Justin Timberlake - The 20/20 Experience & The Class Warfare Of Cool - A Video Essay
Vložit
- čas přidán 4. 06. 2023
- In this special comment and video essay, we discuss Justin Timberlake, his lengthy history, his twin releases in 2013, and explore the crux point between his career and the separate notions of class and cool.
Script:
Resources:
www.salon.com/2019/12/26/how-...
philosophynow.org/issues/80/W...
chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/www.usf.edu/cbcs/documents/in...
qz.com/1928087/how-black-amer...
www.hollywoodreporter.com/new...
• Timbral Vision: Ear Fa...
www.cheatsheet.com/entertainm...
thegrio.com/2023/04/18/no-jus...
thegrio.com/2020/05/18/justin...
www.elitedaily.com/dating/bri...
Join my Patreon experiment: / spectrumpulse
If you want to read the essay in text, or check out any additional reviews I've done so far, go to www.spectrum-pulse.ca for more. Otherwise, be sure to like and subscribe for more!
Thanks for watching!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Spectrum Pulse, music, review, 2013, album, album review, react, reaction, video essay, Justin Timberlake, Justin Timberlake review, Justin Timberlake album review, Justin Timberlake The 20/20 Experience, Justin Timberlake The 20/20 Experience review, Justin Timberlake The 20/20 Experience album review, Justin Timberlake The 20/20 Experience 2 of 2, The 20/20 Experience, The 20/20 Experience 2 of 2, R&B, Pop, Futuresex/Lovesounds, Justified, Timbaland, Cool, Class, Class Warfare, Nelly Furtado, Pharrell, Clipse, NSYNC,
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#SpectrumPulse #videoessay #justintimberlake - Hudba
that snap transition into royals was absolutely incredible 10/10 would recommend
Holy crap I was NOT expecting an essay for this album at all, glad I'm not the only one who even remembers this album
this aged well
It is an interesting thing to think about, the relationship of 'cool' to music success, because it was very clearly split in the 90s and early 2000s, you were mainstream if you were cool, and you were independent 'indie' if you were not. There was a big barrier for me to like pop music then as I was not good looking, not rich, not popular, so even all the time that I focused at the time trying to make music, I knew that I did not have the 'cool' that would ever lead me to success, even if I made things that I liked, or that many people did. The increased diversity of 'cool' in modern music is more relatable for me, I like a lot of mainstream pop music more because it is made by ugly nerds now. But I think overall we have lost something by losing 'cool'. We lost the idea that we can aspire to change to grow to succeed in that same way. People now don't even think they can ever buy a house, and that is likely true. And the main dominant attitude is performative liberalism and trying not to offend anyone, while musicians used to purposefully offend to be more popular. For the record JT is pretty enjoyable.
I'm not gonna lie here, Mark.
I replayed the part where you said "King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard" more than any other time. Mostly because it's funny to bring that band name up in a video about Justin Timberlake, but also because it's true. I'd also add Buckethead to that list, but I'm not sure where you stand on his work, so yeahhhh. Anyways, another home run of a video essay. Keep it up!
post-essay comment and timestamps incoming soon!
before i go further, i feel very validated in inferring the connectedness of these 2023 essays (plus the 2021 one) and seeing it play out
Love these. A lot. Please keep talking at length to settle decade old scores
Good stuff. As with other artists I'm interested in trying to trace Timberlake's career decline in the present day. I do wonder how much of it has to do with Gen Z's awareness of the factors behind the scenes (particularly his impact on Janet Jackson and Britney Spears) in a post MeToo world.
Then again it could just be that his music got worse.
moreso the latter i bet. if his next album is actually back to his better quality music and he’s not tryna do any anti cancel petty shit than i can see him having some kind of a resurgence.
these long form retrospective videos are fucking masterpieces. please keep making them!
You can most definitely quantify cool it's called social capital at the macro level
There are methodologies in place to help you assess the monetary value of Social Capital if that's what you want to do and it's in the realm of Economics not in the realm of Marketing necessarily but I suppose it could be.
