Justin Timberlake’s Comeback Is Flopping and He Only Has Himself to Blame

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Celebrity | February 6, 2024 |

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Celebrity | February 6, 2024 |

Pop culture loves a comeback. It doesn’t take much for even the most beloved of stars to fall from grace, but the door is almost always open for a return to the top. The shared strength of the general public is a fickle thing, ready to move on to the next big topic at a moment’s notice, and yet nostalgia is also potent, as is our desire to see people do better (for all the overblown talk of cancel culture and contrived culture wars we’re stuck amid, all you need to do to refute this narrative is look at the past several decades of society.) But our embrace of forgiveness is not guaranteed. Someone probably should have warned Justin Timberlake about that.

After the world admitted its regret in our collective mistreatment of Britney Spears and banded together to help free her from an abusive conservatorship, Timberlake quickly fell under scrutiny after years of being an untouchable megastar. The former boyband member turned king of SexyBack had earned millions of dollars, won a slew of awards, and topped the charts thanks to some savvy hitmaking with producer Timbaland and a few undeniable bops. He’d also successfully broke into Hollywood, working with the likes of David Fincher as well as being a reliable guest host of SNL. American entertainment preferred that its celebrities stick to one field at that time, but Timberlake proved he could sing, dance, host, and act, and it took him far. Hell, Jonathan Demme’s final film was a Timberlake concert documentary. High praise from the guy who directed Stop Making Sense.

But by the time of the Britney news, a lot of stirred-up resentment and questions towards Timberlake became unavoidable. How was it that we let this dude spend years throwing his ex-girlfriend under the bus? How did he emerge from the Super Bowl drama unscathed while Janet Jackson was blacklisted? Remember when his pals got a bunch of unhoused people to do a wedding day video for him and Jessica Biel? By the time Timberlake hastily offered a weak apology to both Spears and Jackson - in the same notes message shared on social media - patience was running thin for him.

It’s worth remembering that Timberlake’s career had already slipped a few rungs down the ladder by the time the #FreeBritney movement emerged. His previous album, Man of the Woods, had been a critical and commercial disappointment. His ‘back to his roots’ album felt phony after years riding the coattails of R&B, and even then, it was still loaded full of safety net singles like ‘Filthy’ in case his folksy tunes failed (they all failed, in fairness.) There are certain pop musicians who can withstand an underperforming album. Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga, for example, can release a Reputation or Artpop and their hardcore fans will stick by them even if the public doesn’t, and the sheer strength of their image and talent can carry them through to the next project. Timberlake felt like a Katy Perry, someone who, the moment the hits stopped coming, had to give up their crown.

Also, he was in a Woody Allen movie. Just wanted to remind you all of that.

Between Man of the Woods and #FreeBritney, Timberlake was largely out of the public eye except for Trolls movies and an accusation that he cheated on his wife. He began to return to the spotlight with the rest of NSYNC. It was ostensibly to promote their Trolls reunion, but you also got the sense it was a good way for Timberlake to pave his solo comeback. He let the other band members take up the spotlight, he stopped forcing everyone to pay attention to his hacky jokes, and he felt relatively low-key (this is a big deal when you remember a huge portion of his solo public image was being a spotlight hogger.) Again, nostalgia is a heavy drug and people were happy to take it.

And then Britney Spears released her memoir. Oof. It’s hard to sell yourself as humble when everyone knows how you treated your girlfriend while she was dealing with the aftermath of an abortion (you played the acoustic guitar to her? REALLY?!) The public revolted once more, their fury all the more ferocious as we remembered his many years of slut-shaming Spears in interviews and comedy skits. It didn’t help that he kept singing ‘Cry Me a River’, a song about their break-up featuring a Britney lookalike in its music video, at concerts. The public was Team Britney, a fact made more evident when he dropped a new single, ‘Selfish’, and her stans got a Spears deep cut with the same title charting higher.

It’s worth noting that, despite all of this, I still don’t think a Timberlake comeback would have been out of the question. If he had the hits, listeners would have tuned in. But ‘Selfish’ sucks. It’s a bad song that sounds about a decade out of style and Timberlake’s voice is wavering. As Consequence wrote in their scathing review of the song (disclaimer: I have written a few times for this site), ‘Time and again over the last ten years, he has gone into the studio with the most accomplished hitmakers in the world, only to produce a tune about as lively as a dead house plant.’ It’s dorky, and Timberlake was a dork long before he was cool, and certainly long after. He just can’t pull it off like Bruno Mars can.

So, you have a weak song, a public backlash against you, and dwindling hype for the full album. What do you do? Well, if you’re Timberlake, you double down on flinging your ex under the bus, even after she expressed regret for being mean to you. You let everyone know that any scrap of penitence or shame you pretended to feel was total nonsense and the moment it stopped working you cast it aside to be a faux bad boy. I have no idea if he thought this would appeal to anyone, much less his core fanbase, which is primarily women who liked him in NSYNC. I’m not sure he could have gotten away with it even if his new song was good.

When the work isn’t good, the very least you can do is play the fame game well, but Timberlake is failing on both counts. His image for so long was dependent on Britney, on being the scorned lover who emerged from her shadow to become a Jack of all trades in music, TV, and film. After that attention-grabbing showboating began to grate, we needed some humility. We needed growth, or at least some true understanding of why it sucks to let the world know that you slept with your ex when she was being pressurized to present herself as a virgin. If you’re going to be a total sh*t, at least let the tunes slap. Arrogance plus mediocrity equals a comeback that is dead on arrival, and Timberlake only has himself to blame for it. Sorry, you can’t pretend this is Britney’s fault anymore.