Lance Bass trolled his NSYNC band mate Justin Timberlake as part of meme that’s become known to fans as “It’s Gonna Be May” Day.
Apparently to NSYNC fans — and the band itself — Timberlake’s infamous pronunciation of the pronoun during the chorus (which comes out sounding more like “May” than “me”) has sparked a yearly meme just before May 1st arrives where social media users post videos of themselves with the song clip, singing “It’s gonna be May.”
Now Lance Bass himself has gotten in on the fun. Bass took to TikTok to post a video on April 30 in which he passes by his husband Michael Turchin, who’s eating ramen noodles, and flirtatiously drops a love note. Turchin then reads the note, “Michael, roses are red, April is gray, but when you wake up tomorrow…” at which point the familiar beat of It’s Gonna Be Me slowly creeps in as the camera pans up to Bass — who now mimics Timberlake’s curly blonde locks of hair from the song’s era with the ramen noodles — and lip syncs “It’s gonna be May!” to the chorus.
Bass also commemorated the occasion with a winning caption, “POV: your friend mispronounces a word once and now it’s a national holiday. Happy #itsgonnabemay Day!”
So in case the Star Wars-inspired May the 4th be with you isn’t enough of a pop culture calendar meme tie-in or doesn’t arrive soon enough for you, now there’s also “It’s Gonna Be May” Day to look forward to every year.
The video has been creating a splash on social media, with 8.2 million views on TikTok as of Wednesday morning.
Part of that’s likely due to NSYNC’s recent spike in relevance with the band’s mini-reunion for Timberlake’s new album Everything I Thought It Was, which dropped in March. NSYNC has a new song on the album, Paradise.
Prior to that, the band also released Better Place, a new track for the animated feature Trolls Band Together, which boasts Timberlake as a voice actor.
NSYNC also famously reunited publicly on stage for the first time in years at the 2023 MTV VMAs.
All this is to say that there’s been some serious nostalgia for the 90s and early aughts era boy band’s biggest hits — and It’s Gonna Be Me is certainly on that list. But since its release in 2000 preceded social media and the instant meme-ification of all things noteworthy, there weren’t very many ways to poke fun at Timberlake’s unusual pronunciation choice at the time.
Now the internet is catching up with memes galore devoted to “It’s Gonna Be May” Day. And Bass has shown a knack in the past for trolling his celebrity friends with meme-worthy video clips.
Last October, for instance, during a nationally televised Chiefs game on Monday Night Football, at the height of the Taylor Swift camera cutaway craze, Bass famously held up a sign in the suite that said “Not Taylor Swift” when a camera cut to him.
Now, Lance Bass‘ own personal ode to his fellow NSYNC band mate Justin Timberlake may very well move his “It’s Gonna Be May” Day video post to the top of the all-important meme mountain.
