somuchrain

"If I'm a Cassanova, than you're a supernova!"

So, despite that it doesn't come out for six days (I think) I've got a copy of the new Justin Timberlake album and it's sort of bloody amazing. I mean, I love "Justified" and all, "Cry Me A River" is one of my all-time favorite songs and whatnot, but I think this album, overall, is far far far better. You can tell that Justin had a far more significant influence in the production because some of the tracks just feel like Prince. He uses a similar vocabulary at times and his bass lines are sort of lifted right from early Prince. It's also sort of awesome to see how Timberland has moved beyond sort of using textbook production gimmicks (Oh look! A wall of sound!) to changing his technique to suite the particular song.

JT said that his biggest influences were Michael Jackson, Prince, and Michael Hutchens (sp?) and this album is moving WAY away from the Michael Jackson, though not in a bad way. At times it, like with Prince's later work, feels like improvisation, he uses jazz keyboard in a cool way and talks far less about bling and bitches than he did on "Justified" though I think it might be musically better and have fewer singles.

Sexyback is a fun and funny song, and, though I don't care, I think he's aware of how silly a song it is, but the best song on the album is what I imagine will be the second single "My Love" which he preformed as an intro to Sexyback at the MTV award thingies. His voice and the constant acid line riff off of one another well. It's just a great song and, as with "Cry Me A River" reminds me why I don't give a fuck if Charles Simic is awesome, because Justin Timberlake reminds me of love and sadness without having to think and sometimes that's nice.