It's almost like I referenced social capital in the video and highlighted how fuzzy it can be. There's no objective measurement of it, and the econ supporting it (speaking as someone with an econ degree) is about as bad as your average supply side diatribe.
The funny thing about life is that we never know that we are living through a societal/cultural shift until we are about 10 years away from it. Releasing an album right in the middle of a major shift like that is risky business, cause you can either come up with a decade defining album like Futuresex/Lovesounds, or release a flop like 20/20 that the public is painfully not going to resonate with, but well... you have no way of knowing. Thank you for this amazing analysis, I forgot that album existed and I'm def gonna listen to it now to see how much my opinion differs from back when it just came out, cause I remember liking it a lot.
1:06:56 A+ transition there.
Justin’s unfortunate and somewhat justified decline in the public eye is the product of him being able to sidestep scandals and controversy at ease.
As the video contextualises the luxury of ‘coolness’ bestowed upon predominantly white males in the 00’s, we also have to remember Justin’s proximity to black music offering a sense of security. He essentially had the best of both worlds.
Then factor in his flawless discography up until the publicly panned man of the woods, you couldn’t tell him nothing.
Although revisionist history positions Justin as a washed up pop star, for many of us we can still identify him as being one of if not the leading male artist of the 00’s alongside contemporaries like Usher.
This current album cycle will be interesting. He’s recently announced a tour which was sold out most of its venues indicating an audience that still buys into his star power. I feel like it’s a matter of whether he’s able to make the music connect. Selfish was decent appetiser but nothing noteworthy.
Spectacular work Mark. Always been allergic to Timberlake for reasons I could only half identify but I think a lot of this shone a spotlight on just why he’s always been an uphill battle for me as someone whose very nearly in between Gen Z and Gen X
Now that you mention it, in the past decade of increased demand for things like social justice and inclusion, the likes of Timberlake have been either absent or silent on such matters. Most people trying to build up their brand these days end up becoming an ally to at least one movement, but the "cool" crowd still considers itself above such things.
Okay but I'm super into the idea of a compilation of "Mark looking ridiculous in hindsight" (The Iggy Azalea review comes to mind tbh)
This is pretty good. Learned a whole lot from JT
beautifully written essay Mark!
Another banger!
Great album
Timberlake dissed Prince on stage at the 2007 Golden Globe awards one year. Timberlake insulted Prince's height.
Awesome video
Great video.
In terms of quantifying like one sense of cool like on the micro level you can look at self-efficacy assessment scores to quantify cool
APPLAUSE and much needed
An essay as long as the album that is the subject of it sounds about right 😌
I don't know if there's a way to describe something as aging even better than wine, like somehow exponentially getting better in a relatively short period of time, but this review has accomplished that.
I’d more call this The dissection of Justin Timberlake cuz DAMNNNN
10:13 Strange thing to point out but what is it with pop/R&B music videos and 7-Elevens?
I was ready and waiting for that Thrift Shop drop. It was glorious and well built to
I feel like the meat of your argument/essay has some merit to it, and I'm happy you've made this video because I don't think I've ever seen a retrospective like this addressed for a "modern" artist.
BUT I also notice that a lot of heavy lifting is being done by your opinions and inferences as opposed to quantifiable and searchable facts. Especially when it comes to the whole "what is cool" and "why no one talks about" so and so. The truth is, the reason why no one talks about the 20/20 experience (or part 2 for that matter) is not because of a supposedly perceived lack of "coolness" or being somewhat out of touch with the general musical audience of the time, and is moreso because that era of music (stretching all the way up until very recently) was predominantly overrun by rap/hip-hop, broadly speaking. Nobody talks about ANYTHING from that milieu of time really unless it's for retrospectives like this.
I know this will come off as a tad rude (and I sincerely don't mean it to be, it's largely a matter of fact sort of statement despite it being somewhat judgmental), but anyone who was "cool" then and remains "cool" now to the vast majority of non chemically imbalanced individuals would have found both Future/Sex LoveSounds and The 20/20 Experience cool in their own ways. As I'm sure you know, there's multiple angles upon which you can attain and/or hold onto the conception of being cool.
