Justin Timberlake is back with new music, but can he make a Grammys comeback in 2025?

Daniel Montgomery
·3 min read
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Justin Timberlake released his new single “Selfish” on January 25. It’s the lead single from his forthcoming album “Everything I Thought It Was,” which is his first new collection since “Man of the Woods” six years ago. Do you think the song sounds like a potential Grammy winner for the artist after so much time away? Watch the official music video above.

Timberlake is a 10-time Grammy winner across his career, but he only received one nomination for his “Man of the Woods” era: Best Pop Duo/Group Performance for his Chris Stapleton-assisted top-10 hit single “Say Something.” The last time he won an award from the Recording Academy was Best Visual Media Song for “Can’t Stop the Feeling!” from “Trolls,” a prize he shared with co-writers Max Martin and Shellback.

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His last really successful album era on the awards scene was “The 20/20 Experience,” which earned him seven nominations and three wins in 2014. Surprisingly, though, he wasn’t nominated for Album of the Year even though we thought he had a good chance to win it. But that was back when the big four categories — Album of the Year, Record of the Year, Song of the Year and Best New Artist — only had five nominees. Now they have eight. There’s a good chance Timberlake would have made the cut in an expanded field given its otherwise strong performance and the fact that he earned Album of the Year bids for his previous albums “Justified” and “FutureSex/LoveSounds.”

But has the pop zeitgeist passed him by? He fed fans’ nostalgia by reuniting with his former boy band NSYNC for the song “Better Place” from the film “Trolls Band Together,” but the 42-year-old’s new album will need to hold its own in a modern pop landscape against the likes of Olivia Rodrigo, Taylor Swift and SZA, plus streaming superstars like Drake, Morgan Wallen and Zach Bryan. It’s certainly possible to stay culturally relevant two decades into a career, but sometimes if music listeners and awards voters move on from someone, they move on for good.

There’s also the question of Timberlake’s public image, which was tarnished in part by his unflattering portrayal in ex-girlfriend Britney Spears‘s memoir “The Woman in Me.” He may need to win back a segment of his audience, as evidenced by the fact that Spears fans sent her song “Selfish” up the charts in response to his. Will music fans stand by him when he delivers “Everything I Thought It Was” on March 15?

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