admin @ Thu, 2006-09-21 11:00
s this is written, Justin Timberlake's single “SexyBack” has been atop the national charts for three weeks. By the time this piece appears, the former *NSYNC vocalist's new album, FutureSex/LoveSounds (released by Jive, appropriately enough), will probably have debuted at No. 1 on the album charts.
Ordinarily, I'd give a pure pop product like Timberlake's a wide berth. But pre-release write-ups – in particular an especially moist encomium by Ann Powers, the new gal at the Los Angeles Times – have suggested that the record marks some sort of creative flowering on the part of the former boy-band pin-up. I checked it, and, sorry, I ain't buyin'.
There is precious little to write about artistically in Timberlake's interminable and excruciating 66-minute opus. Both lyrically and musically, its content could be dispatched in a couple paragraphs, but then there'd be a lot of white space in this column, and you'd get confused. So I'll try to stretch.
FutureSex/LoveSounds is such a transparent gambit that you can see right through the disc if you hold it up to the light. What do you do with a commercially backdated commodity, formerly popular with a young demo, whose previous sound is as fresh as two-day-old lettuce? Well, whack him together with some hot urban talent, whip up a batch of one-track-mind songs about sex, and ladle on state-of-the-moment production gimmicks. If you're lucky, some of the thicker specimens 'mongst the critics will shout huzzah, and some promotion dollars will put the record across at radio.
The foist has worked successfully so far. “SexyBack,” the most compact number coproduced by Timberlake and hip-hop auteur Timbaland (fresh from his assembly-line hitmaking with Puffy/Diddy/Whatever Combs's girl group Danity Kane), has been slammed home at Top 40 by Sony BMG's promotion slaves. No matter that the single is a tuneless, hookless stew of tired electro and panting, empty lubriciousness. Radio has a seemingly bottomless appetite for crap like this.
What's more surprising is that some writers have swallowed Timberlake's obvious, ineptly executed image remake. It doesn't take much to toss a chart-friendly but vacuous singer like Timberlake with a beat-savvy mercenary like Timbaland and such au courant rap and hip-hop talent as T.I., the Black Eyed Peas' Will.i.am, and Three 6 Mafia, the vocalist's Oscar-winning homeboys. Yo, boyfriend credible, y'all.
Some of the response is maddening. Timberlake the new Prince? C'mon, now. The Artist Formerly Known As brought some real heat and obsession (20 years ago!) to funky fuck-fests like “Sexy M.F.,” “Head,” “Gett Off,” and “Irresistible Bitch.” It takes more than rubbing Timberlake's faux melisma and weak falsetto up against tumescent lyrics like “Sexy Ladies,” “Chop Me Up,” and “Damn Girl” to truly bring it on.
Timberlake loses big-time if contemporary standards are brought to bear. Set FutureSex/LoveSounds next to Gnarls Barkley's insuperable pop confection St. Elsewhere – 37 economical minutes of up-to-the-second production, high-energy songs, and soul-drenched singing – and the kid looks like the long-winded pantywaist he is. Likewise, English soul-boy Lewis Taylor, who works his own Princely moves in his home studio, trounces JT with one hand tied behind his back.
It's all a masquerade. Timberlake shows his true colors as the album dribbles to a close with two ballads, “Until the End of Time” and “(Another Song) All Over Again” (produced by Rick Rubin, who should know better), and the inane anti-crack track “Losing My Way.” Timberlake can't quite find his way out of the boy-band jungle.
*NSYNC was always a white-bread simulacrum of a soul vocal group, and the teenies chowed down on its weak broth. Justin Timberlake is obviously now hoping that the pre-pubes who pasted his picture in their lockers will accept his “mature” new image as a hard-dick brother. Others need not apply.
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