Hip Online – music biographies, reviews & interviews

Justin Timberlake – Futuresex/Lovesound

Justin Timberlake
Artist: Justin Timberlake
Title: Futuresex/Lovesound
Label: Jive
Rating: 7/10

CORPORATE LINE: Come Along with JT through his own groovin’ universe of FutureSex/LoveSounds, co-written by Justin Timberlake and produced by Justin Timberlake, JAWBreakers, Timbaland, will.i.am, and Rick Rubin, among others. Guest artists include TI, Three Six Mafia, and Hezekiah Walker. Obviously, there is no shortage of talent.

THE GOOD:
“What Goes Around” – The one song JT gets right. This is what the audience wants and pays to hear—a love song. Here Timberlake is true to himself and its Justin at his best. Why he tries so hard to get away from what he does best makes no sense.
“Summer Love” – Timberlake will steal every girl’s heart away. His vocals are pitch perfect and really quite beautiful. This sounds like a song that Michael Jackson would sing and be proud to call his own. Now if Timberlake would only release twelve songs like this he’d have a heavyweight album on his hands.

THE AVERAGE:
“Futuresex/Lovesound” – Timberlake bounces around to a beat that sounds like it was borrowed from Queen’s “Another One Bites The Dust”.
“Sexyback” – “I’ll let you whip me if I misbehave” is a line that really made me laugh. It’s really hard to take Timberlake seriously—especially when he is trying to be a bad ass.
“Sexy Ladies” – “I got sexy ladies/ all over the floor/ you’re talking to one of the greatest/ I did it before.” It’s good to know that Timberlake has lost his virginity, too. We never asked Prince to prove he was having sex so why is Timberlake trying so hard to prove he’s getting action? He’s trying a little too hard wouldn’t you say?

THE BAD:
“My Love” – The joker cackle during the chorus breaks up what might have been a sweet song. Who ever conceived of that idea knows exactly what it takes to turn us off.
“Damn Girl” – Timberlake aims at little Michael Jackson from the ‘70s and misses the target with corny lyrics even Wacko wouldn’t dare touch.
“Losing My Way” – This is a ridiculous story about a guy named Bob who gets high and loses his family. The backing vocal beat is taken from Afroman’s “Because I Got High.”

FRANKLY: Justin Timberlake wants so badly to be taken seriously. He doesn’t want to be a boy from a boy band. He wants to show he is a man. He wants to prove he is sexy. He wants to prove he is cool. So who does he try to copy in order to prove he is all of those things? Prince. Seems like an oxymoron right?

If Timberlake wants to prove he is a man and can bring the sexy back maybe he could team up with Paris Hilton for an X-rated film. Otherwise he should realize Prince hasn’t let the sexy disappear and when he went into Jacko’s territory he didn’t have an artist that would fight back—but watch out for Prince because that cat has claws.

If Timberlake stuck with songs like “What Goes Around” and “Summer Love” we would be praising him all day long. These songs are natural for him. These songs best showcase his vocals and talents. It’s a shame that Timberlake tries so hard to prove he is everything but a balladeer.

+ Rae Gun

Posted

in

by

Hip Online

Tags:

Comments

One response to “Justin Timberlake – Futuresex/Lovesound”

  1. Ian Andrew Schneider Avatar
    Ian Andrew Schneider

    Brilliant.
    In a recent comment I made to your publication, I noted that Justin was deservedly a great and confident musician. So said, I have to be honest! I only know his “hits” – and those are the songs you mention and those about which I wrote. I couldn’t agree more about “What Goes Around..Comes Around” – a shockoingly good song.
    ]
    But as I hit submit comment before I wrote about he whom I meant to write and you did: Prince. These is still no one, not Phil Collins, Steve Winwood, Don Henley, for example, that tried to play *every instrument* and pull it off as a Prince, who, as you note, still can bring it! Thing about Prince is that he is *so* good that he may be the only dude around who is convncing as a prodigee on ANY instrument. It one thing for Hans Klammer to use a drum machine to ultimate perfection, completely another thing to sit down on you proverbial throne (drummers of the world, unite, and with the web, that’s everyone!) and make it sound like you were born on a drum kit, get up and play the most sophisticated bach Prelude & Fugue there is, play the guitar as if Hendrix had lived and taken 10 years more worth of lessons. So points well made – as the old aphorism states “there is nothing worse than someone trying to imitate someone he cannot be like.

    So said, he’s young and surrounded by people from whom he can take direction. The problems with Phil Collins, Steve Winwood, Sting: they became so good at composing *and* playing all instruments themselves that no one criticized them. You can hear it on their last records. You think: man, no one would have told him” this song stinks and your guitar solo on this one is below embarrassingly bad” – you’d get fired. Duh.

    Anyway, great analysis. It is *very* hard to write about an “art” as abstract as music.

    Best,
    Ian Schneider

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.