While now everyone is in a much “Better Place” (see what we did there), Joey Fatone recently revealed that *NSYNC felt some type of way when Justin Timberlake decided their hiatus as a boy band would be indefinite.
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Admitting he felt a bit blindsided, not by the actual breakup itself, Fatone told Yahoo! Entertainment, “I was more blindsided as far as him coming out with music and not knowing that he was going to go and do an actual album-tour thing.”
Reflecting on that particular period in the band’s past, Joey noted he initially thought of Justin’s departure as “more of, ‘Hey, I’m going to do some music, and then we’ll get back together.’ That’s what that was.”
“We thought he was just going to go out and just come back after the tour,” Fatone recalled referring to Timberlake’s 2003-04 Justified World Tour. “I was like, OK. But then when he went on tour and then things started going, I was like, ‘All right, I’ll go do Broadway.’”
Fatone also went on to say, that while it has taken time to see, looking back he realizes that the way things happened, shouldn’t all be placed on Justin, but rather the record label. “It wasn’t him — it was the record company. If it was him, then I’d understand it,” he explained. “When you’re younger, you think it’s that person. But then you look at the whole bigger scheme of things, and you go, ‘Oh, that’s why I wasn’t there for that.’ That’s the business. OK, I get it.”
Now, many years later, *NSYNC has finally gotten back together (kind of), making many a millennial overjoyed. From their reunion on the MTV VMAs stage to their episode of Hot Ones, photoshoots, various interviews, and releasing their new Trolls Band Together single “Better Place,” Justin, Lance, JC, Chris, and Joey have been tearin’ up our hearts with all the nostalgia.
As for what *NSYNC has planned for the future, Joey made sure to level out any high and immediate expectations. “That takes time,” he explained.
“If you’re doing a whole album, you’ve got about 13 or 14 songs, then you want to do about probably 30 or 40, because you don’t know which ones you really want to pick. And now you’ve got five other guys that got to figure out what’s going on. That’s just the music itself, then you got to figure out a tour.”
That being said, Fatone isn’t ruling anything out. “You never know. I can actually say, ‘You know what? That’s a possibility — ’25, that’s a possibility.’ But, there’s four other guys I have to talk to about that.”