Joey Fatone understands Justin Timberlake’s long absence from *NSYNC

While one might expect the rest of *NSYNC to harbor some pretty deep resentment toward Justin Timberlake for breaking up the band in 2002, it seems like, at least after all this time, the guys’ mutual respect truly has no strings attached.

As everyone and Taylor Swift well knows by now, the iconic quintet of Timberlake, Joey Fatone, Lance Bass, JC Chasez, and Chris Kirkpatrick recently reunited to record “Better Place” for Trolls Band Together, a film fittingly about the power of boy bands and brotherhood. “Justin came up to us about the idea and… it only fit right for us to do this together as a group. I think the message, the meaning, everything just… came to him,” he told Yahoo! Entertainment.

But while this is the band’s first time in the studio in at least two decades, Fatone understands Timberlake’s previous reluctance to rejoin.

“Think about it this way,” he continued. “He is at the top pinnacle of his career, for many years now. There’s nothing wrong with that. Nobody’s upset about that. We all love it and we all support it. But when you’re going to go backwards… do you think you want to go backwards? If you go back, would you want to split it four ways with other people again, or do your business that you built up yourself?”

Fatone also touched on the experience of releasing an *NSYNC song for a new generation of music appreciations, an experience he called “interesting and humbling.” “People are trying to pull just to hear who’s singing what,” he said. “They’re legitimately going in—and nobody does that! Kids are doing that now, which is amazing to me. It’s brilliant. They’re dissecting these chords, which is really cool to do, and they’re overanalyzing and understanding it and trying to get the method or formula of a song. It’s interesting now that people are honestly appreciating it.”

Still, despite this renewed sense of reverence toward the group, fans shouldn’t get their hopes up for a full-length album any time soon. “That takes time,” Fatone shared, citing the challenges of songwriting, tour planning, and coordinating schedules among all five members of the band. Still, “you never know.” “2025, that’s a possibility,” he continued. “But, there’s four of the guys I have to talk to about that.”