Justin Timberlake's 'Man of the Woods' gets savaged by Pitchfork
Justin Timberlake's fifth solo album Man of the Woods released on Friday and immediately got torn to pieces by Pitchfork.
Man of the Woods comes in at 66 minutes with 15 and a half songs and Pitchfork's Jamieson Cox could barely find any moments worth praising, calling large swaths of the record shallow and uninspired. And that's a pretty fair assessment.
Here are some of the hard-hitting highlights from Cox's savage review of JT's Man of the Woods:
"Man of the Woods is a misstep large enough to merit relitigating Justin Timberlake’s status as a pop superstar."
"Instead of surging forward with a new vision for pop music, it leans on the sounds and genres that have become American comfort food: country, soul, funk, disco, gospel."
"Too much of Man of the Woods is musically and thematically shallow; at 66 minutes, it’s a mile wide and an inch deep."
"“Midnight Summer Jam” is a sub-Robin Thicke boogie with a sub-John Popper harmonica solo; “Sauce” is Beyoncé’s “Don’t Hurt Yourself” cut with a jug full of pond water."
"And there’s no refuge from the lyrics, which in many places engender the same mix of emotions you’d confront upon walking in on your parents having sex."
Rough.
Cox isn't completely immune to Timberlake's latest album though. They name "Higher Higher," "Montana," and "Breeze off the Pond" as some ear-worthy highlights with a some actual musical and lyrical substance to them.
"Timberlake is such an abjectly poor lyricist that scraps like these feel like manna from heaven," Cox wrote.
Other reviews of Man of the Woods are pretty mixed. Rolling Stone dug the album, calling parts of it "his most exploratory music in years." Variety spoke pretty positively about Man of the Woods, saying, "it’s hard to imagine anyone who ever liked Timberlake not having a blast for most of the duration of Man of the Woods," with the caveat that you may need to look past the album's marketing and the lyrics.
You can take a listen to Man of the Woods here:
