FutureSex/LoveSounds by Justin Timberlake
FutureSex/LoveSounds is the second studio album by American singer-songwriter Justin Timberlake, released by Jive Records on September 12, 2006. After a two-year hiatus during when Timberlake felt unable to record new songs, he returned to collaborating with record producer Timbaland. Along with the latter's protégé, Danja, the three mainly wrote FutureSex/LoveSounds and much of the album's contents were produced in Timbaland's Thomas Crown Studios. Although it shares lyrical themes with Timberlake's debut album, Justified, FutureSex/LoveSounds is much more diverse in its music. It infuses R&B and pop with techno, funk, and elements of rock, the last being the genre that was the main inspiration of Timberlake during the album's recording. The reprises and interludes interspersed on the album's tracklist were an attempt by the production team at channeling Timberlake's influences which include David Bowie and Prince. FutureSex/LoveSounds was released to generally positive reviews, in which most critics noted the influences in the album and its collection of eclectic sounds. The album produced six singles that attained chart success, including US number-one hits "SexyBack", "My Love", and "What Goes Around... Comes Around". Rolling Stone magazine ranked the album at number 46 on its list of the best albums of the 2000s, and aside from earning numerous best-of lists, the album received several Grammy Award nominations, including Album of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Album. It has been certified multi-platinum in many countries worldwide, and has sold over ten million copies, with four million in the United States alone.
After the multi-platinum, Grammy-winning success of Justin Timberlake’s 2002 solo debut <i>Justified</i>, it was clear *NSYNC was not simply on “hiatus”, as the members of the boy band claimed; in fact, the group had now gone bye, bye, bye. That meant Timberlake could flex his solo superstardom on his 2006 follow-up, <i>FutureSex/LoveSounds</i>. And flex he did, strong-arming into submission any suggestion of a possible sophomore slump with the unswervable swagger of a young heart-throb seemingly destined to become a pop dynamo. And while <i>Justified</i> found Timberlake channelling fellow boy-band alum Michael Jackson on such hits as “Like I Love You” and “Rock Your Body”, <i>FutureSex/LoveSounds</i> was the album in which the singer got naughty (if never nasty). “Sexy Ladies”, with its thumping bass and squealing synths, updated Prince’s 1979 banger “Sexy Dancer” for a next-gen player, while the dizzying high of “LoveStoned” is like a sped-up riff on The Purple One’s <i>1999</i> jam “Lady Cab Driver”. Then there’s the futuristic funk of <i>FutureSex/LoveSounds</i>’ title track, as well as its first single “SexyBack”, which saw into an alternate universe where Timberlake was the love child of Prince and George Clinton. And while <i>Justified</i> was produced by both Timbaland and The Neptunes’ Pharrell and Chad Hugo, <i>FutureSex/LoveSounds</i> was largely a Timberlake-and-Timbaland joint (with additional behind-the-boards work from long-time Timbaland collaborator Nate “Danja” Hills). And just as much as the album is a Timberlake triumph, it is a full-length showcase of peak Timbaland talents—especially on the two-part, shape-shifting stunts “Let Me Talk to You/My Love”, “LoveStoned/I Think She Knows” and “What Goes Around…/…Comes Around”. Both the T.I.-assisted “My Love” and the “Cry Me a River” sequel “What Goes Around…” followed “SexyBack” to No. 1, proving that Timberlake’s chart-topping future was here and now. But while <i>FutureSex/LoveSounds</i> was a step (or three) into pop’s beyond, there is some old-school romance and R&B on the album too, from the smooth Stylistics moves of “Until the End of Time” to the James Brown throwdown of “Damn Girl”. Then, on the Rick Rubin-produced closer “(Another Song) All Over Again”, Timberlake even conjures up Donny Hathaway, proving just how much <i>FutureSex/LoveSounds</i>—one of the defining pop albums of the early 21st century—brought the past into the present on a time-travelling spaceship.
