Johnny Wright, manager

"This business is… ruthless. It's not always all bad, but it is very unforgiving and it will drop you as fast as it will pick you up."

Piper

"I was eighteen, nearly nineteen. And for the first time in my life, I couldn't do anything. I couldn't sing. I couldn't dance because the exhaustion might do something else to my vocal chords, and there was literally nothing for me to do but sit around and wait, which is not something I'm good at."

Lynn Harless, mother in law

"That child, God love her, is a workaholic. You cannot ask her to sit still, she just can't do it. She'll work herself right into the ground if left to her own devices; she'll just keep on goin' and goin'. It worries me sometimes."

Maggie

"It was hard for her, feeling so impotent. For a time I think the only thing keeping her going was the few times Wade could get away to visit and when Gary arranged for her to go work with some of his producer friends, learning the ropes. That was the only time I saw a smile on her face, I felt like it was a shadow of my daughter coming in through the door everyday, she was so crushed."

Things began to look up for Piper. As she spent time in the studios she was picking up tips that would later kick start her own career as a producer and musician, honing the craft which she would later turn into sales of more than 20 million in the US alone. Slowly but surely, the forced year of rest was coming to a close and she could start approaching labels again: but then came the news that would rock her world to the core, changing her life forever.

Justin

"My wife still gets real upset when people mention her Dad now. I can't even think about what it was like then."

Wade

"People have asked me about this because people know Jonathan's death affected Piper so much but… it's just so hard to talk about. You can't even begin to imagine… it was horrible. There were days I thought she was literally going to give up breathing. Just give up."

Maggie

"My husband… it was all very sudden. He… discovered a lump under his armpit that when he went to get checked out… turned to be cancerous. Unfortunately, because of where it was and how long it went undetected, by the time he had got it checked out it had got into his lymph system… and spread. We were devastated. Absolutely devastated."

Daniel Johnson, vocal coach

"Obviously at this point, with Piper on sabbatical I wasn't involved with the family so much and then with her not picking up the singing again I lost touch but… I was shocked. By all accounts it was a particularly aggressive form of the disease and his prognosis would never have been good, even if they had caught it earlier. It was horrific, I can't think of anybody who deserved it less than he did. He was a good man."

Piper

"I think… I think… oh God, I'm about to cry already. I think what was so hard was… how quick it all… I mean one minute everything was normal, the next he had cancer and two months later he was just gone and I didn't understand why. I just don't understand why…"

Wade

"Jonathan was a second father to me. He was always as supportive of me as he was of Piper and he'd gone out of his way a lot of times for me, even when it was nothing to do with Piper, him and Maggie both did. I've never forgotten that. It was hard to hear the diagnosis but everybody was trying to keep positive and they got him started on the chemo and we were all trying to be strong for him, but then out of nowhere he got this lung infection and he was just gone. With no warning. We'd been told the chemo could prolong his life for up to a year, even if it couldn't cure him, but then he'd barely even started it before he was taken away… shit, excuse me, I don't mean to cry but this is still kind of emotional for all of us."

The news hit Piper hardest of all.

Piper

"What always made me feel even worse was that I knew it was hurting my mother, seeing how badly I was dealing, but I just couldn't help it. I felt like I had no reason to get out of bed any more."

Rob Jackman, US Weekly magazine

"Piper's father, by all accounts, was the single biggest influence in her life at that point. He's fed her this love of music, he's supported her financially through this dream, he's taught her to play the piano himself and Piper has said in interviews that there was rarely a performance he missed. He was her inspiration and suddenly he was gone. It's hard enough to lose a parent, but she had to deal with losing somebody who was more than a parent, somebody who was intrinsic to her personal and professional life, she had to do it at a time when she'd already suffered setbacks and was low, it was very sudden and to a terrible disease… and she wasn't even twenty. It's no wonder it hit her so hard."

Wade

"She would just cry. Endlessly. I actually cancelled a tour to be with her, that I was supposed to be choreographing… and I was trying to be strong for her, but I was dealing with my own loss and it was hard watching her and Maggie struggle through all the probate, and then Piper just turned into this endless well of tears. Sometimes I thought she would just never stop."

Maggie

"He was a good man. He was a good man. And a wonderful father. He never stopped believing in her, ever, and I know it would have hurt him to see how shattered she was after he was gone… excuse me… it would have killed him to see her give up the way she did, but for some reason she just couldn't find the will to carry on without him."

