Switched on Pop - Justin Timberlake's Identity Crisis

Episode Date: January 11, 2018

What's up with Justin Timberlake? Two years ago he gifted us the ebullient family-friendly jam "Can't Stop the Feeling," now he's on the cusp of a deeply serious new record called "Man of the Woods," whose first single, strangely, is a bit of electro-funk snarl expertly produced by long-time collaborators Timbaland and Danja. What's going on here—who is JT trying to be? We listen deep to his latest, "Filthy," to try and understand its creator's conflicting musical worlds.  Featuring: Justin Timberlake - Filthy Justin Timberlake - Cry Me A River Bernard Hermann - Psycho Ken Nordine - My Baby Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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It's free for iOS users. Hello, Charlie. Happy new years, Nate. It is a new year, and there is so much music to look forward to over-analyzing in 2018. I cannot wait to put the future pop hits under our microscope. We've had a little break. Yeah, and already, I feel like if we wanted to, we could do the best songs of 2018. There's so many things.

So I'm curious what you've brought to me. What I've brought is not necessarily one of the great songs of 2018, but I think it will be an unavoidable song of 2018 because it's from one of the biggest pop stars we have right now, someone we've covered before. It's the latest from Justin Timberlake, and it's called Filthy. Baby, don't you mind if I do. Exactly what you like, don't do.

Baby, don't you might, if I do, put your filthy hands all over me. I don't know if you know this, but Filthy is off of his new album, Man of the Woods. He released the track list, and there's a bunch of songs clearly relating to him living out on a ranch in Montana. And so he has songs like Montana is one of them, and another one is flannel. But this song is Filthy. I like Filthy. It's a good track. No, and I'm glad you mentioned the track list of his forthcoming album, because actually,

What I want to talk about is the sort of uneasy coexistence of these different songs, Filthy and Flannel. How do these live in the same universe? And in fact, I think within this new track, Filthy, we can almost hear Justin Timberlake having an identity crisis. Oh, absolutely. For a song that's called Filthy, there's a lot of elements in here that may surprise you. So I want to go through the song and see all these different musical and lyrical parts that

do not quite fit together. Let's press play because the mayhem begins at the very beginning of this track. So based on the beginning of this song, what kind of musical world are we dwelling in here? We're going into 80s hair metal. Yes, exactly, right. Raging distorted guitars, this interval of the tritone at the very beginning. Those are the first two notes we get. That's the most dissonant musical interval.

in Western music. Totally. That's like the note you play on a flying V guitar while like sticking your tongue out and maybe like making the devil's horns in one hand at the same time. So we're starting in conflict and it sounds like this epic rock song that we're about to land in. Yes. But then as soon as we are stepped into this world of hair metal, motley crew, tritone, devilish, epic stadium rock, we are gone and we are in at the first verse of this song an entirely different world.

And then my hate is going to say it's fake. And then in the next portion, here we are, and what are we hearing here? I mean, this is a fascinating moment for me because it is such a harsh, synthesizer line and it is taking up almost the entirety of the musical spectrum here. Yeah, it's kind of like a dub-stepy screeching howling sound. Yes, also perhaps with some references to 80s print style electro-funk. Yes, I mean, Charlie, can I call on your production expertise here to offer any insight into the construction of this harsh angular synthesizer sound?

Yeah, this sounds like a digital synthesizer. which is heavily distorted and has a lot of harmonic content. And the producer, Justin is back with Timbaland and also, who's the other? Danger. Danger with a Jake. Danger. The producers here are using some pretty cool sound selection. They're taking this big, distorted, nasty sound, which you know, you kind of feel like we heard some of that in the beginning.

But what they're doing is they're filtering it all out really quickly. So as soon as you hear that big kind of sound, it gets. it's cut off and they're playing with this cut off of those upper harmonic frequencies to create a rhythmic groove from what could sound like a lion roar distorted guitar blended together. Thank you for that and I'm glad you mentioned the producers here, Timbaland and Dangea, because what I want to do in the first half of this episode is really focus on the musical world of this song and then in the second half kind of move to the lyrical plane. Okay.

