Ethermac|Your 'it's gonna be May' memes are in NSYNC's group chat, Joey Fatone says

May is Ethermacapproaching, and with that comes "It's gonna be May" memes featuring singer Justin Timberlake.

The widely mispronounced line from NSYNC's 2000 hit single "It's Gonna Be Me" has been an iconic meme and social media favorite for over a decade.

In an interview with People published Tuesday, Joey Fatone revealed that he and his fellow bandmates Timberlake, Lance Bass, Chris Kirkpatrick and JC Chasez share their favorite "it's gonna be May" memes in their group chat.

"There was the one meme that was like, Justin looking like he was dressed up in something from the Night's Watch from 'Game of Thrones' and I sent him one of those. It was really funny," Fatone said. "Every once in a while, one of us will find a good one and we'll send it on the group text."

The singer added that when the song first came out, the reaction to Timberlake's line "wasn't even a thing."

"It was just, 'It's gonna be me.' When you sing it, it sounds a lot harsher if you're trying to go, 'It's gonna be meeeee.' It doesn't sound very good to the ear. So when we pronounced it, (producer) Max Martin came up with the idea of saying, 'It's gonna be May,'" he recalled. "But we never knew that it was going to take off and become its own thing. And every year you get crazy stuff. But it's hilarious. And we might as well embrace it."

Timberlake takes the lead vocals on the bouncy pop song. "Baby, when you finally get to love somebody, guess what —  it's gonna be meee," he sings, but he pronounces the final word with an inflection that makes "me" sound like "May." 

The memes trace their origins to the 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, which 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.

In a "Hot Ones" interview in September, Timberlake confirmed that he sang "It's gonna be me," and a producer told him to say "may" instead, with fellow NSYNC member 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. But yes, it was a specific note and I did it the way he requested and that's what made the record."

'It's gonna be May' meme is back:Origins, what it means and why you'll see it on your feed

According to a 2016 article from E! News, the first iteration of the meme appeared on Tumblr in 2012. The meme was 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 ever since.

Contributing: Gabe Hauari, USA TODAY; John Beifuss, Memphis Commercial Appeal