To address just a few things: by your tone you've made it seem like he, in his Justified era, was brown nosing his way up and making connections cynically with popular and successful songwriters and producers/rappers which allowed him to work on and achieve the success he attained with that album and his subsequent albums. The less cynical and I'd argue more accurate truth of the matter is that he was a hyper competent and talented kid who attracted the admiration of others in the same industry he literally grew up in. He was the lead singer/dancer of one of the most popular boy-bands ever for crying out loud! That's literally as natural a progression in terms of "clout" as can be conceived of given how the industry functions in terms of investments.
The Jacksons points are really weak. For Michael, you're almost admonishing him for being fortunate enough to get some of the songs MJ "could have had" but for extraneous circumstances. Who's to say that they would have been as successful given that period of time in MJ's life and career? Who's to say they weren't successful specifically because they were JT's songs? If I thought you actually cared very much about any of this beyond the thought experiment I'd say you're almost being bitter. Bitter at what or whom? I couldn't say definitively, but I have some thoughts (lol).
With Janet, there's at least SOME room for discussion as he was directly involved. But ultimately it was an accident. At least as far as he and Janet were concerned. The pull was part of the routine and something unexpected occurred. Would you have him prostrate to her and beg for forgiveness? They both signed up for that performance. If in a stunt one part of a duo dies and the other lives does the survivor owe any other party an apology? I don't think even she would have expected that, it's a very strange and telling way to look at the world. He did admit culpability in the mid 2000s as you mentioned and noted the disparity in how things played out, but this idea that he should be "more apologetic" for something he is not to blame for just doesn't make sense to me. I can't quite put my finger on it as to why, but I'm leaning towards what I mentioned above about him not having enough guilt for his fortune and this leading to bitterness from people who want to tear down those who are with or without merit above them in some way. As I said, it's quite telling about a person's character and philosophy (wink wink).
As @erickent4248 said in his comment below, we don't want to throw away the "cool" you criticized in this video as just a negative thing without merit or function. It gives us something to aspire to be with any and all our flaws. Perhaps we can be better in ways and worse in others. That "machismo" that was a product of its time as you mentioned, was cool because it was largely attractive to most women. Whilst that might not be the goal for everyone, the function yet remains.
Yes, cool is subjective and autonomous and not a fixed position. I agreed with your assessments there and how they applied to JT as an artist. But sometimes beyond the theory and hypothetical there exist people who check so many boxes over a long enough period of time that at some point you have to let go of the bitterness (or whatever contextualization of the same concept you or anyone else might have in mind) and just accept that some people cement the concept of hierarchies with good reason and attempting to deconstruct and therefore flatten this particular notion of a hierarchy is the equivalent of intellectual masturbation in the hopes that someone holds the same fetish as you. I personally don't, but I have enjoyed sinking my teeth into this, so once again thank you for your thoughts and for the video! :)
A few points I want to respond to here, beyond the stuff that I already acknowledged: (JT was super-talented, although there are thousands of hyper-talented individuals who don't get anywhere in the industry without industry backing behind them, and there are decades of history that support that assessment).
Let's handle the Jacksons piece first. Am I bitter that Michael didn't get a bunch of the songs that Justin wrote for Justified? Nah, not really - I didn't like them on Justified, so a better performer probably wasn't going to elevate them much - but it's interesting to highlight how they were generally better than the majority of what was on 'Invincible', and it's a fascinating 'what might have been' conversation. I bring that up alongside the Janet situation more to provide illustrative context of how Timberlake generally treated the Jacksons in his orbit.
Speaking of which, Janet - I wasn't expecting him to prostrate himself and absorb all victimhood here, BUT it's very telling how for about twenty years he conveniently avoided the majority of responsibility altogether. He chose to show up to the Grammys that barred Janet, he didn't extend to her the same feature opportunities he'd later give Madonna, throughout the 2000s he basically hung her out to dry as the primary figure absorbing all of the backlash, which even for an accident is tasteless as hell, especially given his remarks around that era. This is not a matter of bitterness for his success as you've circled around so much as 'hey, maybe don't be an asshole to the woman who took your band on tour when you were first starting and then you ripped her clothes off on public television'.
