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Justin Timberlake

 

Biography by Alex Henderson

 

As both a member of *NSYNC and a solo artist, Southern superstar Justin Timberlake has played a major role in the teen pop explosion of the '90s and 2000s. Like similar teen pop favorites — who have included the Backstreet Boys, C-Note, Christina Aguilera, Hanson, the Spice Girls, and Britney Spears — Timberlake usually doesn't get much respect from rock critics (who, in many cases, tend to be very alternative-minded and anti-commercialistic). Regardless, he is adored by millions of fans, many of whom have been adolescent girls. Over the years, the teen market has had a lot of different sounds. In the '70s, for example, artists like Donny Osmond, the Partridge Family, David Cassidy, and the DeFranco Family were aimed at teens — those were the bubblegum popsters one typically read about in Tiger Beat magazine back then. But Timberlake is part of the more modern school of teen pop, which is mindful of dance-pop, urban contemporary, and hip-hop and got started with the rise of New Kids on the Block, Debbie Gibson, and Tiffany in the late '80s. New Kids, in fact, were the male group that paved the way for *NSYNC as well as the Backstreet Boys and Take That (who were meant to be a British equivalent of New Kids). And just as Tiger Beat (the bible of bubblegum) was obsessed with the New Kids in the late '80s, it would become equally obsessed with *NSYNC and the Backstreet Boys in the '90s.

 

Like Spears (who Timberlake became romantically involved with), Aguilera, and *NSYNC's JC Chasez, Timberlake got his start on the Disney Channel's '90s version of The Mickey Mouse Club. Timberlake and Chasez were on The Mickey Mouse Club simultaneously in their pre-*NSYNC days, and they kept working together when *NSYNC was formed. *NSYNC got started in Orlando, FL, in 1996, when Timberlake and Chasez teamed up with Lance Bass, Chris Kirkpatrick, and Joey Fatone. Released by RCA/BMG in 1998, the vocal quintet's self-titled debut album sold millions of copies in both the United States and Europe and contained the smash hits "I Want You Back" and "Tearing Up My Heart." *NSYNC's second album, No Strings Attached, was released on Jive in 2000 and was even more commercially successful; No Strings Attached went double platinum in only one week, and the singles "Bye Bye Bye" and "This I Promise You" became major hits.

 

Jive released Celebrity, *NSYNC's third album, in 2001, and after that, Timberlake started recording as a solo artist. The singer had performed live as a solo artist before *NSYNC, but it wasn't until the early 2000s that he actually recorded an album as a solo act. Justified, Timberlake's first solo album, was released on Jive in November 2002. "Like I Love You," the album's first single, became a major hit and was followed by a second single, "Cry Me a River" (not to be confused with the melancholy Arthur Hamilton standard that was a hit for the late jazz singer/actress Julie London in 1955). Now a bona fide star — the album had reached number two on the Billboard 200 — and heartthrob to millions of girls, Timberlake continued his success by appearing on the Black Eyed Peas smash hit "Where Is the Love?" and in the halftime show at Super Bowl XXXVIII, where he pulled off part of co-performer Janet Jackson's top in the now infamous "wardrobe malfunction" incident. That event, however, didn't stop him from winning two Grammys that year, and though he stayed out of the studio for a few years in order to concentrate on acting opportunities, Timberlake returned to the music world in 2006 with his Prince-inspired FutureSex/LoveSounds, which featured production work from Timbaland and Rick Rubin, and was followed by a brief club tour.

 

 

 

 

Bah Humbug, the site has crashed, I'll finish this tomorrow. :arrr:

:lol: Thanx.

