Even before the streaming era, Justin Timberlake understood the fundamental importance of an attention-grabbing opening track. With a sweet-talking introduction from Pharrell Williams, “Señorita” opened his solo debut Justified. “FutureSex / LoveSound,” the title track on his sophomore release, packaged lustful yearning with techno-R&B. And when he returned with The 20/20 Experience seven years later, “Pusher Love Girl” served as an eight-minute opening opus of a musician as interested in — and capable of — seducing a lover as he is a crowd. But if the “Haters gon’ say it’s fake”-isms of Man of the Woods opener “Filthy” was the first indication of the plot and charisma being lost, then “Memphis,” the first song on Timberlake’s sixth studio album Everything I Thought It Was, calls for the arrangement of a search party.
Its minimalist trap production is functionally transportive, using distortion to create the feeling of a tape being rewound as Timberlake travels back in time. He returns not to the swanky cocktail lounge, bustling club, or blistering dive bar settings of those early albums, but to his Tennessee hometown as a younger man. After three minutes of ruminating on the pressure and early promises of fame — the money, cars, and alcohol that flowed to him as a reigning pop prince — Timberlake starts rapping. “I was way too far out in the world, but I still put on for my city,” he spits, marking the start of a deeply disorienting transition. “I was handing out too much milk money, too much kitten, and ass, and titties.”
It can’t be understated how jarring this monologue is. This is the same man who brought sexy back and somehow injected Timbaland’s “Carry Out,” a song that essentially compares a woman’s body to a late-night Burger King run, with amusing swagger. It admittedly feels unproductive and almost unfair to compare the musical run of Timberlake’s twenties to that of his forties — there are certain heights that are simply no longer in his reach within the ever-shifting landscape of pop he once dominated. But in many ways, Everything I Thought It Was implores its audience to do exactly that. It’s a purposeful nostalgia play that, at times, lives in the past to a fault.
“I was playing it for people around me. They’re like, ‘Oh, this sounds like everything we know you for,’” Timberlake, 43, recently told Apple Music. “That sort of phrase, in one way or another, was in the air. And I thought to myself about how some of the songs are more introspective and some of them are more what I think people know me for.” To fill both of these spaces, the album spans 18 songs, purportedly trimmed down from 100 though it could have stood to cut five or six entries, starting with “Memphis.” That would have left “Fuckin’ Up the Disco,” an homage to his own “Let the Groove Get In,” as the album’s opening track — a starting point that motions towards what does work about the album versus the places in which it completely falls flat.
The full horn section backing “Fuckin’ Up the Disco” assists Timberlake in shaking off whatever nerves he may have felt returning with his first album in six years. “You looking for worship, baby, well hey, I got a mantle,” he quips. “Got my Gucci Crocs on right now, but we can slide like sandals. Let me flip you like a sample.” There’s a lightness to his performance that returns on “Infinity Sex,” another funk-fueled trip that channels Michael Jackson’s Off the Wall with the same reverence Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak shared for Seventies soul on Silk Sonic’s debut. And when he switches on the intensity with “Technicolor,” all seven minutes highlight the best parts of The 20/20 Experience: earnest yearning, stellar instrumental arrangements, and range-showcasing vocal production.
This recurs on “Drown,” the percussive single that tries on the same pensive melancholy as “Cry Me a River,” only without the tabloid drama. “Liar,” with a guest appearance from Fireboy DML, could pass for an addition to NSYNC’s No Strings Attached in a way that makes “Paradise” — the album’s actual feature with the boy band — feel disjointed. Perhaps a testament to NSYNC’s markings on the boy band blueprint, the song sounds like it could have easily been performed by One Direction, or the Jonas Brothers — but at that rate, so do the trite deep cuts “Love Is War” and “Favorite Drug.” Even Maroon 5 beat him to “What Lovers Do.” Meanwhile, “Selfish” and “Alone” echo Nick Jonas and Shawn Mendes, respectively, doing their best Timberlake impressions to varying degrees of success. And “Play,” ironically, is JT doing his best Prince.
“It’s fun Justin — it’s like FutureSex/LoveSounds but nothing too heavy, just giving you what you expect from us,” Timbaland told Variety last year about the album. The producer only appears on five songs across the record, which primarily features Timberlake co-producing with Danja, Louis Bell, and Cirkut. Making an album rooted in what you believe someone else wants from you feels counterproductive to the creative process on its own, but to hear him pulling pages from his own playbook is similarly confounding. When “Mirrors” and “Until the End of Time” have already set the bar for ballads, what are we meant to make of “Conditions,” which closes the album? At the very least, this new batch of songs will blend into the setlist for Timberlake’s forthcoming tour more seamlessly than anything on Man of the Woods ever managed to.
Timberlake recently told Apple Music that Everything I Thought It Was is his “best work” yet. It’s not. This was actually disproven during the very first song. But nearly every track on the record having a one-to-one parallel to other moments in his discography does feel like a timely reminder. As retroactive criticisms have emerged about the ways in which Timberlake has flourished at the expense of the women around him, as Rolling Stone’s Brittany Spanos recently wrote, “it has even led to revisionist history, with many pretty egregiously claiming that his career has always been middling and even dead in the water for much longer than is actually true.” You can call Timberlake a lot of things, but never a mediocre performer or an insignificant figure in pop history. Not only does he have the hits to prove it, now he also has an entire album of songs that feel like B-sides to make an ironic case for his once-gilded greatness.
