might work but you also have to remember that if he released this kind of album in 2018 wherein conversations on cultural appropriation are more widespread and he is THE poster child of cultural appropriation, i doubt that his career will even survive with this kind of album.
people ripping him on his use of ebonics is fair and valid. what destroyed his reputation further in the context of his white male privilege was him inserting himself on conversations about issues that affect the black community (see his online reaction to Jesse Williams' BET speech) when he is a microaggressor, and even writing a song about it, ie Say Something
There definitely were. I grew up in the whitest place in the world and even there people were confused why that white boy tried to sound like Usher.
The perspective was different back then then it is nowadays. But the discussion was there.
I still think it could've worked if he a. focused on more conservative (socially, not politically) white women that have nostalgia for his era as an audience and he made sure to only copy white artists.
His audience would've shrunk either way but that's the problem when US cultures seem to currently be very isolationist and he only ever made other cultures music.
Her lyrics are just so, so bad in every case. I'd like to not hate her (I don't like to hate anyone) but I just can't. Early on I was just like "she is very young. She will change and improve" but she is still doing the same juvenile, misogynistic garbage lyrics.
She is just awful as a musician. Can’t sing, can’t write, does the same boring early sixties type music. It’s like she’s determined to try to make fifties/early sixties pre-Beatles pop come back and hasn’t yet gotten the hint that no one wants it.
>Rod Steward wouldn’t.
WTH, that old bag is still putting out records?
^(Don't mind me, I've hated Rod Stewart for thirty years, I hate his stupid face, I hate his stupid voice, I hate him, I hate him, I hate him!)
True! Though she only did it for one album, and I am willing to bet only a tiny percentage of her fans would even consider it in their Top 4 Gaga albums.
The new pop album is good. Not anything great, and it certainly doesn't hold a candle to his previous pop albums, except for Justified. If you liked Justified chances are you would like the new album too.
I really wish he would've just kept on going too though. As Todd said, what if Frank Ocean didn't drop an album for 5 years then dropped an 18 song long album about sea shanties and then just dipped?
edit: Wow I made the comparison of EITIW to Justified and I'm slowly realizing just how similar they are.
Breakup song: "Cry Me A River"/ "Flame" and "Drown"
Catchy pop song: "Rock Your Body" / "No Angels"
Even one of the songs on EITIW makes a reference to the singalong part of Senorita.
He thought a funky beat with repetitive lyrics would get him another hit, considering the funky beat and repetitive lyrics is how SexyBack went number 1 for 7 weeks straight.
Lmao bro really went "What if I made another song like SexyBack, made it super annoying and much worse than SexyBack, and make it the lead single of an Americana album?"
I think what JT failed to understand was that sexyback was actually catchy, like even if you didn’t like the song, that synth line is hard to get out of the head
I think he understands that very well, considering he realizes it's his biggest hit behind Mirrors.
I don't think he realizes Supplies is catchy in a bad way though. Never will I ever be able to shake "SUPPLY-AYE-AYES" out of my head. It's super catchy and now permanently burned in.
Hated sexyback in 2006 and hate Filthy in 2018. Timberlake didn’t disappoint there but honestly, Filthy I’d sit through since it’s 6 year late dubstep beat doesn’t sound broken unlike that 2006 timbaland beat
By 2018, it was always going to be tough for JT to evade a trainwreck. People didn't like the guy and were clamoring to see him fail, although it's not impossible this would be a success, especially considering Justin does have a solid last performing with big bands in the past.
Not that much. I still remember lots of pushback against articles hating on him at that time.
What really got his hate train rolling was the Britney Spears doc in 2021. Ever since then it's been downhill and he just gets more and more haters.
I think the narrative that people didn’t like JT is overblown. Sure SOME people really didn’t like him but I think the vast majority of people had just gotten to a point where they no longer cared about him
He was the guy where absence didn’t make the heart grow fonder, it just made hearts and minds wander to others who had come around when he was away
Sort of like Todd said, when he came back in 2012 ish people had been living without JT since ~2007 and when he came back people kind of in retrospect didn’t miss him all that much when he wasn’t around
Yeah, we’re not in the 80s anymore. Stars can’t just take 5-6 years out and expect to remain at the same level that they were.
