Why *NSYNC is the safety net Justin Timberlake needs right now
After watching his solo star dim in recent years, Timberlake seems more than happy to embrace a once-unlikely reunion
It may be easy to forget, in the wake of Justin Timberlake’s Janet Jackson scandal, or his retroactive Britney Spears scandal (both of which he’s since apologized for), or even his dancing badly in khakis scandal (which he also, bizarrely, apologized for), but at one point Timberlake was a Mount Rushmore-level global superstar. His first three solo albums—2002’s Justified, 2006’s FutureSex/LoveSounds, and 2013’s The 20/20 Experience (we can skip right over 2018’s misguided Man Of The Woods)—topped the charts. He sold out major arenas. He won Emmys for singing about his dick (in a box) on Saturday Night Live with Andy Samberg. He did his own Hot Ones appearances.
But now, after *NSYNC dropped their first new track in over two decades on September 29 (to the delight of Taylor Swift), Timberlake is back to just being one of five—that’s JC Chasez, Lance Bass, Joey Fatone, Chris Kirkpatrick, and, yes, JT—and maybe not even the most exciting one at that. Although widely credited with breaking up the band—er, causing them to go on indefinite hiatus—back in 2002, Timberlake has been all smiles and chummy shoulder pats throughout *NSYNC’s recent non-exhaustive press tour (read: going on Hot Ones and hitting up the MTV VMAs) to promote “Better Place” and the rest of their work for the Trolls Band Together soundtrack.
It’s quite the turn of events by Timberlake, considering that a decade or so ago the thought of him returning to boy bandom would have been as surprising as, say, Beyoncé reuniting with Destiny’s Child for the soundtrack to Disney’s live-action version of Lion King 1½. Today, though, the reunion of Timberlake with *NSYNC is viewed by fans as an exuberant win for pop music, rather than an embarrassing backslide or a cheap nostalgia grab. So just how did Justin Timberlake get here? And did he ever foresee his own future?
*NSYNC says “Bye Bye Bye”
It may be hard to imagine in a world scarred by Zayn Malik calling One Direction “generic as fuck” or Camila Cabello constantly beefing with Fifth Harmony, but a popular band can actually break up while still displaying an iota of mutual love and respect—at least on the surface. But the reality is *NSYNC never technically broke up.
*NSYNC’s time out of sync (sorry) started as a long hiatus that everyone else in the band didn’t seem to think would be much of a break. The group was at the height of its powers and still courting a rabid fanbase when Timberlake put everything on pause to record Justified, a move that was mutually beneficial for everyone … at least according to Justin Timberlake. “The break we’re on was a conscious move. We all wanted to do it, and we were ready to do it,” he told New York Post in 2002. “I was 14 when we started, and we’ve been touring for the last seven years. The time was right; we were all in the same zone. This album is what I wanted to do.”
No one would officially acknowledge that the “break” was more of a “break up” until 2007, when Bass wrote in his book: “We’re definitely broken up. It’s not a hiatus. Justin made it clear that he wouldn’t be interested in discussing another album any time soon.” Here’s where Deux Moi or some other gossip instigator would usually step in, except …
No one ever let it get messy
The bandmates Timberlake left in the dust did protest over the years, just … very quietly. “We thought we were getting back together,” Fatone told Huffington Post in 2018, for example. “It was, ‘OK, after [Justin] does his thing, blah, blah, blah, we’ll get back together and move forward and do what we got to do. And then it was like, ‘Nope. The record company wanted to push Justin …’ He got bigger and bigger, which is honestly great for him.. but it was more or less weird that there wasn’t an explanation to say we’re not going to do it, period.”
Timberlake rarely veered from his line about the equal importance of everyone else’s projects (See: Kirkpatrick starting a terrible clothing line called FuMan Skeeto, or Lance Bass almost going to space) if he allowed interviewers to linger on *NSYNC at all. His other oft-used tactic was to simply shrug off the breakup as “not a big deal for us,” which is, of course, an easy thing to say when you’re the one telling the story.
Still, after a thorough scouring of the archive, this writer could find only two interviews in which the star said anything that could even be remotely construed as shade. In 2011, after declaring to Playboy that he’d only sing an *NSYNC song again in a “really special scenario” (that chance would come only two years later when the band reunited for the first time in honor of Timberlake’s VMA Video Vanguard win), the singer went on to admit that he “still talk[s] to the guys occasionally. I probably talk to Joey and Chris more than J.C. and Lance. I’d say I text back and forth with Joey once a month.” But never fear: the guys are all in a “very ridiculous group chat” now, per yet another surprise reunion on The Ellen Show in 2018. (They’ve done that kind of a lot, huh?)
Then, in a 2017 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Timberlake dropped this bombshell: “[*NSYNC] started as a fun snowball fight that was becoming an avalanche … Also, I was growing out of it. I felt like I cared more about the music than some of the other people in the group.” The media of the time responded with predictably sensationalized fervor, but the whole thing seems to have blown over pretty quickly amongst the rest of the band, who never publicly addressed the statement outside of, maybe, some jabs in the group chat. As far as the public is concerned, that’s where the story really begins and ends.
The boyband is back
Whether the guys genuinely feel this chummy towards each other or Timberlake’s PR person is just some sort of prescient genius remains unclear. As his solo career soared then cratered, Timberlake’s boyband past always remained on the periphery, a constant source of “remember when…?” questions. The prodigal son’s treatment of this past paints a picture either of a man endlessly atoning for leaving his friends in the lurch, or one who’s never quite trusted his own fame and wanted to leave some nets in place in case of a fall.
What is clear is that as his solo career and bad boy image crumbled around him, Timberlake is being offered something few in his position have received in the past: forgiveness and—at least on the surface—genuine re-acceptance. We’ll see in the coming months if the reunion sticks past Trolls Band Together and if so, whether or not this cycle repeats itself all over again. Maybe it will finally be JC’s turn to shine.