NSYNC reunites to release first new song in over 20 years at VMAs 2023

After a day, the song is ready. Or at least a preview of upcoming songs.

At the 2023 MTV Video Music Awards on Tuesday, the five members of NSync shared a stage together for the first time in ten years to hand out the evening’s first award. Fans were disappointed when only a Moonperson was provided by Justin Timberlake, JC Chasez, Lance Bass, Joey Fatone, and Chris Kirkpatrick in order to beat Taylor Swift.

That was fixed on Wednesday night when the newest teaser for the popular animated series’ Trolls Band Together, which stars Justin Timberlake’s voice and music, was released. The song “Better Place,” the first new song to feature the original NSync lineup since 2001, served as the soundtrack for the video.

RCA Records will release the whole song on September 29. On Nov. 17, Trolls Band Together, a movie about the reunited (“We still got it!”) members of the defunct Troll band BroZone, will be released in theatres.

When Timberlake announced his breakup from the popular boy band in 2004 and began a solo career that featured hit albums and significant movie appearances, he virtually placed the boy band on hold. But throughout the previous 20 years, there had been encouraging signals of a reunion.

At the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards, during a blink-and-you-missed-it mashup of “Girlfriend” and “Bye Bye Bye” honouring Justin Timberlake’s Video Vanguard Award, was the last time all five members of NSync shared the stage in exactly a decade. Fans were understandably disappointed because the much-anticipated “surprise” moment, which had Taylor Swift fangirling in the audience, lasted only two minutes of Timberlake’s entire 15-minute musical number. (An angry spectator at the time stated that NSync’s cameo was “brief enough to fit the entire thing in an Instagram video.)

What is “millennial-triggered” Swift went to the platform to meet her childhood heroes and gave them hugs and friendship bracelets, looking much more thrilled than she did in 2013. She said breathlessly, “I am not doing well pivoting from this to this,” she breathlessly confessed, glancing from the quintet, who she described as “pop personified,” to the Moonperson trophy in her hands. “I had the [NSync] dolls!”

Swift then posed the query that was on everyone’s mind to NSync: “Are you doing something? What’s going to happen now?” She quickly insisted, “Oh, they’re gonna do something — and I need to know what it is!” But the men gave no information. No significant announcement was made.