Y2K is back and Justin Timberlake is the asterisk in the trend report, left in the dirt like skinny scarves and fedoras. The ex-*NSYNC singer’s stuttering electro-pop, kissed with silky millennium-era R&B, produced at least one all-time album with 2006’s FutureSex/LoveSounds. But after a decade of borderline unlistenable music, hindsight suggests that despite his talents as a performer, Timberlake was also simply in the right place at the right time to benefit from Timbaland’s mid-’00s hot streak, or snag the Michael Jackson rejects that made up his 2002 debut Justified.
Timberlake’s sixth album, Everything I Thought It Was, is designed to buff the dents out of his public image in the wake of a recent memoir by his ex-girlfriend, Britney Spears. She wrote that he encouraged her to get an abortion, told the media she was a “cheating slut and a liar,” and generally acted even worse than you might imagine from a cornrowed white dude who’s prone to speak in AAVE. In an interview to promote the album’s lead single “Selfish,” a wispy mea culpa directed to “the owner of my heart and all my scars,” aka his wife of 12 years Jessica Biel, Timberlake spoke admiringly of music that lays male emotions bare. Referencing Donny Hathaway’s cover of “Jealous Guy,” he told Zane Lowe, “You just don’t hear that from men often, that they would express an emotion that makes them vulnerable. Growing up the way I grew up, you’re kind of taught not to do that.”
Timberlake’s read on contemporary pop could have been true half a decade ago, but today’s radio airwaves are full of men talking about feelings, and the biggest songs last year from male artists were yearning country ballads. No one really wants to hear about gender from an artist who saw fit to name a 2013 single “Take Back the Night,” but softboy masculinity is a useful touchstone for an artist embarking on a redemption arc. Listening to his new album makes it all feel about as convincing as the rootsy pose he struck on 2018’s Man of the Woods, an album for the hypebeast whose hiking boots have never seen soil.
At 77 minutes, the mercilessly unhurried Everything I Thought It Was does everything you thought Justin Timberlake did but worse. Contrary to the story he told Lowe, the album stops short of meaningfully grappling with his past, offering a lily pad for rote, randy showmanship. “Flame” shoots for the cinematic swoop of “What Goes Around…Comes Around” but trades the intricacy of FutureSex/LoveSounds’ karmic ballet for smooth radio piano, soundbank samples of siren wails, and arson metaphors piled like dusty coals that are never going to take. By the end of the song you’re begging for something, anything to jolt the songs’ eight producers out of bird-feeding Timberlake’s former triumphs back to you.
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
