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"So not impressed with the new JT album. With the exception of Suit & Tie, all of the songs are like 10 minutes long and they all sound alike. JT needs to get his sexy back..."
Haha...that settles it...songs too long...Mumford & Sons got mentioned within a reply or two..banjos attack!
Side question: where do people go to be told what to like musically now? Forever it was radio. Then MTV took over for quite a while. Is it back to radio? Spotify? Pandora? Youtube views? Pitchfork? Where/what/who do random people turn to?
Jimaveli
>http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/17/arts/music/justin-timberlake-releases-the-20-20-experience.html?_r=0
>
>
>March 13, 2013
>
>Some New Songs for a Side Career
>
>By JON CARAMANICA
>
>The last time Justin Timberlake released an album, Barack
>Obama was the junior senator from Illinois, Jay-Z and Beyoncé
>were not married, and iPhones did not exist. It was 2006, just
>a few weeks before Taylor Swift’s debut album arrived, setting
>her on the path to become perhaps the last old-fashioned pop
>superstar. But since then rapid industry decline and
>atomization have all but eliminated the need for Justin
>Timberlakes, or Taylor Swifts, or certainly the opportunities
>to make new ones.
>
>In the meantime Mr. Timberlake signaled his importance in
>other ways: versatile appearances on “Saturday Night Live,”
>which he recently hosted for the fifth time; acting in films
>both acclaimed (“The Social Network”) and derided (“The Love
>Guru”); working on a fashion line; golfing. You know — a full
>life. Given all that, there’s no good reason Mr. Timberlake,
>32, should be making music anymore. And yet he’s about to
>release “The 20/20 Experience” (RCA), which could be mistaken
>for an exercise in hubris were it actually arrogant.
>
>Most artists who stay away so long are trying to cleanse
>themselves of something — an unfortunate subgenre association,
>a nasty scandal. But mostly what Mr. Timberlake has been
>trying to cleanse himself of is music. That’s reflective of
>his broader career goals, and also of the diminished value
>music stardom has in the current entertainment economy.
>
>But while it was Mr. Timberlake’s success in music that
>allowed him the chance to succeed in film, or TV, or fashion,
>or baking (who knows?), now the opposite is true: His
>sustained fame as a polymathic celebrity means there’s still
>an appetite for his music, even if he’s out of step with most
>current trends. (Or maybe he just has a contractual
>obligation. Nobler art has been made for less noble reasons.)
>He could have made a cabaret standards album, an acoustic
>singer-songwriter folk record, a ghastly dance-music
>immersion, a pseudo-Drake sing-rap hybrid. Any of those would
>have been more risky and more distinctive than what ended up
>on “The 20/20 Experience,” an amiable, anodyne album that
>hopes not to alienate anyone but also doesn’t offer new
>reasons to commit. It’s an album of largely inconsequential
>beauty, showing Mr. Timberlake as an artist with no incentive
>to innovate, making this primarily a paean to brand
>maintenance. It’s not meant to change minds.
>
>That’s clear from the first single, the breezy hit “Suit &
>Tie,” which has the lighthearted bop of early New Edition with
>the vocal elegance of sunshine dappled soul groups like Tony!
>Toni! Toné! The molasses-y intro nods to Houston’s screw
>music, and the song features the most negligible Jay-Z verse
>in recent memory (though this mediocre chemistry didn’t
>preclude the two from teaming up for a tour this summer).
>
>The album begins with a labored Prince-esque woman-as-drugs
>comparison, “Pusher Love Girl,” (“Just tell me, can I get a
>light?/Roll you up and let it run through my veins”) and, not
>long after that, a less labored woman-as-tasty-treat
>comparison, “Strawberry Bubblegum,” which has some pleasant
>frisson between Mr. Timberlake’s sweet high voice and producer
>Timbaland’s guttural exhortations.
>
>It’s odd that the one unreservedly great song on this album,
>“Tunnel Vision,” could be by Chris Brown, it’s so modern, with
>its updating of Timbaland’s vintage stutter-step drums and icy
>synths. Also unexpected is the rhythmically exciting “Let the
>Groove Get In,” which samples from an album of music from
>Burkina Faso, and is reminiscent of nothing so much as
>Beyoncé’s martial “Run the World (Girls).” It’s almost a
>breaks record more than a proper song, with Mr. Timberlake
>working a few phrases over and over, never building any real
>tension or release.
