Why Joey Fatone Felt “Blindsided” After Justin Timberlake Didn’t Come Back to NSYNC Following His ‘Justified’ Tour

Abbey White
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Joey Fatone is in a good place with Justin Timberlake and the rest of his NSYNC bandmates but admits that he felt blindsided by one aspect of Timberlake’s rise to solo superstar status.

In a new interview with Yahoo Entertainment, Fatone reflected on that breakup period in the band’s past and the possibility of not just a reunion but a new album following the release of NSYNC’s new Trolls Band Together song, the group’s first new single since the mid-2000s.

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“I was not blindsided by the breakup. 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,” Fatone said about his initial reaction to Timberlake’s departure. “It was more of, ‘Hey, I’m going to do some music, and then we’ll get back together.’ That’s what that was.”

Fatone added that while it has taken time to see this, he eventually realized that what had happened wasn’t so much the doing of his former bandmate as it was his 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.”

The TV host, Broadway star and singer said that he felt confident the band was still together in the gear-up to Timberlake’s 2003-04 Justified World Tour.

“We thought he was just going to go out and just come back after the tour,” Fatone recalled. “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.’”

Despite that initial feeling of being blindsided, Fatone shared he’s in a better place with Timberlake and the rest of the band. “I’m always in a better place. I don’t know about [my bandmates]; I can’t speak for them. But I’ll speak for myself,” he said.

The band’s much-talked-about reunion, which saw them present Taylor Swift with a VMA honor last month in New York, sparked rumors in its lead-up that the group might perform again together. They ultimately didn’t, with some considering it a missed opportunity. NSYNC agreed, according to Fatone.

“Trust me, we all did,” he said. “With the powers-that-be, we couldn’t at the moment. But I hope and pray that there will be a time that we’ll be able to perform that song for everybody.”

As for whether fans can expect them to drop a new album anytime soon, Fatone said fans should pump the breaks.

“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.”

Still, Fatone is not ruling anything out quite yet. “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.”

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