Justin Timberlake: Everything I Thought It Was review – pop pariah dances past the discourse

You could almost feel sorry for Justin Timberlake, attempting a return after being reappraised as the villain in two massive pop miscarriages of justice. His career endured after the 2004 Super Bowl – during which he ripped off Janet Jackson’s clothing – while she was censured. But the cultural misogyny of that moment is now self-evident, as it is in the treatment of Britney Spears after their 2002 breakup, when she was painted as unfaithful and subject to disgustingly invasive scrutiny. Her 2023 memoir told a different story, in which she claimed Timberlake cheated and pressured her to abort a pregnancy. She wrote that she had to have a home procedure to avoid being spotted at hospital, and cried in pain on the bathroom floor while Timberlake strummed his acoustic guitar to try and soothe her. (In 2021, he apologised to both women.) Throw in his last album, 2018’s diabolical back-to-the-land reverie Man of the Woods, and you’ve got fairly unprecedented levels of pop pariahdom. Everything I Thought It Was seems less like a straightforward comeback than a survival mission.

Timberlake appears to recognise that he’s on the back foot: tellingly, he has given no interviews, save soft-touch TV bits, though he briefly came out swinging in February. After Spears apologised for offending anyone “I genuinely care about” with her memoir, and praised Timberlake’s mournfully horny comeback single, Selfish, he told a crowd: “I’d like to take this opportunity to apologise to absolutely fucking nobody.” In an era when contrition and growth are pop-star lingua franca, the idea of a proper heel turn was quite exciting.

And the first song on Timberlake’s sixth album hints that the record will tell his story, his way. Titled Memphis after his hometown, it’s a defeated slump through all he’s endured to get here: the loneliness, the exhaustion, the pain, everything he was told was worth it for the money and cars, for being “the one that’s chosen to make it out”. Burbling synths and a dragging beat flicker behind him, hinting at vulnerability (though your sympathies may falter when he laments a time when he was fixated on “too much kitten, ass and titties”). You’d be interested to hear where Timberlake might go with this – and without unduly defending him, 20 years ago he was most likely almost as powerless as Spears, acting from a macho playbook given to him by cunning executives. But it’s a complete feint – the rest of Everything I Thought It Was is uniformly about universal matters of lust and love, with no shortage of kitten, ass and titties.

It’s undoubtedly the right move. With not a hope in hell of regaining the narrative upper hand, the only weapon in Timberlake’s arsenal is to produce bangers beyond reproach. For nearly half of this excessively long album, he gets close. Two Calvin Harris co-productions, the chaotic Fucking Up the Disco and smoother No Angels, put a luxurious spin on the disco sound that gave him his biggest hit in years, the Trolls anthem Can’t Stop the Feeling, while the R-rated lyrics banish King Peppy and Lady Glittersparkles far out of mind. Play, co-produced by Ryan Tedder, follows suit, with puckish horns and a tapering chorus that sounds as though Timberlake is sliding down a gilded bannister. Two later disco cuts, helmed by album mainstays Louis Bell and Cirkut, pale in comparison: My Favorite Drug is so hectic you assume the drug in question is speed, not, you know, shagging.

The sexy lyrics are less leg-crossing than the grim “pink” and “purple” of Man of the Woods, though still ludicrous. A lady’s hips “are making me hypnotised”; “pray this hotel room is insured”, our liability of a lover sings on Timbaland cut Infinity Sex, though the suggestive strut is magnetic enough to make it work. Technicolor, another Timbaland song, wrings every drop out of its lyrical concept about sharing a vivid physical connection, but it’s a solid gasping, grownup slow-jam that showcases Timberlake’s falsetto and bears an undercurrent of sadness, aware of how easily those colours can fade. There are well-judged simpler moments: Liar, featuring Afrobeats star Fireboy DML, grabs for the pan-global success of Rema and Selena Gomez’s Calm Down, and their feathery vocals make fine complements. Heartbroken ballad Alone features just a bittersweet Timberlake and elegant, swooping strings.

If the album were 10 tracks rather than 18 – many of which could in turn lose two minutes from their runtime – Timberlake’s musical redemption might be more of a home run. Invariably it sags. The wan Selfish was an odd choice for a comeback single. Flame and Drown are two equally boring shades of wounded. What Lovers Do is generic, lasciviously slippery Timbaland (with the unforgettably priapic image that Timberlake is “ready to go all the time”). The wearily hopeful closer Conditions ends with him tediously warbling “you are love”, presumably to his wife Jessica Biel, for sticking with him despite his shortcomings.

Related: ‘Fo’ shiz, homie!’: Michelle Williams’ impression of Justin Timberlake is Britney’s greatest revenge

The very worst song is no doubt intended as the next step of Timberlake’s redemption arc: the saccharine acoustic epic Paradise features his old boyband ‘NSync, who reunited at a Timberlake gig this week and have impending new music. It sounds like a song sung between the five men, about waiting for your moment and wondering “if it would feel the same as it did when we were young and not afraid”. You sense a return to innocence is theirs for the taking: nostalgia is Teflon, and Justin Timberlake will be just fine.

This week Laura listened to

Myriam Gendron – Long Way Home
The Quebecois musician’s 2021 album Ma Délire: Songs of Love, Lost and Found inspired quietly cult-like devotion. From her new record, Long Way Home’s subtly crushing tale of desertion and disappointment brings to mind Nina Nastasia taking on a folk standard.

• Alexis Petridis is away