The conversation surrounding machismo is fascinating, because while to some it absolutely has aged badly, to many others it hasn't - it's still an ideal of cool that effectively goes unchallenged - that's kind of the point I made in discussing cool all the way through, it reveals the lack of cool on my part to even bring up or challenge such a power dynamic, to many it just IS. But I find that very telling in the context of pop music of this era, not just from JT but also those that followed in his wake or used his formula (see: Blurred Lines). In a case such as that, the argument becomes not that Robin Thicke stepped out of bounds with 'Blurred Lines', but he didn't do it well, the wielder of that power was ill-equipped for it, not that his usage was wrong, which is where I think you may be approaching this.
And that's where I ultimately feel our points diverge: you place a lot of value in these hierarchies as self-evident in their results, and view critique of them as 'intellectual masturbation' - which from a certain conservative point of view with disdain towards postmodern analysis like I provided, I understand, which is why for much of this I did acknowledge how much it worked at the time for its audience AND for me (I'm not pure postmodernist :D). I think what I find most interesting is how said hierarchies evolve and change with time, as the rules get rewritten and one's place seems to shift, often for no great scandal than more innocuous reasons like overexposure or just weaker music. That's kind of the point I was going for with the piece that came from my research, not that there is some grand critique of cool or power structures that brought him down, but that JT's career imploded for ultimately less poignant reasons - less poetic, but more realistic and ultimately compelling. Sometimes the story has to come to you, not the one you want to project onto it.
Glad you enjoyed the video, though - I really appreciate some good, thoughtful analysis here :)
@@SpectrumPulseI'd just liked to add that Janet herself said in her documentary that people should stop blaming Justin and that she told him to not defend her at the time, because apparently he wanted to defend her.
@@SpectrumPulse I accept your acknowledgement and I'm not necessarily saying you don't think he was talented, what I AM saying is that this sort of analysis is vapid and uninteresting because in the same vein as there being innumerable artists that are very talented that never make it, there are also almost just as many artists that aren't particularly talented that do make it due to an "industry push". I am sure you'd agree with me in saying that Justin is certainly not in the the latter and wouldn't have made it even half as far as he has without his talent and competence in his field. You seem to have dodged my main criticism of your tone and pointed angle at which you've set out your diatribe lol.
So if the songs apparently weren't that good to begin with and Justin didn't even have anything to do with them being given to him in the first place, how exactly are to tying this into the Janet situation? There is not comparison to be made because JT is not an active party in this situation. As I said, you're reaching to make a not very original and very much exhausted point that has circled around certain online communities for decades now. It's all so trite.. not because it isn't worth discussing but because whenever someone wants to mention this period in history they only seem to want to remember what's convenient to their already held agendas.
As to what @LeonLindProductions said in his response, I don't know for sure the validity of what he's saying but I wouldn't put much doubt in it being true. The reality of the situation is that Moonves is the big evil villain people should be pointing fingers at. It is quite literally entirely his fault why the incident was made a meal of with respect to Janet and her career and what shows/ceremonies she was invited to etc. It's a lot easier to blame a face you recognize and hear about often than it is to hold accountable those who are truly behind it. It's cool to blame JT because of the percieved punching up that's happening when doing so. God forbid you try and have a nuanced and actually well thought out opinion on a matter and people give you vacant expressions because they're lacking critical information and want to take out their vitriol against the easiest target. JT didn't dodge responsibility because he wasn't responsible to begin with, it's not like it wasn't a pre-rehearsed wardrobe malfunction ffs lol. He is not being an asshole, the asshole is Moonvez. But obviously a relic like him wouldn't attract views or wouldn't be convenient to assign virtually all the blame to because then all your interconnected threads seem as flimsy as they are.
Yes, I would say this is a lot more interesting to discuss because I am of the firm belief that JT's version of machismo hasn't aged particularly badly unless you literally live and breathe inside niche online post-modernist circles. What HAS aged poorly would be the Blurred Lines version of it. It's a lot more blasé, on the nose and tasteless and as such I think that song was truly a product of that time period and was snipped off the branches of common societal norms fairly quickly as it should have been.