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Justified (Nov 5, 2002)

3 Stars

 

Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine

 

Growing up is hard to do, as any teen pop idol will attest. Still, showbiz kids are nothing if not savvy, so they know it's better to make the jump than to idle as an idol, no matter how hard that jump may be — and no matter how hard they try, it's hard to judge the distance, and they may miss their mark. With his debut solo album, Justified (face it, that title was a given), Justin Timberlake misses his mark slightly; he hits much closer than fellow Mickey Mouse Club alum Christina Aguilera did with her Stripped, but he's uneasy as a suave, mature loverman, particularly because much of his stance is borrowed directly (and rather improbably) from Michael Jackson. JT — a shorthand nickname that's distressingly inevitable — shamelessly borrows from Jacko, from the Thriller-era getup and poses to the sharply modernized spin on the classic Off the Wall sound. To be sure, the sound of the Neptunes productions which dominate Justified is the best thing about the album; they have a lush, sexy, stylish feel that is better, more romantic than most modern R&B. Too bad they're delivered by such a cipher. Though he's turned into a technically skilled vocalist, he's still too much of a showbiz kid — all technique and surface, not much substance. His falsetto may be smooth, but it's utterly without character, which unfortunately describes the songs too: pretty on the surface, but devoid of memorable hooks. This means that what truly stands out is when he breaks from form and tries to prove how street and hip he is, delivering awful double-entendres like "I can think of a couple of positions for you" and "get real wet if you know what I mean" and exhorting the fellas and ladies to sing separately in a cringe-worthy affectation on "Senorita." When he sings that he'll "have you nekkid by the end of the song," he doesn't sound like a seductor, he sounds like a kid actor awkwardly assuming a new persona. This isn't without merit — the sound, apart from some flop Timbaland productions (which he redeems with the slinky funk of "Right for Me"), works well, and if these cuts were songs instead of tracks, his bland falsetto would be fine. This sure isn't the musical immolation of Christina's ugly Stripped. Unlike that album, this suggests a direction Timberlake could follow in the future, given stronger songwriting collaborators. But Justified is just sound and posturing, with no core. [bad packaging alert: the foldout booklet for Justified is merely stuck into the digipak for the album, with no sleeve or slot to house it; it's guaranteed to get beat up or lost.]

 

 

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FutureSex/LoveSounds (Sep 12, 2006)

3 Stars

 

Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine

 

Give Justin Timberlake credit for this: he has ambition. He may not have good instincts and may bungle his execution, but he sure has ambition and has ever since he was the leading heartthrob in *NSYNC. He drove the teen pop quintet to the top of the charts, far exceeding their peers the Backstreet Boys, and when the group could achieve no more, he eased into a solo career that earned him great sales and a fair amount of praise, largely centered on how he reworked the dynamic sound of early Michael Jackson at a time when Jacko was so hapless he turned away songs that later became JT hits, as in the Neptunes-propelled "Rock Your Body." That song and "Cry Me a River" turned his 2002 solo debut, Justified, into a blockbuster, which in turn meant that he started to be taken seriously — not just by teens-turned-adult, but also some rock critics and Hollywood, who gave him no less than three starring roles in the wake of Justified. Those films all fell victim to endless delays — Alpha Dog aired at Sundance 2006 but didn't see release that year, nor did Black Snake Moan, which got pushed back until 2007, leaving Edison Force, a roundly panned Shattered Glass-styled thriller that sneaked out onto video, as the first Timberlake film to see the light of day — but even if silver screen stardom proved elusive, Justin didn't seem phased at all, and his fall 2006 album FutureSex/LoveSounds proves why: he'd been pouring all his energy into his second album to ensure that he doesn't have a sophomore slump.