And in both these worlds, musical and lyrical, I think we're going to find these moments where opposites sort of collide. Beginning with this one we've just experienced where we move from the stadium rock anthem to the electro-funk world. Let's stay in the world of this verse for a second. We have the angular synthesizer. We have a bass drum. And I think the only other sound here besides the vocal is this kind of high-piercing

shriek that for now I'll just refer to as the psycho motive based on Bernard Herman's famous score for the movie Psycho. Wee, wee, we, we, we, we, we... What my head is going to say is fake, self, real. Altogether, is it fair to describe this as kind of a harsh sonic landscape here? Oh, yeah, absolutely. We go from a sort of epic hard rock to harsh electronic electro-funk. Yeah, it's a monstrous beginning.

And presumably in keeping with this song's message of filthiness. This is kind of dark and dirty. It's dirty. I think it's important to note, though, even though Justin says this is not the clean version, it's also not an explicit song. So, you know, anybody can listen through it. Absolutely. And perhaps that dichotomy plays out further on in what you were about to say.

Well, it will. Wow. Thanks for the beautiful setup, Charles. Because just as Timbaland and Danej, have established this harsh sparse soundscape, they're gonna introduce these other elements that seem to sort of counteract that world that they've just established.

And the first element that to me is kind of like an opposite of this world, the non-filty, the clean version, maybe we'll put it that way, is this baseline that sort of slinks in under the chorus. So now amidst the psycho and the harsh synthesizer, we have this incredibly satire satisfying melodic major key bass line. How refreshing is it to hear Timbaland and Dangea up to their old tricks?

Because this whole track, again, musically, is just so rich and dense and filled with little Easter eggs and surprises. It is, I mean, just sonically such a pleasure to me. Oh my gosh, yeah. Surprises every time I listen back through it. And so here we are on the baseline. and we've gone from a dark underworld filthy sound to the bass outlines a major tonality. And all of a sudden, wait a minute,

this has gone from a sad song to a happy song. What's going on? Totally. I mean, this almost sounds like it's interpolated from a totally different song. Like, you could construct a totally different song around this baseline, something that's only reinforced as the song goes on.

Baby, don't you mind if I do. Exactly what you like. And we get your And we're also And another very Kind of This is a Mait if I do

Put your filth in here. So this pad Right. So this pad kind of introduces some more atmosphere to the song. Yeah, absolutely. And now we seem to be in this new place that I couldn't have imagined at the beginning of this electro-funk experience, where now these different elements are sort of awkwardly coexisting. We have the kind of smooth, slinky bass, the atmospheric pads. But then at the same time, all those other elements we were hearing, too, the harsh synthesizer, the psycho string

screams. Somehow, I think this is all working together to create this really unique and effective texture. Did you notice that nothing steps on each other? They're all sort of filling different parts of the measure. They're rhythmically unique and diverse. And it's amazing because the kick drum, the funk bass and the sort of screechy synth base are all in the same sonic register. And yet they don't step on each other.

They work perfectly together. Totally. That's a great point. No, again, this is like chess. You know, this is the product of countless hours in the studio getting all these elements to line up together perfectly. Yeah. So I've just painted maybe a rosy picture of this peaceful coexistence between radically different sonic textures. Right.

And yet what happens in this song that I find so fascinating is that it maybe suggests that this harmony isn't really sustainable. Because there's a really captivating moment to me that occurs about three minutes into the. song we have a return of that initial stadium rock anthem section yes afterwards another sort of abrupt suture back into the dominant texture and a repeat of the pre-chorus and then a moment that disorients me every time it sounds sort of like the track is almost breaking down like something is caught in the gears and it's starting to go off the rails Well, this is a break, technically, in the form of the song, you could probably call this a break, and it is breaking down.

It is right. So it's a very literal interpretation of a breakdown. This is so strange because we're hearing the pre-chorus material, but presented it in a totally new form. You were talking about how the song has kind of an unstable characteristic to it here, and I think we're getting that instability because what had been this nice major upbeat kind of pre-chorus, all of a sudden, all of those like psycho-horestor. synthy, terrifying sounds come in and it adapts this minor tonality and now I don't know what to think. Well, let's use the song as our guide because despite this sort of halting, creaking breakdown, the ship manages to ride itself. We're able to get through another break and another chorus. And then, however, there seems to be another one of these breakdown moments where the car is

out of gas where the ship sinks, where the plane crashes, things are going, and this time it seems that we're now towards the very end of the song, there is no recovery. Right. Instead, this breakdown leads to an outro that is a completely different world. Yes. We have these sparse textures that we've never heard before. We have a female voice speaking, asking questions, these sort of existential queries. Do you see me? Can you find me?

