Hey y'all - this is a short story which ties in with two of my longer ones, Making Music and Another You Another Me. You'll want to be reading those before this, or you'll get totally spoilt!

But yes, this is just a mock up of a Behind The Music special, telling the story of Piper's life and career and obviously her thing with Mr Timberlake, who if he wasn't present would mean this wasn't really a story for an *NSYNC site!!! It's written as a transcript, because obviously they6 show zillions of clips on BTM and we'd be here for like a week if I had to describe them all.

Anyway, enough chatter, enjoy!!

Oh, wait - I forgot to mention, do NOT expect these dates to match up with the real life timeline, because I totally messed with it for the long stories

"This is just something I always wanted to do, and one way or another I just had to make it happen."

"She's the most incredibly focussed individual I've ever signed to a label."

"I think what sets her apart is the fact that she might be a pop artist, but she is still an artist and an incredibly versatile one. She's completely in charge of her music, and woe betide anybody who thinks otherwise."

"Girl got game, that's all I gotta say about it."

"No matter how big she gets, she's just always been my Piper."

With 50 million albums sold worldwide and a face that's rarely off magazine covers, Piper Tenshaw is a household name. Her sassy lyrics and knowing smile have captivated a legion of fans, launched a thousand websites and sold millions of dollars worth of merchandising and concert tickets. But once upon a time this big superstar was just a little girl growing up in New York City, dreaming of the big time.

The only child to parents Jonathan and Maggie Tenshaw, coming from a humble but comfortable and financially secure background, Piper's destiny began to manifest itself at an early age.

Maggie Tenshaw, mother

"Piper Marie Tenshaw was born on August 2nd 1981, in New York City... she was a couple weeks early, she's always been full of surprises like that! But from the moment that child began to walk and talk people were telling me there was something special about her - and I know every parent says that about their child, but not every parent can hear their pre-school daughter singing harmony to Whitney Houston on the radio, you know? Jonathan absolutely loved music and Piper just soaked it up from him like a little sponge and the student quickly became the master... and oh he used to complain every time she'd correct him or be able to play something on piano that he couldn't!"

Piper

"I was just always, always in love with music; I can't ever remember not loving it. I was obsessed with melody and deconstructing how songs worked, even when I was too young to actually be able to work that stuff out for myself, and pretty much the second I could reach the piano my Dad had to teach me to play it because I bugged him so much. I mean Mom tried to get me to go to ballet, or soccer, or anything else she could get me interested in that might stop me becoming completely obsessed, but I think in the end she just had to accept I was a freak like that!"

Maggie

"Piper grew up in a very comfortable home... we certainly weren't wealthy, but we could afford a family vacation once a year and we never struggled with the necessities. Jonathan was in accounting and I was a middle school teacher and we got by just fine. She was always a very intense child, and I used to get complimented on how quiet and polite she was but I never had the heart to tell people she was only so quiet and unobtrusive around adults because she was always thinking about something else and just not interested in them! She's always had that focus."

Ted Hilton, neighbour

"She was a very sweet child. We lived opposite them until they moved to England and we've always kept in touch, but it'll always astound me thinking about her as this big celebrity I see in the newspapers because she was just a little kid like anybody else, riding her little bike around the block with our kids and getting the bus to school and just being a child. She was never as naughty as my two though, always much better behaved!"

Ben Houghton, cousin

"She's just my cousin, you know, like she's always been. We never used to care that she was winning talent shows and stuff, we always used to pick on her because she was the girl and that's what boys do, you know? I mean, now people ask me about it and they think she must have lived out this glamorous dream where she was always gonna be a star but back then it was just this thing she did, like we played football or whatever. It wasn't a big deal to us."

Not only was Piper's early childhood a familiar showbiz story of the child prodigy, it also mirrored the destiny of another young hopeful in Memphis Tennessee who would later become one of the biggest parts of the Piper Tenshaw story: young Justin Timberlake.

Lynn Harless, 20/20 September 2003

"You know it's funny, Piper's mom Maggie and I are always comparing notes on her and Justin as children because they had such similar paths, and it's just funny to me how similar they were - both very quiet, very focussed kids who knew exactly what they wanted from the get go and who you had to go check on not because they were misbehaving but because they were too quiet and you just wanted to make sure they were still breathing!"

Once she hit school, Piper's talent quickly became obvious to teachers and students alike, and they encouraged Jonathan and Maggie Tenshaw to nurture their daughter's gift.

