Friday 6 April 2012

Justin Timberlake 'What Goes Around... Comes Around'

Chart Peak: 4

YouTube
JT scored a Top 10 hit with the "beautiful yet haunting" single 'What Goes Around Comes Around' in February 2007... The epic music video for the track stars Hollywood siren Scarlett Johansson and features a nine-minute long director's cut which even has film credits!
Before the Bank Holiday break I was crediting Take That for their strategy, and Timberlake is another act who has done well on that score. In the ten years he's been a solo artist, he's released only two albums but not only have those both been massive sellers, he's created such demand for his work that every guest spot he does on somebody else's record turns into a major event and usually a major hit too.

This present track was the third single from the painfully-titled second album FutureSex/LoveSounds, and you were wondering why the ellipsis in the title, which makes it look like he thinks the "comes around" part is a surprising and amusing punchline, rather than the utterly conventional cliché it is. It transpires that 'Comes Around' is an "interlude" in the album version which has been excised from this single edit, though it still goes on for five minutes even in this form. The song is a big string-laden ballad which openly rehashes elements of his earlier big hit 'Cry Me A River', to the extent that I sometimes struggle to remember which lines are from which of the songs. Strangely, I find this one preferable to the original, because I like the melody slightly more and the production is better, but well-done as it is it doesn't greatly change my perception of Timberlake as the successor to Mick Hucknall - a man who has genuine talent but overshadows it with his arrogance and smarm. They are of course both going to cry all the way to the bank if they read this.

Also appearing on: Now 54, 55, 56, 57, 65, 67
Available on: R&B Love Songs 2010 [Explicit]

No comments:

Post a Comment