 

If Michael Jackson was the touchstone for Justified, Prince provides the cornerstone of FutureSex/LoveSounds, at least to a certain extent — Timbaland, Timberlake's chief collaborator here (a move that invites endless endlessly funny "Timbaland/Timberlake" jokes), does indeed spend plenty of time on FutureSex refurbishing the electro-funk of Prince's early-'80s recordings, just like he did with Nelly Furtado's Loose, and Timberlake's obsession with sex does indeed recall Prince's carnivorous carnality of the early '80s. But execution is everything, particularly with Timberlake, and if the clumsy title of FutureSex/LoveSounds wasn't a big enough tip-off that something is amiss here — the clear allusion to Speakerboxxx/The Love Below would seem like an homage if there weren't the nagging suspicion that Timberlake didn't realize that the OutKast album bore that title because it was two records in one — a quick listen to the album's opening triptych proves that Justin doesn't quite bring the robotic retro-future funk he's designed to life. Hell, a quick look at the titles of those first three songs shows some cracks in the album's architecture, as they reveal how desperate and literal Timberlake's sex moves are. Each of the three opening songs has "sex" sandwiched somewhere within its title, as if mere repetition of the word will magically conjure a sex vibe, when in truth it has the opposite effect: it makes it seem that Justin is singing about it because he's not getting it. Surely, his innuendos are bluntly obvious, packing lots of swagger but no machismo or grace. They merely recycle familiar scenarios — making out on the beach, dancing under hot lights, acting like a pimp — in familiar fashions, marrying them to grinding, squealing synths that never sound sweaty or sexy; if they're anything, they're the sound of bad anonymous sex in a club, not an epic freaky night with a sex machine like, say, Prince. But Prince isn't the only idol Justin Timberlake wants to emulate here. Like any young man with a complex about his maturity, he wants to prove that he's an adult now by singing not just about sex but also serious stuff, too — meaning, of course, that drugs are bad and can ruin lives. Like the Arctic Monkeys deploring the scummy men who pick up cheap hookers in Sheffield, Justin has read about the pipe and the damage done — he may not have seen it, but he sure knows that it happens somewhere, and he's put together an absurd Stevie Wonder-esque slice of protest pop in "Losing My Way," where he writes in character of a man who had it all and threw it all away...or, to use Justin's words, "Hi, my name is Bob/And I work at my job," which only goes to show that Timberlake lacks a sense of grace no matter what he chooses to write about.

 

Graceless he may be, but Timberlake is nevertheless kind of fascinating on FutureSex/LoveSounds since his fuses a clear musical vision — misguided, yes, but clear all the same — with a hammyness that only a child entertainer turned omnipresent 21st century celebrity can be. Timberlake yearns to be taken seriously, to be a soulful loverman like Marvin Gaye coupled with the musical audaciousness of Prince, yet still sell more records than Michael Jackson — and he not only yearns for that recognition, he feels entitled to it, so he's cut and pasted pieces from all their careers, cobbling together his own blueprint, following it in a fashion where every wrong move is simultaneously obvious and surprising. There is no subtlety to his music, nor is there much style — he's charmless in his affectations, and there's nothing but affectations in his music. At least this accumulation of affectations does amount to a semblance of personality this time around — he's still a slick cipher as a singer, yet he is undeniably an auteur of some sort, one who has created an album that's stilted and robotic, but one who doggedly carries it through to its logical conclusion, so the club jams and slow jams both feel equally distant and calculated. And also kind of tuneless and hookless, if the truth be told — there may be flair within the production, particularly in how foreign yet familiar its retro-future vibe sounds at first, but the novelty fades away rapidly, even within the course of one song. That's because there's not much there — Timbaland may have set Timberlake up with a set of sounds, but Justin didn't deliver a set of songs, or even much to hang the productions on. He prances like a frisky young colt but doesn't carry through on his act. Which really shouldn't come as a surprise: when Justin was pranked on Punk'd, his first instinct was to call his mommy, and when he tore away Janet's top and unleashed her demon boob, the first thing he did was run away and apologize. He casually bragged how he took Britney's virginity while shaking his head at the mess she's gotten herself into with K-Fed, and he attacked American Idol winner Taylor Hicks as a hack, as if being a veteran of The New Mickey Mouse Club has considerably more street cred. Timberlake may have a tough act, but he crumbles like a sand castle the instant he's scrutinized, which is something this weirdly sexless sex record proves in spades.