Cry him a river? New generation turn their backs on Timberlake
▶ Gemma White charts his rise to Prince of Pop and calamitous downfall
With 10 Grammys, four Emmys and the high praise of being dubbed the Prince of Pop, it once seemed unfathomable that Justin Timberlake’s musical crown could slip so far.
A teenage star of 1990s and early 2000s music, Timberlake, now 43, parlayed his boyband beginnings and relationship with Britney Spears, then the biggest pop star on the planet, into an acclaimed, award-winning solo career.
Somewhere along the line, the culture shifted in ways Timberlake not only failed to anticipate, but also failed to move with. Ahead of the release of his sixth studio album, Everything I Thought It Was, next month, his past actions and behaviour, particularly concerning Spears and Janet Jackson, have been put under the microscope by a new generation in a less-forgiving cultural landscape.
Here’s a summary of the rise and fall of the fading star.
1992: Early promise
Aged 11, the Tennessee-born star performs Love’s Got a Hold on You by country star Alan Jackson for his appearance on American TV talent show Star Search. Performing under the name Justin Randall – his middle name – he does not win, but the fame bug bites.
1993-1994: Rising talent
He wins a spot as a Mouseketeer on Disney children’s TV show The All-New Mickey Mouse Club. His fellow cast members include Spears, Christina Aguilera and future NSync bandmate JC Chasez.
“If my parents hadn’t got me to those auditions, at some point I would have found a way myself,” Timberlake tells The Guardian years later.
1995-2002: Global fame
Along with Chris Kirkpatrick, Joey Fatone, Lance Bass and JC Chasez, Timberlake finds fame with boyband NSync and they break through with their second album, No Strings Attached, in 2000.
Featuring the chart-topping Bye Bye Bye, it wins three American Music Awards and five Billboard Music Awards. The group go on a hiatus in 2002 following a US tour.
1999-2002: Arise pop’s ultimate power couple
As NSync establish themselves, Timberlake receives a priceless publicity boost thanks to his relationship with rising pop superstar Spears. The pair go public in 1999, elevating Timberlake’s fame far above that of his bandmates.
2002: Solo success
Timberlake releases his debut solo album, Justified. Produced by Timbaland and The Neptunes (made up of Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo), the album is a critical and commercial success.
It reaches number two on the Billboard 200 after its release and spawns four hit singles. It also wins a Grammy.
In his 2007 book Out of Sync: A Memoir, Bass says he and the band felt blindsided by Timberlake’s solo career, writing: “I felt completely betrayed. It [expletive] me off that Justin’s life got set up perfectly before he came back to the rest of us.”
Cry Me a River, the second track from Justified and his biggest hit, is released with the video featuring a Spears lookalike. The song’s lyrics (“You told me you love me / Why did you leave me all alone?”) were taken as proof of Spears’s alleged infidelity. He later tells People: “You get to a point when you’re crying yourself to sleep every night.”
2003: Playing the wronged man in public
Spears’s interview with Diane Sawyer on Primetime helps cement Timberlake’s public persona as the betrayed party.
Sawyer drives Spears to tears with a barrage of questions including: “You broke his heart. You did something that caused him so much pain, so much suffering. What did you do?”
2004: Teflon Timberlake
Timberlake emerges unscathed from the Super Bowl half-time show “wardrobe malfunction”, where Janet Jackson’s breast is exposed during the live performance.
Jackson’s music and videos are banned across network platforms causing long-lasting damage to her career. She is reportedly uninvited from the Grammys, where Timberlake performs and wins
Best Male Pop Vocal Performance.
2006: Onwards and upwards
After a foray into film, Timberlake releases his second solo album, the Timbaland-produced FutureSex/LoveSounds, which tops the Billboard 200. Three singles, SexyBack, My Love and What Goes Around … Comes Around, also hit the number one spot.
2010: Big-screen joy
Timberlake flexes his acting muscles in a critically acclaimed role as Napster founder Sean Parker in The Social Network.
2013: More Grammys
Timberlake’s fourth album, The 20/20 Experience, becomes the bestselling album of the year in the US. Two of the singles, Suit and Tie and Pusher Love Girl, go on to win Grammy Awards for Best Music Video and Best RnB Song.
2018: Super Bowl return and musical ‘misstep’
The star’s fifth studio album, Man of the Woods, is released two days before he headlines the Super Bowl half-time show. Although it hits number one in the US, the album is not a critical success. Pitchfork pans it as “musically and thematically shallow”. It adds: “Man of the Woods is a misstep large enough to merit relitigating Justin Timberlake’s status as a pop superstar.”
2019: Cheating rumours
A paparazzi image of Timberlake – married to Jessica Biel since 2012 – holding hands with his Palmer co-star Alisha Wainwright on a night out in New Orleans makes headlines.
“I apologise to my amazing wife and family for putting them through such an embarrassing situation, and I am focused on being the best husband and father I can be,” he writes on Instagram.
2021: President’s man
Timberlake and Ant Clemons’s performance of Better Days is broadcast at Joe Biden’s inauguration.
2021: Spears documentary reframes Timberlake
One month after Biden’s inauguration, the Framing Britney Spears documentary introduces her 2003 interview with Diane Sawyer to a new generation, sparking an outpouring of anger towards Sawyer and Timberlake.
“I am deeply sorry for the times in my life where my actions contributed to the problem, where I spoke out of turn, or did not speak up for what was right,” he writes in a now-deleted Instagram post.
October: Spears’s memoir shares her side of the story
In her tell-all book The Woman in Me, Spears lays bare her relationship with Timberlake. Putting out her side of the story, she says she was portrayed as “a harlot who’d broken the heart of America’s golden boy”.
She adds: “There’s always more leeway in Hollywood for men than for women.
“And I see how men are encouraged to talk trash about women in order to become famous and powerful.”
Last month: Vitriolic review goes viral
Timberlake releases Selfish, his first song in almost six years. However, a review by the website Consequence goes viral, stating: “Time and again over the last 10 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.”
This month: Unrepentant views create uncertain future
Days after Spears publicly apologises for how her book affected Timberlake, he tells the audience at a concert in New York that he’d “like to take this opportunity to apologise to absolutely [expletive] nobody”.
His words are publicised and are immediately met with anger by Spears’s supporters. Many utilise social media to rally other fans to push her 2011 song Selfish above Timberlake’s track of the same name in the US iTunes chart. The move works.