Is it alright for me to say I’m not wild about the new Justin Timberlake album? Are my friends going to shun me? Are people going cross the street to avoid me? Will my parents kick me out of the house?
The truth is I like the new album, but I’m not in love with it. I can appreciate the chance JT took by constructing an album where each song was at least five minutes in length, with most being closer to 7 minutes, but it doesn’t work for me. The album isn’t upbeat enough for a JT album. It’s almost as if Timberlake fell in love with Frank Ocean’s Pyramids and tried to do an entire album in that vein. Pyramids is a great song, but it stands out more because it was such an oddity compared to the rest of the tracks. If each song on Channel Orange was that length Pyramids would get lost in the shuffle. I think that is what happened with the 20/20 Experience. Mirrors for example is a great song, but it just drags on for about two minutes too long.
Since Timberlake was gone from the music scene as long as he was and the hype surrounding the album was enormous it was going be almost impossible for the album to live up to expectations. It just fell a little flat for me. Maybe sometime down the road I’ll come to appreciate it more, but for now I’ll probably still be listening to Future Sex/Love Sounds more often than the 20/20 Experience
29th Floor/Growing Old 