Joey Fatone talks about the possibility of a new NSync album and tour

NSync band member Joey Fatone discusses how Justin Timberlake came to the band with a new song, how Justin left the group and about the possibility of a new NSync album and tour — but urges fans to be patient.

Video Transcript

LYNDSEY PARKER: So this NSYNC reunion has been happening since-- it's been at least in talks since, I believe, March. How did you keep the best kept secret in show business for six months?

JOEY FATONE: I don't know it's been quite a fun little thing to do. A lot of people are not happy. They were asking me, like, what's going on? I'm like, why do you need to know right now? Everybody needs to know. It's like, let it happen. Just let it happen. If it's going to happen, let it happen. So for us, I mean, I guess Justin came up to us about the idea and just kind of obviously talked about the song and said, hey, I love this song. This is part of this A, B, C, and D. It only fit right for us to do this together as a group.

I think the message, the meaning, everything, just all around everything I think came to him because you got to really think about it too. He's the youngest one of the group, in general, though. Think about it this way. He is at the top pinnacle of his career for many years now. And there's nothing wrong with that. Nobody's upset about that. We all love it. And we all support it.

When you're going to go backwards, do you think you want to go backwards? Would you want to split it four ways with other people again or do your business that you did and you built up your own business to yourself now?

LYNDSEY PARKER: So there's no resentment from you about the fact that--

JOEY FATONE: Why?

LYNDSEY PARKER: --it took this long? I don't know. I'm asking you. No?

JOEY FATONE: No. That's the beautiful part about it. No, not for me. Me, personally, no, I can't because my career and my life led me somewhere else. And I'm good. And I've been happy with it.

LYNDSEY PARKER: Well, see, I've read-- this is your chance to tell me if what I've read is correct or not--

JOEY FATONE: I will be happy to.

LYNDSEY PARKER: --that you guys, or at least you, were blindsided by the-- that you guys were blindsided by the breakup or that you didn't see it coming.

JOEY FATONE: Not blindsided by the breakup. I was more blindsided by what they were doing as far as him coming out with music and not knowing that he was going to go and do an actual album tour thing. It was more of, hey, I'm going to do some music, and then we'll get back together. That's what that was. And it wasn't him. It was the record company. If it was him, then I'd understand it. But as you're younger, you think it's that person. But then you look at the whole big scheme of things, you go, oh, that is why I wasn't there for that. Oh, that is why that-- oh. And that's the business. OK, I get it.

LYNDSEY PARKER: So when we went off to do--

JOEY FATONE: I look at the business and get it.

LYNDSEY PARKER: So when Justin went off to do "Justified," you thought that was just at that time an indefinite hiatus or a hiatus?

JOEY FATONE: No. We thought he was just going to go out and just come back after the tour, like, OK. And then when he went on tour and then things started going, I was like, all right, I'll go do Broadway. So that's when I did Broadway. I started doing "Dancing with the Stars." I started hosting TV shows. And I started doing my own thing. And that was what led me-- I always wanted to do Broadway. And that's what led me to do that in that route. And that's basically it.

LYNDSEY PARKER: So I want to-- with all the fanfare, all the excitement everyone's having, people have been watching this reunion forever. They've been wanting it since the 2013 VMAs, since Coachella 2019. They've been wanting it forever. Everyone's so excited about this now. Everyone wants a tour. Everyone wants an album.

JOEY FATONE: Yeah, OK. That takes time, right?

LYNDSEY PARKER: Get on it. We've all been waiting.

JOEY FATONE: How much time do you think? How much time do you think?

LYNDSEY PARKER: A good amount of time. You don't want to rush things. But we've been waiting a while.

JOEY FATONE: Have you ever recorded a song before?

LYNDSEY PARKER: I have not.

JOEY FATONE: OK. Depending on it, it takes a day, maybe two. But if you're doing a whole album, you 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've got to figure out a tour. Think about how long Taylor Swift's tour probably took to build.

LYNDSEY PARKER: She would probably open for you on tour, she was so excited to see you the VMAs.

JOEY FATONE: That'd be amazing. I hope she does.

LYNDSEY PARKER: She would probably do it. You have a talk with Hella Good about sponsoring the Taylor Swift NSYNC tour in 20-- maybe 25. Let's be-- I'll be patient, 2025.

JOEY FATONE: See, that's a realist. Again, you never know. And I can actually say, you know what? That's a possibility. '25, that's a possibility. But you know what? There's four other guys that I have to talk to you about that.

LYNDSEY PARKER: Is it vindicating in a way? Because I'm talking about the female fans. It's kind of a layered question. But I always feel when boy bands or any artist that has a lot of female fans doesn't get respect, there's kind of an inherent misogyny about it. They're like, oh, girls like them. But now, everybody is like, yay, NSYNC's back. It must kind of feel good to be like-- to see this, to feel this love.

JOEY FATONE: Well, it's a combination of everything in the sense of-- and you really look at it because you look at it from either an artist standpoint or just kind of a fad standpoint, as far as a boy band vocal group, these guys don't know singing, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But then you look and you break down our history and what we've done in our-- how we are as musicians and singing and our harmonies and all this, blah, blah, blah.

We can go on forever for that stuff. Now that people are going into, what I'm saying, going into the pro tools and going into even dissecting vocals now, people are trying to pull just to hear who's singing what now. I've been getting messages listening from our track from the song. People are dissecting the song. They go, OK, well, Joey's singing this part. Chris is singing this. Lance is singing.

They're legitimately going in and-- nobody does that back in the day. They go, oh, that's great music I love the tune. They don't do that. Kids are doing that now, which is amazing to me. And 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. And it's interesting now that people are honestly appreciating it now.