Let's anticipate Justin Timberlake's Man of the Woods...?

I haven’t even listened to his latest album but if Timbaland is back to form, this could be interesting.
It’s a pity Timbo kinda lost it since the mid 00 or something. Especially when you consider all the things Pharrell has done in these 10y +...
I didn’t know he had drugs issues though. Good for him that he kicked them.

that Rolling Stone article linked says Timbaland having a pretty brutal oxycontin habit for most of the 00s (and seemed insightful about the transition in the music world from the trope of the drug dealer who hustles & makes money to the drug user who Has Big Fun)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gA-NDZb29I4

no idea what to make of this, if anything the weirdly dated wubs + rock bridge & intro remind me of "madness" by muse? at least it isn't 8 minutes

look what we made him do

Aw that stadium rock thing is horrible. The rest sounds like an irritating sexy funk jam. Not a good start for this new album.

it's a bit of a mess that track, and despite not kicking in for a good minute and a half, ends up being a little slight and boring

those wubs really don't help the track much. if you're going to revive brostep 3 years too early, at least do something interesting with it?

feels like an attempt to make a Prince b-side. pleasant enough jam though imo

I like it fine. Won't dread it.

it appears justin timberlake has accidentally posted a twitter comedian's setlist parody, what a terrible mistake

MOTW https://t.co/oydnUMzBE8 pic.twitter.com/24vYbTachJ

— Justin Timberlake (@jtimberlake) January 5, 2018

also I just had a horrific thought that A.K. and C.S. stand for Alison Krauss and Chris Stapleton

The CS does stand for Chris Stapleton, but the AK is Alicia Keys.

even worse

"Flannel" by Justin Timberlake
"Flannel" by Justin Timberlake
"Flannel" by Justin Timberlake

at least 16 tracks means he's probably cut down on the codas this time

also I just had a horrific thought that A.K. and C.S. stand for Alison Krauss and Chris Stapleton

― algorithm is a dancer (katherine), Friday, January 5, 2018 9:37 AM (forty minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The CS does stand for Chris Stapleton, but the AK is Alicia Keys.

― MarkoP, Friday, January 5, 2018 9:45 AM (thirty-one minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

even worse

― algorithm is a dancer (katherine), Friday, January 5, 2018 9:50 AM (twenty-six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol i went through this whole dynamic in my own head when i read the tracklisting

i assume "breeze off the pond"/"livin' off the land"/"the hard stuff" is his extremely personal song cycle about choppin' wood

Not a great song, but remember when he was talking about listening to Dirty Mind all the time, and then the subsequent album had no trace of that? At least this sounds plausibly like JT & Timbo taking some inspiration from early Prince.

always remember: "Alicia Keys" and "even worse" go hand in hand.

Ahah that tracklist...
Maybe it’s a joke album in the same spirit as « Dick in a box » ? (actually I have difficulty listening to his « sexy » songs without thinking about his sketches...).

ticks in a box

he made the box himself

Also the big revelation from that RS piece is that Timbaland produces at home on Ableton now

feels like an attempt to make a Prince b-side. pleasant enough jam though imo

― she carries a torch. two torches, actually (Joan Crawford Loves Chachi), Friday, January 5, 2018 5:35 AM (seven hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haha yeah like an unreleased track from Planet Earth

Filthy might be half decent when it's finished.

Disappointed he didn’t cover « Knock On Wood » on the album. Maybe as a b-side!

especially after that horrendous trailer i was ready to completely dismiss this entire project, call it "man of the whites" and so forth, but i have to admit to rather liking "filthy"! of course it's his previous track record and industry clout that permits him to do this, but it's nice to see someone who tends to aim right down the middle go for something at least somewhat audacious -- he could have easily just dropped a track with 3.5 minutes of moaning in a thin falsetto the way at least one up-and-coming twink imitator at top 40 is currently doing to modest success. there are interesting touches both in the backing track and in his vocal so i imagine i'll be coming back to it for a little while at least.

(the full album could still turn out to be abysmal. i haven't liked most of his music since futuresex/lovesounds.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4vnmgZLA8s

the follow up is just as confusing

maybe jt is a prepper

JT clearly loves Black Mirror.

so are we out of the woods?

