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

The calendar flips from April to May on Wednesday, meaning social media users will almost certainly see "It's gonna be May" memes featuring singer Justin Timberlake in the coming days.

The meme stems from NSYNC's 2000 smash hit "It's Gonna Be Me." When singing the titular line in the song, Justin 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 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.

Timberlake even got in on the fun himself in 2020, posting a version of the meme on X where his mouth is covered by a mask during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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.

Timberlake 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," Timberlake 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.

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Memes came early this year

Some social media users have already started posting the annual meme in anticipation of May 1.

Gabe Hauari is a national trending news reporter at USA TODAY. You can follow him on X @GabeHauari or email him at [email protected].