Katherine Diego, elementary school headteacher

"When Piper was in front of an audience, it was like a charge had just hit that kid and she lit up. She was getting lead roles in everything she tried out for, every school occasion she was given solos or asked to play piano... I know most of her tuition came from her father, but I think we as teachers have to take responsibility for pushing her onto the talent show circuit because none of us could believe what had fallen into our laps. Her music teacher was actually scouting out for talent shows and workshops on her own time and passing the information to the Tenshaws because she just could not believe how sophisticated the child was for her age, and I think we actually gave them the information that led to her first dance lessons. I must confess I still feel some guilt for the way that they got accused of being pushy stage parents, because all that drive came from the child and if anything I think her mom was taken aback by it and was actually very wary of her daughter doing all this so young, but it was we as teachers who were nudging them to do this with her."

Piper

"I remember my first talent show, going in there not expecting to win - and everybody was doing what was popular in the charts back then but then I walked out on stage in my little pink dress with the gold bow that I loved at the time but now realise how hideous it was... and I sang Billie Holiday... and the parents in the audience who recognised the song were looking at me like I'd just sprouted another head. And I won second place that night and I remember thinking that was like the greatest thing ever, second place in this little talent show that maybe a hundred people were watching. Just shows how far I've come, huh?!"

Piper quickly became a regular at local talent shows and events, but not everybody was supportive of the tiny star in training.

Randy Jones, talent agent

"At the time I was recruiting children in the area, checking out local talent shows and looking for who I thought could have a career in television or in theatre, there's a lot of demand for child performers, and I remember Piper blowing me away, as she did everybody. She got very noticed in the local scene, but with that level of success, comes jealousy from others. It's not like these small towns Britney Spears comes from where everybody gets behind you, it's New York City and the competition is ruthless, even when it's just children. I remember being appalled at how much flack that kid took, and I remember being particularly annoyed on my own behalf because I approached her parents to represent her, and they would not get professional representation for her at that time because they were terrified of it getting any worse than it was.

Maggie

"I just had heard of all these child stars who got pushed and pushed to work and behave like adults, who ended up as completely dysfunctional adults because of it and I didn't want that for her. My daughter was six or seven years old and begging Jonathan to let her do these shows, which he could never deny her, and she was winning everything but I spotted resentment from other kids and parents who started taking note of her - especially in New York which is such a competitive town - and I just did not want this to be her childhood. I didn't want to stop her because it would have made her miserable, but I just wanted to keep it at a level where it was a hobby, not a profession at seven years old."

Piper, Larry King June 2002

"I think it was tough on my mom, I think she struggled with the competitiveness of that whole scene, and, you know, I'm her only child and I think it hurt her almost more than it did me because when I heard people being nasty or jealous of me I'd be upset for maybe an hour before I just went back to the piano and thought, you know, who cares. In hindsight though, I think I'm glad that I was that much older before I really started doing stuff on a professional level. It wasn't the most normal childhood ever but it was as normal as my parents could give me when I was such a precocious little brat!"

Through it all, her biggest supporter was her father, accountant Jonathan Tenshaw.

Wade Robson, choreographer and best friend

"Jonathan was just the most decent man you could ever meet. He loved music, so passionately, and I think he more than anybody understood that Piper just had it in her soul. Everything she ever did, whether he agreed with it or not, he was standing behind her telling her to go for it."

Maggie

"Always a Daddy's girl. Always a Daddy's girl."

Piper

"We used to sit there for hours, him teaching me piano, and he was always correcting my posture. I used to argue with him about it because I said it actually stopped me playing right because it made me uncomfortable and I made mistakes, but he just used to glare at me and tell me if I sat right I would get used to sitting right and then it wouldn't matter. He'd probably smack me upside my head if he could see the way I play piano now."

At the age of 10, young Piper found her entire world uprooted when parents Jonathan and Maggie Tenshaw decided to make the transatlantic move to London, England.

Maggie

"It was a simple case of the New York branch of Jonathan's company downsizing and he was basically told that the only place they had for him was in England. It was that or accept redundancy, and we couldn't afford to do so at that time. Being a teacher, I could look for another job, but it was more difficult for him because his niche area was suffering some problems in New York, which was why they'd downsized in the first place. We had no other choice."

Piper, British TV show Parkinson December 2004

"It was a big culture shock. England was totally different from everything I'd ever known. I was worried I wasn't going to be able to continue all my dancing and singing lessons and talents shows and everything, and pretty much the only way my father got me to agree to that move was to remind me Elton John and Queen and all these people were from England, and to promise me he'd take me to Liverpool for The Beatles tour."

