Celebrity
'It's Gonna Be May': Justin Timberlake memes are back
Justin's songs rendition is back on the Internet to signal the start of May
The late-April return of the It's Gonna Be May memes, a pre-May Day excuse to pay homage to Lance Bass, Joey Fatone, Chris Kirkpatrick, JC Chasez, and the Memphis area's own Justin Timberlake, collectively known as NSYNC.
The memes trace their origins to 2000 hit single It's Gonna Be Me from NSYNC's second album, No Strings Attached, which was made especially popular by its accompanying video.
It depicts the boy banders as literal living dolls flirting with various crop-topped and bikini-bottomed quasi-Barbies on the shelves of a toy store.
Timberlake takes the lead vocals on the bouncy pop ditty. "Baby, when you finally get to love somebody, guess what — it's gonna be meee," he sings, but he pronounces the final word with a vibrato that makes "me" sound sort of like "May."
As a result, Tumblr users, bloggers, YouTubers, content generators, and other social media mischief-makers began poking fun at Timberlake.
For example, BuzzFeed, in 2012 posted an April calendar page with a picture of Timberlake at the bottom, with the caption "IT'S GONNA BE MAY."
One had to not only know the song but be so familiar with it that you were aware of the eccentric pronunciation.
