Justin Timberlake’s New Album is Overstuffed, Overproduced, and Under Baked
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There is a lot to glean from a title like Everything I Thought It Was, especially from an artist like Justin Timberlake, who returns today with his fifth album in a 22-year solo career. He usually waits at least five years to put out an album, making each Timberlake release a big event. But the weight he carries in 2024 is a lot different than each of those prior records, and Everything I Thought It Was — based on title alone — signaled a more introspective, mature return.
Its past tense phrasing suggested that Timberlake was indeed living in the present, looking back on 30 years in show business and coming to terms with his public-facing identity, his relationships, his successes and mistakes, and perhaps, his pain. After all this time away, would this be the course-correcting album from JT that might just rope us back on his side?
From the first song of Everything I Thought It Was, the hometown-referencing “Memphis,” it sounds like that’s the album he sought to make. “Who cares if you get lonely long as you’re famous?,” Timberlake rhetorically asks, later singing, “Who cares if there’s too much on your plate?/ Don’t make no mistakes and hide your pain.” He sounds slightly weakened, his passionate tenor muted for the sake of droll, hip-hop-adjacent narration.
The song overall is a bit flat, but the ideas behind it — that Timberlake was sold an unattainable ideal when he began on this journey — are definitely intriguing. For a former boy band star who has been (appropriately) criticized for his complicity in the early 2000s misogyny that took serious tolls on Britney Spears and Janet Jackson, there’s a lot to unpack. Timberlake got famous very, very young, and it’s undeniable that he was fed toxic, psyche-altering messages from the men in his life, from executives, from dance and vocal coaches, from producers, from his own peers, from the culture at large.
Based on title and the album’s first track, you’d think Timberlake would keep up his end of the bargain and lay bare a little bit more of himself. He does not. The rest of the album is as vanilla as it gets, so much so that it makes the Americana/folk-pop/country/soul rebrand from 2018’s Man of the Woods feel, somehow, more ambitious. The only ambitious thing about Everything I Thought It Was is its tracklist, whose 18 songs clock in at a laborious 77 minutes.
There are some lightly revealing lyrical concepts about loneliness (“Alone”), getting older (“Paradise”), and generally feeling hopeless (“Drown”). But for the most part, every song on Everything I Thought It Was is either about having great sex, throwing down in the club, being in love, or feeling wronged by an ex, in the same vein as two actually good Justin Timberlake songs, “Cry Me a River” and “What Comes Around (Goes Around).”
The lyrics — there are so, so many — tell us very little about him, especially the lovey-dovey ones. As we saw in the album’s lackluster lead single “Selfish,” it’s all romance filler: “Your lips were made for mine,” he sings. On “My Favorite Drug” he croons, “Your hips is makin’ me hypnotized/ How your vibe just fits into mine,” and if you think that’s cringingly unimaginative, just wait until you hear “Infinity Sex.”
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It’s only in the final three tracks of the album that Timberlake again digs deeper under the clubby surface. “Paradise,” which features *NSYNC, is actually a little sweet, with JC Chasez reassuring Timberlake as he sings, “All this time I’ve always wondered if it would feel the same/ As it did when we were young and not afraid.”
Unlike much of Man of the Woods, everything on the album sounds good. The album’s various producers — Timbaland, Danja, Cirkut, Calvin Harris, and Post Malone-whisperer Louis Bell — are competent and employ a barrage of clean, enjoyable beats, occasional back-half vibe switches, and all the bells and whistles necessary for an 18-track pop album in 2024. But there’s no life behind it. There are no moments of messiness or instrumental power, no arrangements that rival the majesty of “Pusher Love Girl” or “Lovestoned.” Timberlake mentions sex so often that the funky strut of these songs deserve a little raunchiness in the mix a la Pharrell. But instead, we’re given disco for the devout, a sanitized excuse for Studio 54.
There are some nice moments, like the warm harmonies and vocoders that Timberlake oft employs. Somehow, the dancehall beat on “Liar (feat. Fireboy DML)” is actually pretty slick, and the Tobe Nwigwe-featuring “Sanctified” has a full gospel-rock chorus where you can practically see the flame cannons exploding beside Timberlake. The seven-minute “Technicolor” is about as musically complex as the album gets, and it calls to mind the widescreen ambition of FutureSex/LoveSounds.
In the end, though, Everything I Thought It Was feels less like a terrible Justin Timberlake album and more like wasted potential. Man of the Woods was terrible, but at least he took a risk. This one is fine, frictionless, and overwhelmingly safe.
Justin Timberlake has been writing love songs since day one. He’s been writing about sex — having sex, wanting sex, being sexy — for almost as long. He’s never had to sing about anything else, because for a great deal of time, his charisma made up for the lack of variety. Those first two solo albums had depth anyways, in their layered arrangements, ambitious sequences, in the atmosphere and vibe that Timberlake and his producers curated together. It seemed like on Man of the Woods, the adult male Justin Timberlake, a husband and a father, realized he didn’t have to write about sex anymore, and it ended up being his least successful album.
Now, here he is, trying to course correct back to the era where he was dripping with appeal, retreading back into those same crooning, smooth-talking waters, like nothing has changed between now and 2007 — save for the occasional trap beat. It would have been much, much riskier for Timberlake to make the album he promises on “Memphis.” But at this point, I’d take that over this lukewarm, crutch-heavy, Target-core Justin Timberlake album. It should have been his Lemonade; instead, it’s just a lemon.
Ed. Note: You may not have liked this album (we sure didn’t), but it seems like it would be fun to see live. Get tickets to Justin Timberlake’s 2024 tour here.
Justin Timberlake’s New Album is Overstuffed, Overproduced, and Under Baked
Paolo Ragusa
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