So JT is the unabomber now?

lmao what the actual fuck is this

i dont dislike this

these videos are v v Trenchant Social Commentary tho lol

This is better than "Filthy" but my god that video is... something.

I fear the WTFness of the video is distracting us from how lifeless and mediocre the song is.

let it be clear, the "what the actual fuck is this" also referred to the quality of the song

the WTFness of the song meant i still haven't really taken in just how bad the video is yet

his dancing is really shit in the video too. isn't he usually a pretty good dancer? everything about this is so fake and stupid, the choreography, the styling, the Trenchant Social Commentary. it's clearly all top-down imposed and nothing to do with JT, despite what he says in the trailer video. It just seems very confused, he's talking about bringing it back home and trudging through the fields in a big woolen cape (styling error!) and now we get this mess which seems completely disconnected from the supposed theme.

is that sequins or rhinestones around the edge of his hoodie, because WHAT

also wtf was the budget for that shit video?

JT acting like he’s giving some sort of woke message on the video while the lyrics are sex and then he’s there gettig it on with Eiza Glz (who does look insanely sexy in the video tbh) but then there’s that kid saying “wake up” and then there’s all the faux rural/hipster/indie/ aesthetic for the album... I don’t know what he’s trying to say but I’m hating it.

I dug the main groove - felt like a Timbaland loop pedal jam. The bridge was weak. The video looked very expensive.

i assume "breeze off the pond"/"livin' off the land"/"the hard stuff" is his extremely personal song cycle about choppin' wood

It’s like side 2 of Hounds of Love but in a forest.

except that would be good

the chorus to supplies is dreadful

the weirdly country-tinged verse is also dreadful

ok so this album will be a trainwreck apparently.
too bad, I would have enjoyed a Timbaland come-back...

ugh, thank god for lauren jackson
http://www.vulture.com/2018/01/exploring-justin-timberlakes-relationship-to-black-music.html

his dancing is really shit in the video too. isn't he usually a pretty good dancer?

This was the exact thing I said to my 13-yr-old son, after he texted me the link to the video. (The full content of his text: "JUSTIN IS TOO WOKE BRO ... but seriously this is one of the worst music videos I have ever seen")

Looks like the Neptunes (!) actually produced most of the album, including 'Supplies'?

the show is always just as much about the spectacle as it is the performer tho so I include them all as a package deal

Katy was great. my memory is fuzzy but when she rode ... something? ... way up into the air singing Roar, I think? that was awesome!

^^^ lol i have an identical half-formed memory of that

xp maura I didn’t really notice how bad the vocals were, they sounded fine to me but there was some crosstalk at my watch party so maybe it warrants rescreening. everyone I watched with thought the choreography was solid tho, and I personally thought the song selection was on point. like UMS said above, I guess I just don’t know what people are looking for in a halftime show if that was bad

right, this is kind of the point of the halftime shows......?

oops that was an xp to this:

the show is always just as much about the spectacle as it is the performer tho so I include them all as a package deal

― Hi diddley dee, hen fapper's life for me (Neanderthal), Monday, February 5, 2018 2:28 PM (forty-five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

xxxp that nytimes piece was indeed probably written before the show, yet at the same time is pretty much otm. Especially when highlighting how Janet Jackson was vilified and JT can go about like nothing happened.

I do find it weird when people get rockist about a Super Bowl halftime show. I think the Black Eyed Peas one was the only recent one I considered completely terrible.

The Who were pretty bad

i watched with a music savvy crowd on a tv with a nice soundsystem
that said the “it’s supposed to be background noise” argument is a ... strange one? jt’s voice and the mixing itself was bad, and it was noticeable even in the context of the telecast

People generally like JT, he's had a lot of hits (both solo and with a group), he's a modest singer but a very good performer, and he's had decades of experience entertaining huge crowds. That he had all of that going for him and was still pretty indifferently received indicates something was not firing right, technical or otherwise. Not enough spectacle? Played it too safe? The fundamental thin-ness of pop without enough distractions (costumes, explosions, choreography)? Something like that. Doesn't help that as much as I like a lot of his stuff, very little JT is particularly exciting, let alone rousing. Probably why stuff like Mirrors and the Trolls song did so well. They're more conventionally anthemic, though that is probably too strong a word.

