The Backstreet Boys song Joey Fatone wanted to sing

For Joey Fatone, sharing a stage with AJ McLean created a chance to step into a song from the other side of the boy-band divide. In a January 2024 interview on Audacy's 96.5 WTIC-FM, the NSYNC singer identified Quit Playing Games as a Backstreet Boys song he had long wanted to perform. The conversation concerned the pair's A Legendary Night tour, not a new tour by either full group.

The exchange worked both ways. Fatone said McLean had wanted to sing NSYNC's This I Promise You, a song they had already tried in their joint shows. His own answer about Quit Playing Games was phrased as a possibility, not a printed setlist guarantee. That distinction is the center of the story: a singer naming a favorite and discussing a format that might let him perform it, rather than announcing exactly what every audience would hear.

As reported by Entertainment Tonight and People on January 17, the project grew from earlier appearances together, including a 1990s-themed show in Tampa. The positive response encouraged the two performers to try a run of dates. At the time of the interview, the announced tour was set to begin on March 15 in Temecula, California, before continuing to other U.S. cities. Those dates are historical and should not be presented as a current ticket offer.

The appeal was a combination of familiar material and a different pairing of voices. Fatone brought his history in NSYNC; McLean brought his in the Backstreet Boys. That does not make their collaboration an official merger of the bands, and it does not imply that their former bandmates were booked to appear. The two names on the bill were enough to establish the idea without inflating it into a reunion claim.

Read now, the interview is a small account of musical curiosity surviving a very familiar catalogue. Fatone was discussing a song he admired and the pleasure of finally having a reason to try it. The archive preserves that specific answer and the context in which he gave it. It does not turn a conversational possibility into a claim that Quit Playing Games was performed at every stop. More artist-focused reading is collected in [Ninefold features](/features), separate from this historical record.