It’s Gonna Be May

It’s gonna be May refers to a line of popularly mispronounced and misinterpreted lyrics, also known as mondegreen from the hit single of NSYNC titled “It’s Gonna Be Me”.

Starting in 2012, the phrase has been spread online toward the end of every April, in the form of image macro memes and GIFs, depicting Justin Timberlake paired with “It’s gonna be May” captions.

The meme could be used for expressing various forms of excitement, related to events happening in May, similar to the May The 4^th Be With You trend.

via GIPHY

The song “It’s Gonna Be Me” was released as a single on NSYNC’s second album: No Strings Attached on June 13^th, 2000, clearly in the wrong time, as May has already passed that year.

The official videoclip of the song was uploaded to the *NSYNC YouTube channel on October 25^th, 2009.

“It’s gonna be May” first appeared on a meme on January 29^th, 2012, when Tumblr user amyricha shared an image macro of Justin Timberlake paired with the titular captions.

By March 2012, the joke grew, with a photo of a calendar, including an “It’s gonna be May” image macro gaining massive traction on Tumblr and later BuzzFeed.

On April 30^th, 2012, YouTube user Dr. Aaron Ochoco uploaded a video, depicting the Timberlake meme, with the one line where he says “It’s Gonna Be Me” isolated from the song.

Almost a year later, on April 26^th, 2013, YouTube channel PassionateFriendTime uploaded a parody of the original song, with the title “It’s Gonna Be May”.

The gag was also embraced by Maytag who launched a commercial in 2019, featuring the NSYNC song.

For a brief time on April 30^th, 2020, NSYNC complemented the title of “It’s Gonna Be Me” with “It’s Gonna Be May” on Apple Music and Spotify.

• Usatoday.com – ‘It’s Gonna Be May’: Why the Justin Timberlake meme became so popular
• Wikipedia – It’s Gonna Be Me
• Time.com – A Critical History of That ‘It’s Gonna Be May’ Meme
• Billboard.com – Here Are the Best 2021 *NSYNC ‘It’s Gonna Be May’ Memes