There is a lot to learn from a title like Everything I thought I was, especially from an artist like Justin Timberlake, who returns today with his fifth album in a 22-year solo career. He typically waits at least five years to release an album, which makes every Timberlake release a big deal. But the weight he carries in 2024 is very different from each of those previous records, and Everything I thought I was – based solely on the title – marked a more introspective and mature return.
His past-tense phrasing suggested that Timberlake was truly living in the present, looking back on 30 years in show business and coming to terms with his public identity, his relationships, his successes and mistakes, and perhaps, his pain. After all this time away, would this be JT's course-correcting album that could get us back on his side?
From the first song of Everything I thought I was, “Memphis,” which refers to his hometown, it seems like that's the album he was looking to make. “Who cares if you're lonely while you're famous?” Timberlake asks rhetorically, and then sings, “Who cares if there's too much on your plate?/Don't make mistakes and hide your pain.” He sounds a little watered down, his passionate tenor muted for the sake of fun, hip-hop-adjacent storytelling.
The song overall is a little flat, but the ideas behind it (Timberlake being sold an unattainable ideal when he began this journey) are definitely intriguing. For a former boy band star who has been (appropriately) criticized for her complicity in the early 2000s misogyny that took its toll on Britney Spears and Janet Jackson, there's a lot to unpack. Timberlake became famous very, very young, and it is undeniable that he received toxic messages that altered the psyche of the men in his life, from executives, from dance and singing coaches, from producers, from his own colleagues, from the culture in general. . .
Based on the album's title and first song, you'd think Timberlake would hold up his end of the deal and reveal a little more of himself. He does not. The rest of the album is as straightforward as they come, to the point that it makes 2018's Americana/folk-pop/country/soul rebrand. forest man I feel, in some ways, more ambitious. The only ambitious thing about Everything I thought I was is its tracklist, whose 18 songs last a laborious 77 minutes.
There are some slightly insightful lyrical concepts about loneliness (“Alone”), aging (“Paradise”), and generally feeling hopeless (“Drown”). But for the most part, every song on Everything I thought I was it's about having good sex, fucking in the club, being in love or feeling wronged by an ex, in the same vein as two really good Justin Timberlake songs, “Cry Me a River” and “What Comes Around (Goes Around). ).”
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