Oh, how the times have changed…an album release used to mean that one day, copies of a record would magically show up in stores and you could but it. These days, there\u2019s an album to listen to, sure, but there are TV appearances, music videos, countless articles debating the cultural significance of what\u2019s about to be released, streaming service exclusives, pop-up clothing stores\u2026anything that helps promote awareness of \u201cThe Brand\u201d is crucial. <\/p>\n
This review is giving off an old man yelling at the cloud type vibe, and that\u2019s not what I\u2019m trying to accomplish. I am merely making the point that when albums come out, there is so much more wrapped into it than what it was even five years ago. It\u2019s harder to separate the music from the accompanying pomp and circumstance. Hell, this particular record, Man Of The Woods<\/i>, had a Super Bowl halftime show performance to bolster its performance sales-wise.<\/p>\n
Justin Timberlake releases music infrequently enough that each album is a significant statement for him. The last time the record buying public had an opportunity to buy a full-length Timberlake album was five years ago in 2013; prior to that it had been a seven year gap. That\u2019s a lot of pressure for anybody to be under, let alone one with all the extra accoutrement that Man Of The Woods<\/i> was saddled with. I\u2019m skeptical there was a record that Timberlake could have released that met these expectations, and the accompanying reaction has been an overwhelming sense of \u201cmeh\u201d (Yes, that is the technical term).<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s get one thing straight though before continuing on: Man Of The Woods<\/i> is not a great album. It has some moments of very good, but it generally settles into a vibe of decent-to-good. Timberlake wears his influences very plainly on his sleeves and tries a wide variety of different styles that at the very least make this release wholly unique from his previous efforts.<\/p>\n
Admittedly, you hear the title of the album and would assume that Timberlake would have gone directly down a Bon Iver rabbit hole. The singles released for Man Of The Woods quickly disabused one of that notion: \u201cFilthy\u201d and \u201cSupplies\u201d definitely recreated that dance\/R&B sound Timberlake has perfected over the years. In fact, the first half of the album, up to \u201cMorning Light,\u201d definitely sounds like previous Timberlake, albeit to varying degrees of success.The jangly \u201cSauce\u201d and Pharrell Williams involved, soul-inspired \u201cHigher And Higher\u201d are the non-single standouts for me on Sides 1\/2 from a songwriting perspective, but honestly the rest of the tracks….I could take them or leave them. \u201cMorning Light\u201d in particular was a disappointment considering the pedigree of those involved; Chris Stapleton and Alicia Keys should be a no-brainer right? Instead, what we get is simply…well, it\u2019s boring. Keys isn\u2019t asked to do too much really, which is a waste of her incredible talents.<\/p>\n
It is Sides 3\/4 where I actually really got invested in the record and found some genuine surprises. It\u2019s not to say that it\u2019s a totally stripped-down, folksy version of Timberlake, but he takes a detour down a more traditional pop\/country road and I love it. \u201cFlannel\u201d is a gorgeous acoustic piece, and sure, Timberlake completely rips off Prince\u2019s \u201cPurple Rain\u201d for the verses, but it\u2019s a nice homage nonetheless to the dearly departed Purple One. The authenticity of the lyrics to \u201cLivin\u2019 Off The Land\u201d is a little suspect, but it features a gorgeous vocal performance from Timberlake, and a nice hook to boot.<\/p>\n
“Say Something\u201d was co-written with current country music star Chris Stapleton, and it\u2019s just a knockout piece melding Timberlake\u2019s and Stapleton\u2019s strengths perfectly. The juxtaposition of Timberlake\u2019s falsetto and Stapleton\u2019s grit works very well, and it doesn\u2019t hurt that I find the song\u2019s credo of (and this is my personal take, considering the current social and political climate) shutting up sometimes is okay. We could use a little of that, right?It may be low-hanging fruit to point this out, but the inclusion of a handful of spoken word monologues from Timberlake\u2019s wife Jessica Biel was, shall we say, a poor choice? And I fully understand that his marriage and child are huge components to his life and impact his songwriting choices, but if I could give the man some advice going forward, I would say just make to let Jessica be an active listener and not a participant. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s harder and harder to convince someone to buy a record these days, which is why one could make the argument that the media blitz accompanying the statement records of the modern day is completely necessary. With the advent of streaming services, literally the entire library of human recordings is available for ten bucks a month. How does one attempt to standout amongst everything else? We saw how Justin Timberlake attempted to answer that question with Man Of The Woods<\/i>. Whether or not it\u2019s worthy of that level of attention is something that probably doesn\u2019t even matter to him. Timberlake delivered a record that doesn\u2019t capture the magic of Futuresex\/Lovesounds<\/i>, but it does lay out a roadmap that shows where he might be headed in the future. I\u2019ll still be there for the ride.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":33406,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[7888],"rating":[5615],"class_list":["post-45223","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-justin-timberlake","rating-rating-b"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/45223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45223"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/45223\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=45223"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=45223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}