Joey Fatone isn’t ruling out giving *NSYNC another go. ET’s Rachel Smith spoke with the singer after his boy band released “Better Place,” their first single in 20 years, and Fatone admitted that there may be more to come from the group, which also includes Justin Timberlake, JC Chasez, Lance Bass and Chris Kirkpatrick.
“As you get older in life you start to realize certain things of what’s important, or what you may miss, or feelings that you’ve had before that you may never have again until later on in life… I think that’s what we felt like in the studio,” Fatone told ET of recording “Better Things.” “I think all of us felt like this is the right time to do it… After that, who knows? It was one of those things like, let’s see what happens.”
For his part, Fatone said he’ll “never say never as far as us getting back together, as far as a tour is concerned.”
“This is the first step, people, so we don’t know what’s gonna happen after,” he said. “It’s almost like I took you out on a date, we’re gonna hang out a little, we don’t know if we’re actually gonna go out for the next date or just get married and kick it, we don’t know yet… Basically the five of us got together, we had dinner. We haven’t slept with each other yet, but you never know.”
Fatone noted that it’s not just up to him and the other members of *NSYNC if they return, explaining, “You’ve got to call Sony! Sony, RCA, we want a tour, we want an album, we want the stuff. The five of us can’t do much. We can just say, ‘Yes, we can try to.'”
No matter what comes next, Fatone is grateful for *NSYNC’s recent resurgence, calling the whole thing “really exciting and really weird.”
“It’s almost like we passed and came back to life,” he said. “It really is, because obviously everybody has their own lives, we have our own things, everybody’s doing their own stuff, so when we get back together to do something like that, it’s just really amazing. It’s fun.”
The fun of the experience, Fatone believes, came in part thanks to the lack of pressure this time around.
“I don’t think it felt like a lot of pressure this time. I’m not worried about being at number one,” he said. “… As I’ve gotten older, obviously for me, I know what’s important in my life. My kids are more important than that kind of stuff. Yes, is it fun to have a great hit song on the radio? Of course it is.”
“Listening to it the first time we’re like, ‘You know what? This is a great song. It’s gonna be fun,'” Fatone continued. “Didn’t know the magnitude, honestly, that was gonna happen.”
They got to celebrate their new song at last month’s MTV VMAs, when they presented an award to Taylor Swift, who freaked out about the onstage reunion.
“It’s so funny because we didn’t know she was gonna win the award or anything, so we got up there, did the whole thing, she came up and she’s like, ‘OK, what’s going on?'” Fatone recalled. “I was like, ‘I have no idea, but if you want to just keep talking about us and you’re not even thinking about your award, we’re here.'”
ET’s chat with the 46-year-old singer came amid his attendance at Heluva Good’s No Team Required Tour, which is bringing tailgate fun to cities that are team-less to show that you don’t need a game to have a fun tailgate with snacks, including their dips.
“We’re having a heluva good time,” Fatone said during the tour’s Hoboken, New Jersey, stop. “Basically, we’re gonna be tailgating out here at this lovely bar that we have out here. I’ve actually worked with Heluva Good now this is the fourth or fifth year… They don’t take themselves too serious, just like me.”
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