music Awards. The song, part of the soundtrack to the film Trolls Band Together, was released September 29.
Free Lance Entertainment
In 2000, Bass formed a music management company named Free Lance Entertainment, which was a joint venture with Mercury Nashville, a division of Mercury Records. Vowing to keep the company "a strictly family-run operation", Bass employed his parents and sister as talent scouts, and he recruited childhood friend and aspiring country singer Meredith Edwards for the company's first release. Edwards began touring with NSYNC as an opening act in the fall of 2000, and Bass teamed up with MTV to hold a nationwide talent search for more artists later that year. However, Free Lance soon folded after disappointing sales of Edwards's debut album, Reach.Acting
Film and television
Bass guest-starred on The WB drama series 7th Heaven, playing Rick Palmer, a love interest for Beverley Mitchell's character, Lucy. The following year, while NSYNC was in the midst of recording Celebrity, Bass received his first starring role in the 2001 motion picture On the Line. Bass played Kevin, a man who falls in love with a woman on a Chicago train and begins a search to find her again.The film was produced by Bass's production company, A Happy Place, and it featured appearances by Jerry Stiller, Al Green, Bon Jovi guitarist Richie Sambora, former WWE wrestler Chyna, and Bass's bandmates Timberlake, Kirkpatrick and Fatone, the latter in a major role. The film also featured a soundtrack which included previously unreleased songs by NSYNC and Britney Spears. Bass collaborated with Joey Fatone, Mandy Moore, Christian Burns and True Vibe for the film's theme song, "On the Line".
Despite heavy marketing towards NSYNC teen fans, the film was a commercial failure, grossing only US$4.2 million domestically despite its $10-million budget. The film, along with Bass's acting, was poorly received by critics. Bass later said he felt the film's success was greatly hindered by its release date, which came one week after the World Trade Center attacks of September 11, 2001. In his 2007 autobiography, Bass wrote, "That was it our film was finished... once the country went to war, there was no way our film was going to be on anyone's top-priority list."
After On the Line, Bass appeared in Zoolander and Wes Craven's Cursed as himself, and he played a wedding singer in I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry. Bass has also lent his voice to several animated television programs, such as Robot Chicken and Disney's Kim Possible, Handy Manny and Higglytown Heroes. Bass made an appearance in the 2008 film Tropic Thunder. As a guest star in the 2013 Gravity Falls episode "Boyz Crazy", Bass plays in the boy band, Sev'ral Timez. In 2014, Bass guest starred on an episode of the Comedy Central series Review, in which he visited space along with the show's lead character.