The 'It's gonna be May' meme is back: What it means and why it's all over social media
The meme stems from NSYNC's 2000 smash hit "It's Gonna Be Me." When singing the titular line in the song, Timberlake annunciates the word "me" as "May."
According to a 2016 article from E! News, the first iteration of the meme appeared on Tumblr in 2012. The meme included a calendar featuring a smiling photo of Timberlake on April 30 with "It's gonna be May!" written on it. The meme caught fire, and different versions of it have been in circulation online and on social media ever since.
Timberlake even got in on the fun himself in 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic, posting a version of the meme on X, then known as Twitter, where his mouth is covered by a mask.
Spring Summer 2020. Thanks for this, Internet. pic.twitter.com/I3mdWPTjiN
— Justin Timberlake (@jtimberlake) May 1, 2020
Timberlake said in a September 2023 interview on popular YouTube interview show "Hot Ones" that he was not the one who came up with idea to sing the line in the song that way.
The "Cry Me a River" singer confirmed on the show that he sang "It's gonna be me," and a producer told him to say "may" instead, with fellow NSYNC member JC Chasez chiming in to remind Timberlake the producers and songwriters Max Martin, Andreas Calsson and Rami were Swedish and had accents.
"What's funny specifically to Max Martin is the parts of their English that were broken actually made them catchier songwriters because they would put words in a way that almost didn't make sense, but when you sang them, they were more memorable," Timberlake said.
"I knew one day they're going to invent this thing called memes," the Grammy award-winning singer joked. "But yes, it was a specific note and I did it the way he requested and that's what made the record," he concluded.
Gabe Hauari is a national trending news reporter at USA TODAY. You can follow him on X @GabeHauari or email him at Gdhauari@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'It's gonna be May' Justin Timberlake meme is back: What does it mean?
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