Justin Timberlake, the review of Everything I Thought it Was: the return is sexy-dancing

Justin Timberlake is back. It took him over four years of work. Long studio sessions that produced around one hundred songs. An enormous job that JT filtered several times, ending up extracting the 18 tracks that compose it Everything I Thought it Was (RCA Records/Sony Music), his sixth album. It's a long album, in which he wants to give space to all his artistic sensibilities. From the more introspective ed emotionalto the most sexy And fun. It's a pop album, with some trap drums, which draws heavily on the Seventies imagery of disco music.

Six years later Man of the Woodsthe new album presents itself as an autobiography of the recent past ofpop icon of Memphis. Songs that he defines as “honest”. A “real perspective” of what he has experienced from 2018 to today. And something has actually happened in recent years. The never-ending saga between him and Britney Spears has been enriched with a new chapter. In fact, it's actually an entire book. The Woman In Me, containing a series of accusations that have held sway among gossip enthusiasts in recent months. But not only.

Justin Timberlake has accomplished forty years. He is now a mature man and as such looks back on his youth with nostalgia. Perhaps this is also why he wanted to refresh his memory, reconstituting him NSYNC. The (now) man band that climbed the charts between the end of the nineties and the beginning of the 2000s, selling over 70 million recordsfound herself first to release a single: Better Place (2023), the song contained in the soundtrack of the animated film Trolls Band Together – in which Justin Timberlake voices a character. And then all five of them sang together again Paradiseone of the three feats featured on JT's new solo album.

With the first track, the album starts from afar. From Tennessee, from home. Memphis he remembers the brilliant future that everyone had predicted for him, since his youth: “You will become a star.” A career made of success, fame, wealth. But then, «Who cares if you get lonely?». In Fucking up the discoinstead, we dance. That's the other side of the album more successful. Electric bass, synth and funky guitar alternate for the first dance piece Of Everything I Thought it Was.

With some musical references to Daft Punkthe groove continues in No Angels. Here we inaugurate one of the most important themes of the album: the physical chemistry and the sensuality. Topics with which Justin Timberlake has often winked at fans (see FutureSex/LoveSounds of 2006). The trend continued for seven-odd minutes Technicolorfrom What Lovers Do, from My Favorite Drug and above all from Infinity Sex: «I don't know you anymore, soon as all your clothes hit the floor. Pray this hotel room is insured.” A contemporary reinterpretation of Seventies disco Boney M. This soul of JT is preferable to that of a pop-trap ballad Selfish. It involves more, in this case, the analogue nostalgia of Halo: ballad minimal accompanied by piano and strings.

Flame it looks like a piece of the old Justin Timberlake from the 2000s (What Goes Around… Comes Around?), complete with final sound effects of crackling flames and distant sirens. But the most interesting piece is Sanctified. The talent vocal of JT is just one of the protagonists. Alongside him, in this modern world irreverent gospel-rockthere is Tobe Nwigwe. A rapper of Nigerian descent who grew up in the Texas suburbs of Houston, whose lyrics often end up being unconventionally religious. And in his verse there is also a tribute bar for those who host him: «I know you cried me a river like the Nile». To which Timberlake responds a few lines later: «Rid me of my sins, take and forgive them». Any reference to things or people is purely random.

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