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Y2K is again and Justin Timberlake is the asterisk within the pattern report, left within the dust like skinny scarves and fedoras. The ex-*NSYNC singer’s stuttering electro-pop, kissed with silky millennium-era R&B, produced at the least one all-time album with 2006’s FutureSex/LoveSounds. However after a decade of borderline unlistenable music, hindsight means that regardless of his skills as a performer, Timberlake was additionally merely in the best place on the proper time to profit from Timbaland’s mid-’00s scorching streak, or snag the Michael Jackson rejects that made up his 2002 debut Justified.
Timberlake’s sixth album, Every little thing I Thought It Was, is designed to buff the dents out of his public picture within the wake of a latest memoir by his ex-girlfriend, Britney Spears. She wrote that he inspired her to get an abortion, informed the media she was a “dishonest slut and a liar,” and usually acted even worse than you may think from a cornrowed white dude who’s susceptible to talk in AAVE. In an interview to advertise the album’s lead single “Egocentric,” a wispy mea culpa directed to “the proprietor of my coronary heart and all my scars,” aka his spouse of 12 years Jessica Biel, Timberlake spoke admiringly of music that lays male feelings naked. Referencing Donny Hathaway’s cowl of “Jealous Man,” he informed Zane Lowe, “You simply don’t hear that from males usually, that they’d categorical an emotion that makes them weak. Rising up the best way I grew up, you’re form of taught not to try this.”
Timberlake’s learn on up to date pop might have been true half a decade in the past, however immediately’s radio airwaves are stuffed with males speaking about emotions, and the most important songs final 12 months from male artists have been craving nation ballads. Nobody actually needs to listen to about gender from an artist who noticed match to identify a 2013 single “Take Again the Evening,” however softboy masculinity is a helpful touchstone for an artist embarking on a redemption arc. Listening to his new album makes all of it really feel about as convincing because the rootsy pose he struck on 2018’s Man of the Woods, an album for the hypebeast whose climbing boots have by no means seen soil.
At 77 minutes, the mercilessly unhurried Every little thing I Thought It Was does the whole lot you thought Justin Timberlake did however worse. Opposite to the story he informed Lowe, the album stops in need of meaningfully grappling together with his previous, providing a lily pad for rote, randy showmanship. “Flame” shoots for the cinematic swoop of “What Goes Round…Comes Round” however trades the intricacy of FutureSex/LoveSounds’ karmic ballet for clean radio piano, soundbank samples of siren wails, and arson metaphors piled like dusty coals which are by no means going to take. By the tip of the track you’re begging for one thing, something to jolt the songs’ eight producers out of bird-feeding Timberlake’s former triumphs again to you.
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