Photo Credit: Instagram / justintimberlake

Fans are asking what the Justin Timberlake ‘Gonna Be May’ meme is? and how it became so popular. With the arrival of May, social media has been rife with the ‘It’s Gonna Be May’ meme posts featuring Justin Timberlake. This has been an annual tradition since at least 2012. So just what is this meme? How did it go viral? What does Justin Timberlake have to do with it? And what are its origins? Here is the answer to your queries.

What does the Justin Timberlake ‘It’s Gonna Be May’ meme mean?

The Justin Timberlake ‘It’s Gonna Be May’ meme mocks the way the actor and singer pronounced the word ‘me’ as ‘May’ in the 2000 NSNYC song ‘It’s Gonna Be Me.’ This meme reportedly first gained traction in 2012 when it first appeared on the microblogging and social networking site Tumblr.

Justin Timberlake himself recently put up a post on Instagram, which was a video showing a woman asking: “What’s a word you pronounced incorrectly one time and it still haunts you to this day?” to which the video then cuts to Timberlake who simply replies “Um… me!”

Timberlake even addressed the origins of the ‘It’s Gonna Be May’ meme last year in an appearance on Hot Ones’ First We Feast with Sean Evans alongside his fellow NSNYC bandmates Chris Kirkpatrick, JC Chasez, Lance Bass, and Joey Fatone.

When asked if he was directed by Swedish music producers Max Martin, Rami Yacoub, and Andreas Carlsson to to say “may” instead of “me,” he replied by mentioning that he did not know if he had to specifically say “a meaner me” and that when he said “It’s gonna be me,” the producers shouted and told him it had to be “may”. JC Chasez also chimed in and recounted how they had Swedish accents.

Like many memes in recent years, it is interesting to see how the ‘It’s Gonna Be May’ meme steeped itself deeply in internet culture and became an annual viral celebration.