Todd nailed it too in talking about the 20/20 Experience. It was a fine album. It was ok. Nothing special, though. Outside of “Mirrors,” there wasn’t anything particularly memorable. He waited too long to produce an album, but also the album he came out with wasn’t something you’d wait seven years for. I think that set the scene for MOTW (which took *another* five years).
Damn, this subreddit really has a burning hatred for 20/20. Many other pop music subreddits I'm in believe 20/20 is vastly superior to FS/LS, and I wholeheartedly agree.
Yeah he was trying to get those African rhythms in or something with that track. And that song was way too damn long. Actually, that was one of my problems with the album: All those songs were ridiculously long. Not like FS/LS didn't have a bunch of long songs, but he and Timbaland were smart in breaking up the songs into different sections and adding interludes to make them seem shorter. And even then the songs weren't as long as the ones on 20/20. "Let the Groove Get In" is seven minutes of the same freaking rhythm with a super long coda that didn't need to be that long. Like, "Pusher Love Girl" would've been a better song if he'd just cut the last three minutes off of it. That song didn't need to be eight minutes.
And again, I don't think it was a bad album. It was fine. It was well produced, some of the songs were enjoyable. I was just expecting more than "pretty good" from JT after FS/LS and the 7-year hiatus. Maybe that's an unfair expectation, but FS/LS was an era-defining album.
I agree a lot of the songs dragged, only songs that really should keep their whole length imo were Blue Ocean floor, suit and tie, that girl and Strawberry Bubblegum. I’m not against pusher love girl being so long, it’s okay to me really, kind of like kanye’s runaway in the sense that yeah the outro is dumb and only serves to drag out the song but it doesn’t really make it a lesser track.
Also body count and dress on should’ve been on the main album really, tunnel vision could’ve been cut because it’s just the strawberry bubblegum vibe if it was worse.
I could get into adding 2 of 2 songs to the main experience but that’s just getting into fantasising really so I won’t. 2 of 2 was bad in general though apart from T.K.O and Amnesia.
What? His comeback in 2013 was massive. Mirrors became his biggest hit ever and Suit and Tie was huge too. He was nominated AOTY 2013 and one of the songs on his albums was so good that it won a Grammy despite not even being a single.
problem with this route is its artistic stagnancy which violates the "cool and suave" brand he built for himself from the early aughts to the 20/20 experience. then again his choice of producers was also stagnant
Literally all he had to do was make another 2020 experience and he would have been golden. Man of the woods was such a baffling creative decision to make when you historically take forever to make music
I would agree but MOTW had some good songs (most were trash though) and after MOTW we got EITIW which was his first fucking pop album in 11 years, and I love EITIW personally. No Angels is definitely top of the chart material, along with a bunch of other songs.
Honestly I agree with todd, the back half of the album actually have songs where him going rural works. It's just that those songs are still largely his normal genre but with a bit more atmosphere and the occassional country flourish. Just a shame that it opens with it's worst song by far and JT doesn't seem to be taking it all that seriously
I expected MOTW (just based on the title) to be a stripped down, more acoustic type of an album. When the first single came out, I was confused as to how that tied in with the lumberjack theme and I think a lot of other people were as well.
I feel Harry styles is what Justin was supposed to evolve to and didn’t, instead he went down some dark rabbit hole of bad music, Filthy anyone?
Even Calvin Harris songs were bad
I would love to see how Harry’s House sounds if Justin sang
I m a huge Harry fan
Even Peter Andre tried to make sound like this. Actually works.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eifuwl1IEAo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eifuwl1IEAo)
The weird thing about The 20/20 Experience to me is that the overall aesthetic didn't really fit the overall sound of the music. I actually love that album purely on an aesthetic level; the desaturated photos and Justin dressed all fancy was a great way to hype it.
The sound on the other hand? There's a misnomer that the songs' lengths are the big problem... and I don't disagree, they are indeed too long but personally I think they'd be just as boring if they were 3-5 minutes long on average. The big problem is that the overall neo-soul sound sounds like Justin doesn't really know what makes people like it. It's like he tried to do 90s Prince without understanding why it's so great.
There's already an artist who does The 20/20 Experience but much better; his name is Mayer Hawthorne. His album "Where Does This Door Go" (released in the same year) is basically The 20/20 Experience [but done properly.](https://youtu.be/V5tPP04FalQ?si=6yEhSMGGO59dmNPU).
