With this year’s The 20/20 Experience, Justin Timberlake made it clear that he wasn’t interested in an easy-to-digest musical comeback. There was no instant anthem like “SexyBack” and few overt contemporary references; instead, he delivered sprawling songs that meandered through different genres, with a special focus on retro soul and R&B. In hindsight, the record felt like a test to see if people would warm to Timberlake The Sophisticate as well as they did to Timberlake The Heartthrob. After all, he had transitioned into more mature acting roles rather easily—evolving his musical side seemed like an obvious next step.
The only flaw in that logic is that while The 20/20 Experience was certainly a bold step, it was almost too ambitious; its long songs tended to be sluggish, sounded monotonous, and came off as more than a tiny bit self-indulgent. Still, the record successfully achieved a very important feat: Timberlake was once again dominating pop music’s narrative—and steering the conversation. (Whether he hijacked this particular aesthetic/conversation thread from Bruno Mars is a question for another day.)