agree with all that ^ but everyone remember "we" exist in a bubble, no matter who you watched it with. 90% of norm women/kids absolutely loved it, 75% of norm men rolled their eyes and wanted "real" music and 25% of norm men did the whole "i can't believe i'm going to say this but i think the guy is very talented and seems like a cool dude" thing to contrast the eye-rollers.

the scores of millions of people who loved it aren't in yr twitter timeline

we had about 15 kids (12 and under) watching it and they were all like "this is weird / lame" "i dont like this who is this" and then 'cant stop the feeling' came on....

my 1 year old girl was rocking back and forth the whole time, my 3 year old boy paid no attention at all

I think y'all are on to something here

I tried to convince my 3 yr old to watch cuz "there are people dancing, you like people dancing" she was non-plussed and demanded we watch whatever she wanted to watch.

i watched with a music savvy crowd on a tv with a nice soundsystem
that said the “it’s supposed to be background noise” argument is a ... strange one? jt’s voice and the mixing itself was bad, and it was noticeable even in the context of the telecast

― maura, Monday, February 5, 2018 2:28 PM (thirty-five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Vocals sounded weird/bad to me but I was unclear if it was on purpose or a bad mix or what

Usually in these sorts of situations where I assume there are scads of professionals working on it when stuff sounds weird to me I just think its me and not that it's bad or mistake

What are you going to believe, your ears, or science?

I assume all terrible sounds are aesthetic choices

man of the woods title track is some looney tunes shit, what the f was he thinking

eheh, exactly !
Why not for a cartoon ost or something but on an album (and more so a supposedly "serious/spiritual/whatever" album)...

I got suppli-yiii-yiiiiieees

"supplies": because "Carry Out" wasn't bizarre and strained enough a metaphor

how many jt songs are extremely strained metaphors. i relistened to 20/20 the other week and as far as i can tell it's almost all of them

lol i forgot about "carry out"

i relistened to 20/20 the other week

congrats: if you can prove you finished it I'll nominate you for a Nobel.

da lex on j-tim.

https://www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/is-justin-timberlake-losing-his-way-1.701958

what i wrote on lex FB. which is probably totally wrong but i kinda would have liked to see all-in faux-cowboy JT for some reason. i think it was that village people handkerchief that made me wish for it:

Scott Seward "if he really wanted to get woodsy he should have made a big pop-country album with huge nashville hitmakers handing him hooks for days and a smash duet with t-swift that premiered AT the halftime show. would have been the biggest seller of the year in the u.s."

i agree with you there. somewhere along the way whatever message he meant to come with got muddled.

"say something" isn't horrible; maybe shoulda just done an album of duets with Stapleton if he wanted to be in this lane?

i can't imagine Timberlake's voice over a country-ass country song

I have this feeling he just does not care that much anymore. There's some good songs in there, but even these good songs leave me with the impression another younger/hungrier artist would have made it better.

Perhaps he should go the Charli route and release mixtapes of shit he really cares about. This whole album with a concept thing just seem so heavy on him.

Also, christ, 16 songs. I know this is the streaming era, but please edit.

if i was ever a recording artist, i would release 8-song albums with 12 bonus tracks each with a 5 second sound effect from a synth preset just to goose the numbers

my big takeaway from watching him sing and dance in HD on a giant TV was: wow, Justin Timberlake is 37 years old

Tom Brady is 40.

Timberlake eats tomatoes, he won't make it to 40

probably wears sunscreen too

So I've tried to listen to more of this album.
the father/son stuff is awful, the husband/wife stuff is cringey, the looney tunes song is wtf, etc.
"Montana" which seems to be the favourite song for many people is just meh to me.
I think the only thing I enjoy is "Higher Higher". And the funky part from "Filthy" (minus some of the vocals)...
Good job JT !

lmao what the actual fuck is this

― algorithm is a dancer (katherine), Friday, 19 January 2018 05:44 (three weeks ago) Permalink

^^ otm