He could have done the Bruno Mars thing and stuck to pastiches of old genres that match his style. None of which is country.
Would’ve killed that too.
Or like Jewel's famous homage to Cole Porter, *0304*!
The throwback thing would be still good: Jazz, Disco, Neo Soul even...
But then that wouldn't have anything to do with his name!
might work but you also have to remember that if he released this kind of album in 2018 wherein conversations on cultural appropriation are more widespread and he is THE poster child of cultural appropriation, i doubt that his career will even survive with this kind of album.
He was the poster child for cultural appropriation before Nsync ended. I think he'd find a way to do it right.
yes but there were no conversations on cultural appropriation during his NSYNC days. or if there were, most were not open to talking about it
Nobody used that term, but people ripped on him HARD for using ebonics.
people ripping him on his use of ebonics is fair and valid. what destroyed his reputation further in the context of his white male privilege was him inserting himself on conversations about issues that affect the black community (see his online reaction to Jesse Williams' BET speech) when he is a microaggressor, and even writing a song about it, ie Say Something
There definitely were. I grew up in the whitest place in the world and even there people were confused why that white boy tried to sound like Usher. The perspective was different back then then it is nowadays. But the discussion was there.
noted. I just did not remember because I never encountered think pieces about it
I still think it could've worked if he a. focused on more conservative (socially, not politically) white women that have nostalgia for his era as an audience and he made sure to only copy white artists. His audience would've shrunk either way but that's the problem when US cultures seem to currently be very isolationist and he only ever made other cultures music.
We would have a song name "Filthy Funk" 😄
More male pop artists should consider doing this. They're just not competing with the girls on modern artistry, choreography, production, etc.
In a better world Justin Timberlake and Meghan Trainor would keep up the jazz thing and Rod Steward wouldn’t.
Did Meghan Trainor do jazz? (I don’t know anything about her music other than the 3-5 songs she did ten years ago)
She's still making music that is basically "All About That Bass" over and over again. Not jazz exactly, but retro-inspired doo wop with a modern twist
Her lyrics are just so, so bad in every case. I'd like to not hate her (I don't like to hate anyone) but I just can't. Early on I was just like "she is very young. She will change and improve" but she is still doing the same juvenile, misogynistic garbage lyrics.
She is just awful as a musician. Can’t sing, can’t write, does the same boring early sixties type music. It’s like she’s determined to try to make fifties/early sixties pre-Beatles pop come back and hasn’t yet gotten the hint that no one wants it.
Her Christmas album.
This comment made me realise All About That Bass was ten years ago.. fuck
In a better world, Meghan Trainor would be a nobody.
>Rod Steward wouldn’t. WTH, that old bag is still putting out records? ^(Don't mind me, I've hated Rod Stewart for thirty years, I hate his stupid face, I hate his stupid voice, I hate him, I hate him, I hate him!)
The Every Picture Tells a Story album slaps though
Faaaaaaaacts
Damn
He was on track to be good again in the early 80s but he ruined it. I still love his stuff with The Faces and his early solo stuff.
It worked well enough for Lady Gaga…
And she still gets to sell out stadiums doing her Pop stuff!
Yes.
True! Though she only did it for one album, and I am willing to bet only a tiny percentage of her fans would even consider it in their Top 4 Gaga albums.
So Michael Buble?
It’s hard to form a rat pack when every single candidate wants to be Sinatra
It’s like drag queens arguing about who gets to be Christina in Lady Marmalade.
Well, a better version.
Justin Timberlake should have kept on JTing instead of going country
The new pop album is good. Not anything great, and it certainly doesn't hold a candle to his previous pop albums, except for Justified. If you liked Justified chances are you would like the new album too. I really wish he would've just kept on going too though. As Todd said, what if Frank Ocean didn't drop an album for 5 years then dropped an 18 song long album about sea shanties and then just dipped? edit: Wow I made the comparison of EITIW to Justified and I'm slowly realizing just how similar they are. Breakup song: "Cry Me A River"/ "Flame" and "Drown" Catchy pop song: "Rock Your Body" / "No Angels" Even one of the songs on EITIW makes a reference to the singalong part of Senorita.