>
>“The 20/20 Experience” was made with a small group of
>collaborators — the producers Timbaland and Jerome Harmon
>(known as J-Roc), and the songwriter James Fauntleroy. Mr.
>Timberlake handled the vocal production and arrangements, and
>even some of the mixing. The result is a smallness of purpose,
>with only slight variation throughout, like the deeply
>wholesome soul of “That Girl” or the drowsy “Blue Ocean
>Floor,” which had it been released two or three years ago,
>might have been called chillwave’s pop breakthrough. (Maybe
>Mr. Timberlake has been listening to Enya in his downtime.)
>
>Seven of the 10 songs are more than seven minutes. In an era
>of Frank Ocean soul meditation, this could pass for artistry,
>but really it’s a gesture of conservatism, an argument for the
>album as a whole over whatever abbreviated singles will
>eventually be shipped to radio. It also harks back to ’70s
>soul, Prince’s funk breakdowns and Michael Jackson’s
>hyper-ornate pop. It is Mr. Timberlake radiating seriousness,
>lest you think his music making is frivolous.
>
>There is something to that. This is just his third solo album;
>it’s surprising how much of his fame is still rooted in his
>years in ’NSync, how much of a head start that gave him. It’s
>kept him afloat even though, of all current pop superstars, he
>is the least present, the one still dining out on marginal
>benefits from old work.
>
>Maybe that’s why, if Mr. Timberlake is trying to communicate
>anything about his music, it’s a certain groundedness. On the
>Grammys, and also on “Saturday Night Live,” he performed with
>a band set up behind podiums emblazoned with JT & The
>Tennessee Kids, a visual nod to swing bands and a gimmick that
>lands on the blue-eyed soul spectrum somewhere between
>throwback fetishist Mayer Hawthorne and earnest cheese ball
>Robin Thicke.
>
>Until now Mr. Timberlake was rarely measured on that scale. He
>avoided those sorts of comparisons almost wholly thanks to the
>sui generis breakthrough of his debut album, “Justified,” from
>2002, which introduced him as confident, randy, and just a
>touch sinister and wounded. That album also cemented the
>producer Timbaland, once a revered hip-hop eccentric, as
>something of a modern pop savant. “FutureSex/ LoveSounds,” Mr.
>Timberlake’s follow-up, aimed lower aesthetically, but was
>embraced more widely.
>
>But the peak of Mr. Timberlake’s vocal feeling was “Gone,” the
>2001 ’NSync song that effectively served as his solo
>coming-out party, and which highlighted his pained yelp. Yet
>over the years that’s been sandpapered to a more restrained
>move, all but free of anguish or ecstasy. “Mirrors,” the most
>nakedly emotional song on the new album — seemingly written
>for his wife, Jessica Biel — also perplexingly features the
>most vocal processing, burying Mr. Timberlake and his heart.
>
>To show too much feeling would be to risk alienating people,
>and one of Mr. Timberlake’s signatures is his accessibility.
>He’s not common, but he’s relatable, and never condescending.
>He gets a tremendous amount of mileage just for being a cool
>guy who’s willing to hang out with regular folk.
>
>During his “Saturday Night Live” performance of “Suit & Tie”
>he took a mild swipe at Kanye West, who’d recently targeted
>that song in one of his ceremonial mid-show rants. But just
>two days later, on “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon,” he quickly
>retreated, smile beaming. Mr. Timberlake wouldn’t rock a baby
>bassinet.
>
>He just wants to entertain. On “Saturday Night Live” recently
>he put his musical gifts to wide use, impersonating Elton John
>eulogizing Hugo Chávez in song, reprising his partnership with
>Andy Samberg as sensual early-’90s white R&B goons for a
>dating show sketch, and dressed up as a piece of tofu, hawking
>a vegan restaurant by singing health-friendly versions of
>Chic’s “Le Freak,” Trinidad James’s “All Gold Everything” and
>more.
>
>He sounded more at home and vocally present in those moments
>than when singing his new songs, or almost anywhere on “The
>20/20 Experience.” Forget the album; go see the show, or
>whatever else Mr. Timberlake applies his talents to. He’s
>learned how to be a musician who has no need to make records,
>the perfect solution to the modern economy.
>
>
>
>Here is also an audio review/podcast on the album:
>
>http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/15/popcast-is-justin-timberlake-still-a-pop-star/
>
>This album isn't his best work.
>
>There are a few standouts...but SOMETHING is missing.
>
>
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