I wouldn't say Blurred Lines was a good approach but bad execution at all, it was just a poorly written song overly relying on shock value be that in its lyrics or MV for viral/commercial success.
The Robin Thicke comparison is a bit of a red herring really. The crux of my issue and criticism is mostly with the idea that you can deconstruct something or even challenge it without having something to say for what you'd replace it with or amend it to be (with rigorous explanations and justifications). The intellectual masturbation comment wasn't just something I came up with to bash you with, but I'd argue a very astute assessment of the vast majority of postmodern thought. For example, how you have based your entire "essay" on the preconception that somehow JT's career has "imploded"! LOL Man of the Woods sold well over a million copies just like the rest of his previously "commercially successful albums. For one thing, that album was released 5 years ago, and just because that particular album didn't seep quite so profusely into the cultural zeitgeist of its time quite like his first 2 albums did doesn't mean that his career has imploded. It was an artistic choice/approach, which obviously didn't ring off quite as well with the general public. That's a nothing burger of the highest order if you ask me..
If you can't even ground your main axiom into something real without reaching as hard as Michael Jordan did in Space Jam then whatever you come up with as a result of your research comes across as vapid, (as I mentioned earlier) unnuanced and borderline magazine gossip column-y.
To put it simply you took an almost interesting concept and overextended your opinions and inferences to make it "interesting" when it could have just been very informative.
@@besimhasani8776 so I ain't denying that JT is talented, even if a lot of the art he made with said talent isn't to my taste. It's not a mutually exclusive thing: you can have incredibly talented people who don't go anywhere and those who aren't talented who get an industry push and succeed. The point I made with JT coming out of N'SYNC is that he did have that backing which was why he got so big and was able to be so teflon for so long. That's a fact, and there are plenty of acts who got analogous privilege - Beyonce, Taylor Swift, early Eminem, Usher is a big one - as well as plenty who did not. It's not to disparage JT's talent, but to acknowledge there's another layer here that certainly helped - two things can be true at once.
Now for the Jackson conversation - I brought up the Michael piece alongside Janet specifically because it showcases a trend of how Timberlake treated top tier Black talent specifically from the Jackson family and with Prince. It was not always consistent - which I also brought up - but it did speak to Timberlake's behaviour in how he treated living legends who were at least as talented as him from a different era. It's not an straightforward indictment on his legacy - as I indicated from the very beginning, there are plenty of complexifiers here - but it's worth acknowledging that there are a lot of Black folks who give JT the side-eye to this day because of those actions, even if Janet tried to place the majority of the blame on herself (which is a complicated conversation around Black women in the 2000s that I'm probably not equipped to fully unpack). I felt it was important to include that because the Black experience interlaced with cool is an important part of JT's appeal, and unraveling that is important.
And yes, Moonves is the predominant asshole here - I made sure to highlight that - but you seem to be drinking from the conspiracy puddle that Janet and Justin rehearsed all of this and it just went too far as an accident, which can't really proven one way or the other, there's plenty of conflicting evidence and accounts here. What is true is that JT dodged the blowback Janet got both in the industry (Grammys) and popular culture, and wasn't particularly articulate in his responses from direct media quotes at the time, which are on record and are quoted here, and he was doing so in an environment that that was inclined to give him all the grace that Janet would never get (which is systemic, political, and no, I'm not about to shy away from that observation).
And here's the funny thing: I actually agree with you that JT's brand of machismo hasn't aged much in terms of popular culture, in that to many it works and STILL works, especially to a more old-fashioned, conservative demo, and where 'Blurred Lines' has "aged poorly" is where there aren't those same glamours of cool, or those that are attempted but fail. But that's my point: they both rely on the same systemic advantages but it all comes down to execution, so maybe it's worth asking the question when the glamour is dispelled, what's really going on here? That's the question worth raising, and I get the impression you don't want to have that conversation ;) And that extends into JT's later music: the cool dissipated, there's less to analyze, and while 'Man Of The Woods' went platinum three years after its release (that's what persistent streaming playlist placement will do, because note this was not album sales but 'album-equivalent units'), nobody is seriously checking for new Justin Timberlake. I agree that to many, folks don't care about bad reviews and the name will draw enough - my next planned essay will have PLENTY on this subject with a far less 'cool' subject at its core - but he had a track with SZA that went nowhere, folks don't seem to be checking for a new Justin Timberlake album or single, and 'The 20/20 Experience' (and especially its sequel) has evaporated from discourse, and given we're in its tenth anniversary year, that's interesting to observe!