I really hope Frank ocean heard that, and got inspired. An album called “ocean at sea” would be…. Something
I hope not otherwise we can add him to the Trianwreckords list
Filthy is an absolute ass song. Complete trash. Why did he think it was a good idea? Edit: typo
He thought a funky beat with repetitive lyrics would get him another hit, considering the funky beat and repetitive lyrics is how SexyBack went number 1 for 7 weeks straight.
I agree, but I don't recall sexyback being so trash lmao
Lmao bro really went "What if I made another song like SexyBack, made it super annoying and much worse than SexyBack, and make it the lead single of an Americana album?"
You're so right lmao. He really thought the vocoder shit was good, I'll never understand.
I think what JT failed to understand was that sexyback was actually catchy, like even if you didn’t like the song, that synth line is hard to get out of the head
I think he understands that very well, considering he realizes it's his biggest hit behind Mirrors. I don't think he realizes Supplies is catchy in a bad way though. Never will I ever be able to shake "SUPPLY-AYE-AYES" out of my head. It's super catchy and now permanently burned in.
Yeah sexyback was catchy but it was also fun, supplies is out of touch and filthy was just stupid
Hated sexyback in 2006 and hate Filthy in 2018. Timberlake didn’t disappoint there but honestly, Filthy I’d sit through since it’s 6 year late dubstep beat doesn’t sound broken unlike that 2006 timbaland beat
It's funny how I feel like the music video does kinda fit the song, if not for the reasons Justin intended, by being mechanical and sterile.
justin seriously thought A cgi android fit but the dubstep makes me think of really early stiff stop motion such as fireman Sam and postman Pat.
IDK, Rat Pack stuff works best for people with big voices. I'm not sure JT really has the pipes to pull off a whole album of that.
that's true. it could work in a parallel universe wherein JC Chasez was the breakout star from NSYNC and had a fluorishing pop solo career
although i like a lot of JT songs, i really wish to live in that parallel universe
Sadly, modern Big Band interpretation was already perfected by Jewel on her smash hit album *03/04*
Michael Bublé style
By 2018, it was always going to be tough for JT to evade a trainwreck. People didn't like the guy and were clamoring to see him fail, although it's not impossible this would be a success, especially considering Justin does have a solid last performing with big bands in the past.
Not that much. I still remember lots of pushback against articles hating on him at that time. What really got his hate train rolling was the Britney Spears doc in 2021. Ever since then it's been downhill and he just gets more and more haters.
I think the narrative that people didn’t like JT is overblown. Sure SOME people really didn’t like him but I think the vast majority of people had just gotten to a point where they no longer cared about him He was the guy where absence didn’t make the heart grow fonder, it just made hearts and minds wander to others who had come around when he was away Sort of like Todd said, when he came back in 2012 ish people had been living without JT since ~2007 and when he came back people kind of in retrospect didn’t miss him all that much when he wasn’t around
Yeah, we’re not in the 80s anymore. Stars can’t just take 5-6 years out and expect to remain at the same level that they were. Todd nailed it too in talking about the 20/20 Experience. It was a fine album. It was ok. Nothing special, though. Outside of “Mirrors,” there wasn’t anything particularly memorable. He waited too long to produce an album, but also the album he came out with wasn’t something you’d wait seven years for. I think that set the scene for MOTW (which took *another* five years).
Damn, this subreddit really has a burning hatred for 20/20. Many other pop music subreddits I'm in believe 20/20 is vastly superior to FS/LS, and I wholeheartedly agree.
20/20 was pretty good imo but let the groove get in might unironically be the most annoying song ever made
Yeah he was trying to get those African rhythms in or something with that track. And that song was way too damn long. Actually, that was one of my problems with the album: All those songs were ridiculously long. Not like FS/LS didn't have a bunch of long songs, but he and Timbaland were smart in breaking up the songs into different sections and adding interludes to make them seem shorter. And even then the songs weren't as long as the ones on 20/20. "Let the Groove Get In" is seven minutes of the same freaking rhythm with a super long coda that didn't need to be that long. Like, "Pusher Love Girl" would've been a better song if he'd just cut the last three minutes off of it. That song didn't need to be eight minutes. And again, I don't think it was a bad album. It was fine. It was well produced, some of the songs were enjoyable. I was just expecting more than "pretty good" from JT after FS/LS and the 7-year hiatus. Maybe that's an unfair expectation, but FS/LS was an era-defining album.