Janet Holden, dance instructor

"Piper was very unsure when she first stepped into my studio... I think the move to London and the unfamiliarity of everything unnerved her, and it's a lot for a ten year old to take. But the moment she started moving she began to relax into herself and I knew she was a talent. She has an incredible fluidity and finesse to her dance that you just can't teach."

Although Piper struggled to make friends and settle into her new country, her professional life began to go from strength to strength.

Maggie, Oprah March 2003

"By the time we'd moved to England and we'd got away from the competitiveness of New York, I was a bit more comfortable with the whole thing because she was older and the environment had changed, it was much more relaxed. In London people were still striving to compete but they weren't so vicious about it. You could be professional rivals in the audition room but then walk onto the street outside and be chatting away like best friends and I found that much easier to send my daughter into, as did Jonathan."

Now older, wiser, and more accomplished, Piper began settling down into a strict routine of school and then dancing lessons and vocal training, honing her skills and starting to audition for minor parts in the West End, London's answer to Broadway.

Daniel Johnson, vocal coach

"When Piper came to me, the voice and the instinct for music were already there, and she played the piano like a dream. Her father taught her well, but not being a professional vocalist there were certain techniques and control elements that he simply could not teach her, and to his credit he realised that and that's how she landed in my lap. There were rough edges, and I had to completely scratch her previous technique. She had to re-learn how to breathe, which is much more difficult than it sounds, erasing old habits and learning new ones, but that child worked like a demon. She was always pushing herself, never one hundred percent happy and was very self critical."

It was a habit that wouldn't change.

*NSYNC, TRL November 2002

JC Chasez: She is a thing possessed in the studio. She just has the most incredible focus and she knows exactly what she wants to hear and if she doesn't get it the first time, she'll do it as many times as it takes to get it perfect.
Lance Bass: It's funny, you want to tell her that she's too hard on herself, but then you hear how on point everything she does is and you understand why. She's a perfectionist, and that was great for us as a producer because she got the best out of us.

But don't be fooled - everybody around her was buzzing about Piper's talent, but this star was not quite ready to shine.

Janet Holden

"As with any young performer, there were rough edges and there was an immaturity there. At that point she was lacking the personal touch of style that dancers get as they grow into who they are and become comfortable with their own style, but watching her as she got older and then started getting ensemble parts and gaining more confidence, it was amazing how quickly that came to her. Then when she was fourteen or fifteen and became less interested in theatre and more interested in popular music, she was trying out for music videos and such things and she was giving dancers ten years older than her a run for their money, but she couldn't get many jobs because of her age. By the time she was sixteen, she was on stage with Michael Jackson. I don't think it gets bigger than that."

Daniel Johnson

"Her father told me that her mother had had qualms about the daughter's direction as a child, but I think by that point it had taken on a life of its own and she just had to roll with it. There was a slight conflict between the singing and dancing as she started getting jobs on videos and tours and such and she had to be attending all these rehearsals, but somehow they always managed to drive her back to my house in time for her next lesson."

Maggie

"By this point, Jonathan and I were just used to it. Piper wasn't interested in boys or clubs or all the usual things girls her age were doing, all she wanted was to get out there and work, and I think it frustrated her that her age was holding her back, because she had proved she could hold her own amongst these adults. She was fifteen years old going on twenty five, and I think that would have worried me if she hadn't remained as down to earth and just herself as she's always been. No matter how big she gets, she's just always been my Piper."

Piper, British TV Show T4 August 2005

"I did everything. I was on stage in the Shaftesbury Theatre and getting ensemble parts that we used to rotate in two week stints between two casts because they didn't like kids working flat out, I was in Joseph, but it just wasn't what I wanted because I was glued to MTV like everybody else, watching Madonna and Michael and Janet and wanting to look like that, wanting to move like that. I think by that point it wasn't just about performing anywhere I could, like it had been before, I was becoming more... fixated, I guess, on the music industry. But it was hard to break into the scene as a back up dancer, and I struggled in a way I never had before. Everything else had always kind of just fallen into place for me and nobody had ever really treated me like a child in my career, age had never come into it, but for the first time my age was a real barrier."

After we come back: in Part 2, Piper switches up a gear as she and her parents undertake the biggest decision of her young life, and she comes into contact with the man who would change her professional destiny, but also faces disappointment and heartache.

"That moonwalk schtick was so lame; I don't know why she's still friends with me!"

"We were disappointed because we'd had such high hopes for her, but we could not justify keeping an unknown who couldn't record."