Justin Timberlake’s phone rang, and he didn’t know the number. That’s where he starts the story on Complex’s “Re-Rank” series, in an episode the outlet posted this month. “My phone rings from a number I don’t understand,” he told Complex in 2026. He answered anyway. The man on the other end, as Justin remembers it, was “eating popcorn or something.”
This was during the NSYNC years. Justin had written a ballad called “Gone” with Michael Jackson in mind. When Michael didn’t take it, Justin brought it to an NSYNC A&R meeting, and it ended up on the group’s 2001 album “Celebrity,” Hola reported in November 2026. Then, in Justin’s words, “it comes out and then my phone rings.”
The call didn’t go well. Justin cursed the caller out, and he’s honest about why. “I thought somebody was prank calling me,” he said. He finished with a line he can still quote: “Whoever this is, lose my number.” Then he hung up. “Like beep beep beep,” he said. “Hung up the phone.”
It didn’t stay quiet for long. “The number rings again and I’m like heated at this point,” Justin said. “And I’m like, ‘Who is this?'” This time the caller gave his name. “He’s like, ‘Justin, it’s Michael.'”
Justin knew exactly what he’d done. “I just cursed Michael Jackson out,” he remembers thinking, and the apology came next: “I’m so sorry.”
That leaves the first call, and the two words that started it.
Michael didn’t give his name on that first call. Here’s how Justin tells it to Complex: “I answer the phone and you know he’s like eating popcorn or something and he’s like, ‘Hi, Applehead.'”
That was the whole greeting. “Hi, Applehead,” from a number Justin didn’t know. Everything after it, the cursing, the “lose my number” and the hang-up, came from a young pop star who was sure somebody was prank calling him. It was Michael Jackson, calling about a song, and he’d led with a nickname.
Once the apology was out of the way, Michael got to the point. “I’ve heard this song called Gone, and I understand that you wrote it for me,” he said, as Justin tells it. Hola’s write-up adds that Michael told him, “I really like this song.” Michael wanted to record it with him, and Justin turned him down. “I respectfully said,” he told Complex, “‘I hope we can do something down the road, but I can’t turn my back on what I’ve already committed to with the fellas.'”
Justin Timberlake tells the Michael Jackson phone call story on Complex’s “Re-Rank”
This is Complex’s own upload of the full episode, which runs 45:48. The format has Justin going back over his own songs and ranking them, and the Michael story comes up along the way. Justin starts on “Gone” and Michael at about 25:03, the phone call comes at about 28:15 and the “Applehead” greeting is right there in the first few seconds of it. He’s wrapped up the story by about 32:40.
In the middle of the call story, right after the cursing, Justin puts it another way: “We curse out Michael Jackson.” The song Michael called about stayed an NSYNC song, with all five of them on it, on “Celebrity.”