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Lance Bass celebrates arrival of May with Justin Timberlake’s infamous meme

Boyband star mocks his friend as he jumps on ‘It’s Gonna Be May’ meme

Brittany Miller
New York
Wednesday 01 May 2024 18:42 BST
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Related: Justin Timberlake explains origin of ‘It’s Gonna Be Me’ meme

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Lance Bass is ringing in the first of the month by making fun of his former bandmate, Justin Timberlake.

The former Nsync singer recently took to TikTok using a line from the boy band’s 2000 song “It’s Gonna Be Me” where that exact line in the song, sung by Timberlake sounds more like the word “may” instead of “me” with the internet turning the misheard lyric into memes.

For his video, Bass is handing his husband, Michael Turchin, a card with a poem that reads, “Michael, roses are red, April is gray… But when you wake up tomorrow…”

The iconic Nsync song then starts playing as Bass throws ramen noodles on the top of his head to mimic Timberlake’s former bleach blond curls and lip-syncs “It’s gonna be May”.

“POV: your friend mispronounces a word once and now it’s a national holiday. Happy #itsgonnabemay Day!” he captioned his TikTok.

The video went on to receive over eight million views with many people leaving comments about how entertaining and funny it was.

“On behalf of all millennials… thank you for this,” one fan joked.

Another commenter agreed, writing, “This is by far the best parody of it’s gonna be may I have seen!”

Other comments specifically focused on Bass’s method of recreating his friend’s hair from the 1990s and early 2000s. “Lance!!!! Not the Ramen hair!!!!! The way I just cackled in my office!!!” one commenter highlighted.

“I was not prepared for the ramen noodles,” a second person in the comments section agreed. “The commitment to the bit is unmatched.”

Timberlake addressed his mispronunciation before ona TikTok back in September 2023 when a fan asked: “What’s a word you pronounced incorrectly one time and it still haunts you to this day?”

Timberlake stitches this video and responds, “Ummm… me.”

The “Cry Me a River” singer has poked fun at the memes over the years, and even tagged the original creator at one point, Kianna Davis, who glued an old photo of Timberlake from his original Nsync days to the 1 May box on her calendar back in 2012.

According to an Nsync interview on the YouTube series Hot Ones, the mispronounciation of “me” was deliberate.

Host, Sean Evans, asked them: “Fact or fiction: the hook on ‘It’s Gonna Be Me’ has that ‘may’ [pronunciation] cause Justin got a note from a producer that was, ‘Yeah, I need you to say it more like ‘may’, like a meaner ‘me’.”

Timberlake responded: “I don’t remember if the specifics were ‘a meaner me’. But I sang, ‘It’s gonna be me’ and he was like, ‘No, no, no, no, no.’ He was like, ‘It’s ‘may’. May.’”

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