It’s reasonable to assume that when Max Martin explicitly told Justin Timberlake to sing the word “me” like “may,” the singer knew it was a mispronunciation but rolled with it, because a) it wasn’t exactly tearing up his heart, and b) he wasn’t thinking about the way it would open him up to meme-dom 15 years later.
But even so, a quarter century later, every April *NSYNC memes are all the fans ever wanted, all they ever needed, and they want them back.
The reason? The next month is gonna be May.
In the year 2000, Justin Timberlake was already one of the most darling pop stars in the world, and every little thing he did, never seemed enough for *NSYNC fans. That spring, they released their twelfth-ever single—"It’s Gonna Be Me."
It was co-written by pop music god Max Martin, a producer whose discography is so long it has its own Wikipedia page, and who—as of 2024 —has more Billboard Hot 100 Number Ones than anyone alive except Paul McCartney.
The thing is, Max was born in Sweden, and English is not his first language. The reason Britney Spears talks about loneliness and then says “hit me baby” is because Max and his writing partner thought “hit” was American slang for “call.” Although in retrospect, “hit me up baby one more time," doesn't quite have the same ring to it.
In Justin Timberlake’s words, “the parts of their English that were broken actually made them catchier songwriters because they would put words away that almost didn't make sense. But when you sang them, they were more memorable.”
Fair enough. But to someone who doesn’t have that backstory, it's just a funny idiosyncrasy.
To that point, in 2012 we got our first two instances of “It's Gonna be May” as a proper meme, both posted to Tumblr.
Shortly thereafter, a snippet of the song was used as the audio for a short YouTube video whose visual was an image macro of the line, and eventually it earned parodies by independent YouTubers and commercial advertisers alike.
Of course, it also spread like wildfire all over the internet in still-image macro form.
As a spin-off, there’s a subgenre of It's Gonna Be May memes where a pack of Ramen Noodles—making fun of Justin Timberlake’s hair—stand in for the phrase.
And, not wanting to be a fool in this game for two and be left behind, it appears that *NSYNC is willing to run with all of the attention instead of fighting it.
On April 30th, 2019, they invited Twitter users to share their favorite *NSYNC memes, and exactly one year later, in 2020, the band briefly changed the name of the track on Spotify to reference the meme.
It's good marketing, and a great way to stay relevant a whopping two and a half decades after the album’s release. But it might be unnecessary, because with or without their help this meme is here to stay.
Over the years, It’s Gonna Be May has proved to be such a lasting joke that it’s uncertain if the internet will ever want to see it out that door and say bye bye bye.
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