Justin Timberlake

The 20/20 Experience

Much has been made of the album's length, but Timberlake and Timbaland prove to have more than enough ingenuity to make it worth our while.

There is enough oomph for the youngins, yet a defined maturity that proves Timberlake’s overstanding of eventually aging out of the capricious sect of R&B.

For some 20/20 may be difficult to digest, but Timberlake’s aspiration and vision really can’t be faulted. He is this generation’s crossover artist, no doubt.

20/20 succeeds because it’s groove-based, which is to say, it’s neither pop-based nor logic-based.

It's probably going to end up as the defining pop album of 2013. In many ways, it's bold and experimental, but at its core, it's pure Timberlake.

While it may be a little overlong at nearly an hour and a half, there are influences from 40-odd years of pop music expertly melted together by a master craftsman to create an album of consistently brilliant songs. 

20/20 is a statement album, one that succeeds more often than it fails, but occasionally buckles under the weight of its ambition, which is grander that its flimsy thematic contents are capable of sustaining over the long haul.

The 20/20 Experience is confused, sloppy, frustrating, too safe, a let-down. Timberlake’s lyrics are laughable. The album begs to be edited. While these observations hold true – at least part of the time – there remains another, incontrovertible, truth: 20/20 is a total blast.

With the exception of the single Mirrors, which seems best suited for a supermarket checkout line, The 20/20 Experience is an absolutely delicious guilty pleasure.

It’s a little too self-indulgent – the 'serious' work of a man who’s starred in an Oscar-winning film, rather than the energetic pop of a successful boyband escapee, but there’s no doubt he’s still got it.

In 2013 JT’s on that marriage and luxury bath shit and while it’s a good listen, every song drags.

The 20/20 Experience is an album that will only grow with repeated listens, and is an apt if slightly underwhelming addition to his story so far.

On 20/20, the Timberlake/Timbaland team seems content to set up a basic (and more often than not, bland) hook, repeat it ad infinitum, and tack on some superfluous bits until the desired, bloated end product comes into being. 

A pleasant and grown but tedious release from a charismatic entertainer and exceptional vocal arranger who is not a great recording artist.

Even with his boundary-pushing songs and numerous (and often fascinating) interludes, he is still only a somewhat decent songwriter, and it’s Timbaland who winds up picking a lot of JT’s slack