15 on the Hot 100 but never climbing higher, and not even making the cut for her halftime set list the next February. But it wasn’t 2009 anymore, “Illusion” sounded badly out of step with contemporary radio, and the single essentially bricked, debuting at No. Lady Gaga’s “Perfect Illusion” arrived nearly a year and a half ago with similar confidence in the infallibility of its surging disco stomp, sounding closer to the grit and grime of early-days Gaga than Stefani had in a minute. The best reference point for “Filthy” might not come from Justin Timberlake, but from another planetary pop star whose place in the late-’10s sun is similarly unclear - and who also had a Super Bowl gig on the horizon. Rather, it seems like Timberlake is instead flashing back to his creative and commercial peak, even though repeating the past in those terms may prove rather difficult, given that he’s now 36 and no longer unquestioned at pop’s epicenter. That was probably never totally realistic, and from most of the verbage used in this article to describe “Filthy” up to this point, you can probably guess that JT’s not gonna be playing this one at the CMA’s anytime soon. Of course, Man of the Woods wasn’t billed as Justin Timberlake letting pop fans know what the weather was like from 2028: It was supposed to be a return to his roots, which - combined with his recent broship with Chris Stapleton, and this week’s largely misguided 60-second teaser trailer featuring Timberlake as a shallowly introspective combination of Thoreau and Bon Iver - had fans predicting a country-folk album from the Memphis native. “Filthy” doesn’t quite get there, either: Over a decade has passed since JT and Timbo first changed the game, and though the new single carries the surprise of a now-Adult Contemporary-friendly Justin once again getting his hands dirty, it can’t carry the same shock of the new that FS/LS did when it arrived like a time-traveling warning from pop’s future. “FutureSex/LoveSound” wasn’t as hook-reliant as “SexyBack” - letting its monstrous wriggle do most of the heavy lifting - but sounded just as alien, and just as exciting. The real comparison, though, is with that album’s non-single title track, which also led off the set, as “Filthy” will on the upcoming Man of the Woods album. Of course, what that song also had was hooks - crazy hooks, zooming in from every direction, making the song irresistible from its opening lyrics - and a menacing urgency that made it yowl out of the speakers. If there’s an obvious refrain to “Filthy,” well, maybe we could’ve used Timbaland in the background shouting out “ Take ’em to the chorus!” stage directions on this one, too.Įverything Justin Timberlake Has Done Since 'The 20/20 Experience' Like this left turn, “Sexy” sounded beamed in from an alternate-universe Top 40, a sandpaper groove with a naughty lyric (plus some legit F-bombs!) and a merciless thump to it that made the rest of radio instantly feel like Howie Day by comparison. What version of JT is it, then? Well, the much-easier reference point would of course be “SexyBack,” the jaw- and ass-dropping lead single to Timberlake’s epochal second solo full-length FutureSex/LoveSounds. “No, this ain’t the cleeeeeean ver-SION!” he yelps in the song’s most brain-sticking bit, and while the rest of the song doesn’t get much more explicit than “Would you mind if I do/ Exactly what you like, times two?” it’s clear which kind of “clean” he means: This isn’t GQ photo-shoot JT, and certainly not hit single off the Trolls soundtrack JT. He throws in callback references to JAY-Z and Snoop Dogg as if they’d just occurred to him while he was vamping. The choruses sound like verses, the verses sound like ad libs. Meanwhile, Justin - whose “Suit” falsetto was delivered with the exactitude of a man hoping he’d be making as many people dance with it at weddings 40 years from now as “September” does today - sounds like he’s just kinda riffing throughout.
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