Listening to Justin Timberlake’s Everything I Thought It Was feels like plugging your headphones into a giant gray styrofoam block. While the album manages to steer clear of the misguided Americana pitfalls of 2018’s Man of the Woods, it instead delivers a sound that’s devoid of a distinct artistic identity. Its predecessor at least found Timberlake daring to venture into new territory and trying make a statement of some kind, no matter how ridiculous.
Everything I Thought It Was’s lead single, “Selfish,” is an underwhelmingly mopey nice-guy anthem marked by humming organs and pre-programmed drum patterns. Timberlake’s vocal performance emits small doses of insecurity that feel sincere and unaffected, but one would be hard-pressed to remember a lead single from a major star with a chorus this weak or production choices this humdrum.
The same can be said for “Drown,” which aims something in the “Cry Me a River” vein but is so uncommitted to its own theatricality that it’s rendered D.O.A. And when the track does try to up the ante in its home stretch, Timberlake’s voice is violently pitch-shifted up and down, an effect aiming to convey emotional distress that mostly just comes off as silly.
Timberlake’s penchant for writing some of the most comically cringe-worthy put-ons imaginable continues unabated on Everything I Thought I Was. Here, though, they’re delivered without even a shred of confidence, as if he’s aware of how awful a line like “This train has just left the station/Time for a fuckin’ vacation” sounds out loud on the horn-y “Play.”
“Use your imagination,” Timberlake coos to a lover at the start of the cloying “Imagination,” yet he fails to do the same, claiming she tastes “like cotton candy” and calling her the “star of my fantasy.” The worst offender in this regard is the seven-minute “Technicolor,” a drawn-out bedroom jam comparing sex to color motion-picture processes that loses steam before its superfluous beat switch could ever hope to possibly revitalize it.
Things fare slightly better whenever the tempo picks up, as on the disco-tinged “My Favorite Drug” and “No Angels.” But considering the near-epic length of the album, these are mere bumps of momentary excitement before we get another monotonous cut like “Love & War.” With an abundance of material, one could never fault Everything I Thought I Was for being too conservative, but it’s an all too clear case of quantity over quality, resulting in quickly diminishing returns.
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