I think to your point, there IS nuance here - but you don't really want to engage with it because it's a 'postmodern' state that requires you question power structures rather than acknowledge their implicit reality... which I did ANYWAY lol, mostly to illustrate what was going on to an audience in the 2000s. And if you're coming here for just rote regurgitation of facts... nah, this is an essay, I'm looking to make points and expand conversation... but I found the limits where you want to go. Ehh, them's the breaks - sometimes I can't help myself ;)
@@besimhasani8776 You hit the nail on the head. There's also the point to mention that we do not know any of these celebrity figures *personally*. As their personal interactions are likely to shape their experience/perceptions with regard to one another. Justin's history with The Jacksons predates the "MJ Rejected/Justified cuts" and "Nipplegate"; it starts back in '98 when *NSYNC opened for Janet's US Swing for "The Velvet Rope Tour". During that tenure, it has been implied that the 2 actually dated or began a sexual relationship of some sort VERY briefly back as early as ''02. (Missy Elliot's Party in Miami in 2002).
welcome to pop music university
hey dudes how’s it going
❤❤❤
You are the swag messiah
Nobody:
Mark: B A S E D
You're cool though
First!
I don't see how Timberlake dissing Prince after Prince dissed him is in poor taste. It's all part of the popularity stunts that a list celebrities all engage in, and I'm pretty sure that very few of them actually take any of it seriously. They shouldn't anyway.
Great video in any case.
I love both of these albums from 2013, Man of the Woods sucked in my opinion, his Everything I Thought It Was album that's coming out next week is gonna be fire
Months later…how are you liking that album?
3:57 Looking at you, Robin Thicke!
Honestly, the more that I watch this, the more that I'm just happy that the pop music he makes is a thing of the past. He benefitted off of the culture of the US at it's absolute worst, especially when he laughed in the face of all the consequences that the women around him (like Janet and Britney) had to face
Great video essay!!! I know this must’ve been tiresome to shoot and edit. But, it would be awesome if you would do more!!! I would love to see one on Alice In Chains, Britney Spears, Mariah Carey, Pink Floyd, Metallica, and The Cranberries. The conversation around what’s cool is really fascinating when it comes to music stars and the way society views them. I personally think Justin Timberlake is an asshole of a person, and as far as him as a music artist, I think he’s a decent talent. He always seemed to lack identity in his aesthetic and I think he’s always boasted himself up, way more than he can back up. I think as far as nowadays, he’s still stuck in the 00’s and that’s not really relevant anymore and he’s having trouble to grab people. Especially with the truth of what Britney just released from her memoir, it’s definitely shown who he really is I think that’s a definite reason to why people have flipped on him. But, it’s going to be interesting to what he puts out next and how much people are going to support it, (which I doubt he’ll get that much) I think his music career is in the dumps.
He really did fall of tho lmao
You spent to much time in Justin Timberlake career. Its not that deep. Justin Timberlake also spent time in his movie career. Opinions isn't that special every one has one. Justin Timberlake will continue on with his career. All artists have hits and misses.
Except it is that deep lmao
@@xangrycatmanx5104it’s not 😂 Justin’s appeal has been obvious since the nsync days
wow his lyrics are misogynistic
Wow JT was way worse than we previously thought, yikes.
The embodiment of white privilege in one man, the fact he got to do tributes to BOTH Prince and Michael is disgusting.
Please don't let him come back, by god he's really trying.
He's back and you'll just have to deal
@@JT-cx2evis he though? Selfish didn't really go anywhere on the charts and I straight up FORGOT his album came out recently! I don't think his comeback is anything people care about today.