Piper

"I just didn't know how to go on stage without him there to watch. Even though the year was up and I could sing if I wanted to I had no motivation to do it any more, or to dance, or any of it. I started to doubt whether I ever wanted to so much as look at a CD again, because music was what I had always shared with him and I couldn't fathom the thought of doing it without him. Though for some reason I then went and had these symbols tattooed on my shoulder… they mean talent, dedication and love which is what he always told me I needed to be a musician. It was odd timing, given I was saying I never wanted to do it again, but in retrospect I think it was me telling myself I wasn't done yet."

Justin, 20/20 September 2003

"When I met her, she would not sing. She'd do whatever she needed to do in a studio, she'd pick up an instrument if she really had to, but you wouldn't hear a note out of her. She was very resistant to it."

Wade

"She was kidding herself. I can say that now, but at the time she'd bite my head off if I tried to tell her. Music was too big a part of her to be able to turn her back on it like that. I knew she'd never escape that, no matter how far she ran from it."

Fate stepped in when Gary Wilkes, executive at Wildstar, attempted to approach her to sing again. Piper refused, but Wilkes was so determined to harness her talents that he offered her a production deal to write and produce for other artists.

Gary Wilkes, former executive at Wildstar Records

"I was gutted that she wasn't coming back, gutted. It took me every drop of persuasion I had to make them agree to take her on again, and she didn't want to know. But I was determined to get something out of her, so I offered her the production deal because I still thought she was a hit maker, and if I couldn't get her to sing on these hits at least I could use them for my other artists."

Piper

"I'm not sure what made me agree to it… I think it was that as much as it hurt to be around music, it hurt too much to cut myself off completely. Writing and producing was far removed enough from performing that I was able to talk myself into it."

Under the watchful eye of Wilkes, Piper co-produced a number of minor hits for various British artists on the Wildstar label. As she grew in confidence behind the boards, she started to branch out on her own and produce tracks solo. She quickly gained a reputation both for excellence and relentless perfectionism, a reputation that still follows her today.

Pharrell Williams, singer, songwriter, producer

"Piper Tenshaw in a studio? The girl is magic, but she is fierce. Lord have mercy on you if you get in her way, 'cause she don't take no shit. She knows what she wants out of you, and she will get it because she's that good."

Faye Johnson, singer

"Piper as a producer is pretty intense. She's a control freak and a perfectionist, but once you hear the finished product you never doubt that it was worth it, even if she has made you retake fifty times and you're ready to strangle her, which I readily admit I am sometimes when it comes to collaborating with her. But we always go home friends at the end of the day, she knows what she's doing and I listen to her because she just has that Midas touch at a mixing desk."

For the next two years, until the age of twenty one, Piper quietly continued writing and producing songs for other people, eventually leaving Wildstar to go freelance. She produced top ten hits, and quietly made a name for herself as an up and coming talent - but if you weren't in the industry, you weren't in the know. The general public had never heard of Piper Tenshaw, but she was about to be introduced to them in a big way. Re-enter Wade Robson.

Wade

"By that point… it was 2002, I think? I'd been so busy in the States all the time and Piper was in England that we had a telephone relationship, and it had been that way for far too long. So I was choreographing *NSYNC's tour, they were supposed to be recording, and their producer bailed on them at the last second and they were trying to find somebody else… I admit it. I was being selfish. I wanted to see my best friend and I figured this was the way to do it! I ain't gon' lie!"

Barry Weiss, President Jive Records

"Wade came to us and put Piper's name on the table. So we had a recommendation from him, someone we trusted, her credentials all seemed in order and because she was based in England we were thinking that nobody in America had worked with her before and we could discover her for the continent, so we said fine."

JC Chasez, singer and *NSYNC member

"Piper really delivered us the goods in a jam. We'd been let down last second, and she just came in, got right down to work and picked up the slack. She was just what we needed right that second."

Piper flew to Orlando Florida, where preparations were in full swing for the tour. Upon landing she headed straight for the recording studio, though it wasn't all as smooth sailing as she might have hoped.

Piper, Ellen January 2003

"Oh I hated him. The second I laid eyes on him he rubbed me up the wrong way. He was messing around in my studio, he wasn't delivering the note I wanted him to hit even though I knew he could and I just thought he was cocky and unfocussed and a little prima donna."

JC

"Oh boy. They did not hit it off well. At ALL."

Justin

"Me and Piper… did not have a good first recording session, to put it lightly. She was tired and grouchy and pushing me too hard, and in return I wasn't co-operating and putting in my best and we just clashed. It was both of us to blame."

Piper

"In hindsight… it was instant attraction. Of course it was. I was tired and grouchy and in my usual tense studio mode and I was faced with this guy who caused an immediate reaction in me and so I turned into a bitch on him. It's a girl thing."