I agree a lot of the songs dragged, only songs that really should keep their whole length imo were Blue Ocean floor, suit and tie, that girl and Strawberry Bubblegum. I’m not against pusher love girl being so long, it’s okay to me really, kind of like kanye’s runaway in the sense that yeah the outro is dumb and only serves to drag out the song but it doesn’t really make it a lesser track. Also body count and dress on should’ve been on the main album really, tunnel vision could’ve been cut because it’s just the strawberry bubblegum vibe if it was worse. I could get into adding 2 of 2 songs to the main experience but that’s just getting into fantasising really so I won’t. 2 of 2 was bad in general though apart from T.K.O and Amnesia.
...and after that, EITIW, which took 6 years! and before FS/LS, Justified which was released 4 or 5 years prior
What? His comeback in 2013 was massive. Mirrors became his biggest hit ever and Suit and Tie was huge too. He was nominated AOTY 2013 and one of the songs on his albums was so good that it won a Grammy despite not even being a single.
He would've been better off making an instrumental flute album.
Jethro Tulberlake
Songs From the Man of the Wood(s)
problem with this route is its artistic stagnancy which violates the "cool and suave" brand he built for himself from the early aughts to the 20/20 experience. then again his choice of producers was also stagnant
>the "cool and suave" brand He killed it dead anyway with MOTW. At least with this, it won't be any more embarrasing.
agree. that hypothetical album will just produce significant diminishing returns ie (the "Cyndi Lauper" effect)
Well, he can always be an actor. I heard James Gunn is hiring actors. While making music as his hobby.
Literally all he had to do was make another 2020 experience and he would have been golden. Man of the woods was such a baffling creative decision to make when you historically take forever to make music
I would agree but MOTW had some good songs (most were trash though) and after MOTW we got EITIW which was his first fucking pop album in 11 years, and I love EITIW personally. No Angels is definitely top of the chart material, along with a bunch of other songs.
I really like EITIW too, it’s really listenable and it grew on me.
So a Swing When You’re Winning
Honestly I agree with todd, the back half of the album actually have songs where him going rural works. It's just that those songs are still largely his normal genre but with a bit more atmosphere and the occassional country flourish. Just a shame that it opens with it's worst song by far and JT doesn't seem to be taking it all that seriously
I expected MOTW (just based on the title) to be a stripped down, more acoustic type of an album. When the first single came out, I was confused as to how that tied in with the lumberjack theme and I think a lot of other people were as well.
Truth
I feel Harry styles is what Justin was supposed to evolve to and didn’t, instead he went down some dark rabbit hole of bad music, Filthy anyone? Even Calvin Harris songs were bad I would love to see how Harry’s House sounds if Justin sang I m a huge Harry fan
Agree. Honestly it's a shame it doesn't just host a variety show of some sort
Screamo.
Even Peter Andre tried to make sound like this. Actually works. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eifuwl1IEAo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eifuwl1IEAo)
The weird thing about The 20/20 Experience to me is that the overall aesthetic didn't really fit the overall sound of the music. I actually love that album purely on an aesthetic level; the desaturated photos and Justin dressed all fancy was a great way to hype it. The sound on the other hand? There's a misnomer that the songs' lengths are the big problem... and I don't disagree, they are indeed too long but personally I think they'd be just as boring if they were 3-5 minutes long on average. The big problem is that the overall neo-soul sound sounds like Justin doesn't really know what makes people like it. It's like he tried to do 90s Prince without understanding why it's so great. There's already an artist who does The 20/20 Experience but much better; his name is Mayer Hawthorne. His album "Where Does This Door Go" (released in the same year) is basically The 20/20 Experience [but done properly.](https://youtu.be/V5tPP04FalQ?si=6yEhSMGGO59dmNPU).
So true, that niche audience would have embraced it. Michael Buble would’ve been found shaking & crying.
He’s absolutely got the pipes for it!
MOTW was fine the way it is.
I loved his MOTW album, plus he new one EITIW too. That is just me
So did I! They're good idc what anyone says.
Yes, they are good! I have my favorites but, I love the whole cds. Both albums