NSYNC’s Lance Bass trolls Justin Timberlake for ‘It’s gonna be May’ meme — ramen hair included
Meanwhile, Timberlake admitted that he’s still haunted by his legendary pronunciation.
May has returned — and with it, Justin Timberlake’s least favorite meme.
When the end of April rolls around, social media users love to celebrate by breaking out old clips of Timberlake — ramen hair and all — singing NSYNC’s 2000 smash hit “It’s Gonna Be Me” using his very special pronunciation. Now, Timberlake’s bandmate Lance Bass has gotten in on the fun, trolling his longtime pal with his very own TikTok.
The video begins with Bass giving a poem and a bowl of ramen noodles to his husband, Michael Turchin.
“Roses are red, April is gray, but when you wake up tomorrow…” Turchin reads, before the camera pans to Bass, now wearing the ramen as a wig as he delivers the punchline: “It’s gonna be May!”
Tim Roney/Getty; Lance Bass/TikTok
Justin Timberlake; Lance Bass as Justin Timberlake
Bass captioned the video, “POV: Your friend mispronounces a word once and now it’s a national holiday. Happy #itsgonnabemay Day!”
Even Timberlake couldn’t let the day go by unaddressed, sharing a video of his own to Instagram.
“What’s a word you pronounced incorrectly one time and it still haunts you to this day?” asks influencer @umgabi in a TikTok video, which Timberlake stitched with the perfect response: “Um… me.”
Naturally, the singer captioned his video, “It’s gonna be…”
In a recent interview with PEOPLE, NSYNC’s Joey Fatone confirmed that its members are well aware of the running joke — and even discuss it in their group chat.
“There was the one meme that was like Justin looking like he was dressed up in something from the Night’s Watch from Game of Thrones, and I sent him one of those,” Fatone said. “It was really funny. Every once in a while, one of us will find a good one and we’ll send it on the group text.”
Addressing the meme’s unexpected popularity, Fatone noted that the gag “wasn’t even a thing” when the song initially came out in 2000 — and certainly wasn’t an intentional joke on the band’s part.
“It was just, ‘It’s gonna be me.’ When you sing it, it sounds a lot harsher if you’re trying to go, ‘It’s gonna be meeeee.’ It doesn’t sound very good to the ear,” he explained. “So when we pronounced it, [producer] Max Martin came up with the idea of saying, ‘It’s gonna be May.’ But we never knew that it was going to take off and become its own thing. And every year you get crazy stuff. But it’s hilarious. We might as well embrace it.”
This is as good a time as any for the band to do so. Last year, all five members — Timberlake, Bass, Fatone, J.C. Chasez, and Chris Kirkpatrick — reunited after a 20-year hiatus to record the song “Better Place” for the Trolls Band Together movie. They also teamed up for a track on Timberlake’s new album, Everything I Thought I Was. Since then, fans have been wondering what lies ahead for the group, but they have remained coy.
During his January appearance on The Kelly Clarkson Show, Timberlake teased the possibility of more NSYNC music to come. “We’ve been in the studio,” he said. “So there may be a little something in the future, too.”