Wade

"I met the guys later that night and… woah. I'd warned them how intense she was in the studio but I don't think they'd really taken on board what that meant and they were all wary of her after that. Justin was not happy. At all. I was thinking the whole thing was going to be a disaster."

Piper and Justin soon patched up their differences however - the collaboration came up with four new songs, three of which ended up on *NSYNC's next disc and one of which was released as a b-side internationally. When unforeseen circumstances forced Piper to stay longer than intended, it was Justin who gave her a place to stay.

Justin

"Once we'd got past our initial dislike, I saw a totally different side to her. She was sweet and she was funny and we were in a jam, one of our dancers quit on us last second which totally threw the tour and recording out of whack, Piper cancelled a bunch of projects to stay with us and so I was like, the least I can do is put you up for a couple weeks. And of course when you're living under the same roof as somebody, you see a different side to them than other people do, and Piper… well, obviously… I liked what I saw. And it's not like she's hard on the eyes, either."

It was a mixture of Justin's influence and the unexpected problems on the tour which put Piper back on stage where she belonged.

Wade

"I called everybody I knew. I had a month to get this new girl up to speed on the entire show. A month. I needed somebody on board immediately, and I knew I had a dancer there who was the fastest at picking up choreography I'd ever met. I just thought she would kill me if I asked, and she nearly did."

Piper

"It was Justin. He begged. I obviously had a weak spot for him and… I agreed. He talked me into it. And I think being around *NSYNC, who were the most incredible musicians, was starting to reawaken that part of me that had shut down after my Dad, but dancing was an easier first step to take."

Piper joined the tour, and it wasn't long before the sparks between her and Justin fanned themselves into a raging flame.

Justin

"Without going into details, because I'd prefer that stuff be between me and her… she'd confided in me, about everything that had happened to her, and there was this incredible sadness still in her eyes that I was just compelled to, you know, remove. And I saw how talented she was, I heard her sing like a line of a song to herself without realising she was doing it, and I was determined I was getting her back on a stage if it was the last thing I ever did, God as my witness. And it brought us together romantically in the bargain."

Lance Bass, *NSYNC member

"Justin definitely had a bee in his bonnet about Piper. I kind of suspected he liked her, given how gung ho he was about getting her to sing again. He just seemed a little too invested in the whole thing, if you know what I mean."

Lynn Harless

"Justin had what we like to call mentionitis when it comes to Piper, it wasn't like he told me he liked her but he just mentioned her too often and I wondered if there was a little crush going on there."

Their romance began behind the closed doors of the *NSYNC tour set, but it wasn't long before Piper had her first taste of the tabloid attention that would follow them both throughout their relationship.

Wade

"Piper… is allergic to alcohol. She can get sloppy drunk off a few sips of anything, and the aftermath the next morning is not pretty so she's tee total, won't drink the stuff. We all went out to a club one night, and some guy spiked her drink and then got nasty with her."

Joey Fatone, *NSYNC member

"Justin… just flew off the handle and got into a scuffle with the guy over it. Now, if it hadn't been him it would have been me, and nothing too serious happened, but it drew attention to them and without us knowing it, the Daily Scoop started having us all tailed by paparazzi. I mean, I gotta give 'em their dues because none of us had any idea so they did their sneaky shit well, but then one day this article appears outing Piper as Justin's new girlfriend and saying all this nasty stuff about her being some scarlet woman who's already cheating and goading him into fights and it was nasty. She's used to it now, but it really upset her at the time and it upset Justin because it upset her."

Piper

"I was… guarded, with him, at that point. I'd had guys cheat on me before, I was still dealing with the issues with music and my Dad, a lot was changing in my life at once and suddenly I'm back on stage and fighting the feeling that this is where I'm meant to be, and that stupid article upset me. It shouldn't have, but it did. And I held back from Justin a lot at that point because I just wasn't ready to open myself up completely to it, despite the fact that I was falling in love with him."

Justin, Justin Uncovered MTV August 2004

"Who realised they were in love first? I don't know about that, but I certainly admitted it first. She had a lot to deal with at the time and it took her a while before she was ready to say that back to me. It's okay though, I got my girl in the end!"

Wade

"You have to hand it to Justin - he was there for her, he helped her through a lot, and he got her to a point where she got on stage in front of thousands of people and an HBO audience and sang. She sang. This girl who had refused to sing a note for three years made her comeback performance to an audience of millions. It says a lot about her and the fact she has some serious guts, but I think that moment is as much down to Justin as it is her. They were really good for each other."