All of a sudden when we get to the end of the song, we have to look back in retrospect and ask ourselves, was that really a peaceful coexistence between these different elements between the minor and the major, the light and the dark, the happy and sad? The filthy and the clean. Indeed. Or was it always destined for this kind of failure, this kind of sad breakdown? I really love this outro. It may be completely reconsider how I thought about this song. What I realized with the outro is that he was making some sort of unique statement, and it made me go back to the very beginning.

And I realized what this song is, is a musical overture. That it's an opening statement to this larger work, and he's trying to set our expectations. And I think, as you appropriately put it, he's putting us in a place of discord, where we actually don't quite know what's going to happen next, which is really appropriate for a major star like Justin, where there are so many preconceived expectations. about what he should make. Right. His career has gone from in sync to Super Bowl Gaff to R&B sort of crossover hip hop. I don't know what his career has been. That was a good attempt.

And thanks. And so we're all wondering, okay, who are you now? And it's something that pretty much every major star has to confront. So he's putting us in this place, in some ways, not unlike Taylor Swift's reputation of like, it's not going to be what you expect it's going to be. And he does that by giving us this discordant musical overture. When we get to that outro by the end of it, we are totally questioning where we started. This female narrator who comes in says, do you see me?

Can you find me? Look closer through the trees. Do you see it? And the song ends. And I'm just like, oh, act one is about to begin. Wow. Okay. That was great.

And you've just opened the door to the lyrical discussion that we're about to have. And I do agree. I mean, I think maybe your interpretation. is a little generous. We can discuss that more on side B. But again, and this is why I sort of have suggested that we cleave the music and the lyrics of the song because I think if you look sort of from the bottom down

at the music, there's so many fascinating things going on. I think it's really effective. I think it's like creating all these fascinating contrasts. But then when we move to the top of the song, to the world of the vocals and the lyrics, then I'm not so sure how I feel about it. So maybe we can pause for a sec, collect ourselves, and then resume to jump into the lyrical side of Filthy. See if it holds up.

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This is dangerous, right? This is the bad boy side. It's just funny because he actually has other records where there is an explicit and a clean version. And here he says, no, there's only one version. It's the filthy version. It's not the clean version, but it's also not explicit. Basically, it doesn't have an explicit warning so anybody can listen to it so that it can get radio play.

Oh, that just made my head explode. Well, we are living in the gray area here. Yeah, okay, so he's saying this ain't the clean version, but it does seem to be the clean version. It's clean. It's not explicit. It's filthy. Okay. And he demonstrates his propensity for filth with lines such as, what are you going to do with all that meat?

Cooking up a mean serving. You're going to cook it up at a barbecue with all that. your friends. Yeah. Okay. So I guess if that's what Justin Timberlake finds filthy, then yeah, this song is pretty filthy. It's a double entendre. However, it also is, to me, lacking some of the coherence that the music gives us, or some of the depth, perhaps, that the music gives us. Because unlike the complex musical world that we just discovered, where all these opposites are colliding. Yeah.

The lyrics do not seem to, if I can be so bold, to not have the same sort of coherence and are not quite as thought out, perhaps. They more seem to me to be these sort of sprinkles of various pop cliches that Justin Timberlake has sort of drizzled like so many pinkberry toppings on top of this incredible musical bed, you know, made by Timbaland and Danger. Okay. Your tones suggest that you think otherwise, that you see some deeper meanings here,

and in which case I would love to know. Well, no, there's nothing deep here. It is filth. I don't think that he's denying it. There's some cool vocal production that happens, and there's some interesting ways in which he keeps things fresh because he's an amazing vocal producer. I think if you look at every single time,

he has some sort of refrain. So, for example, when he says, haters going to say it's fake so real. Every single time he says it, it carries a slight variation, so you continually stay interested in what is kind of a boring, obnoxious statement, which feels overplayed everywhere, the questioning of what is fake and what is real.

Certainly. But he makes that interesting. His vocal performance keeps me listening. Where we actually have sort of different vocal sounds for fake and real. Yeah. Yeah. If I'm not listening to the lyrics, I'm like, oh, this is a fun song.

And then you listen in, you're like, oh, this is just a bunch of funny little clichés. But they're self-aware, right? Like, they ain't leaving until 6 in the morning. Is a both iced tea and Snoop Dog reference. He even references himself. This is one of my favorite moments of the song, but it's stupid and cliche. Oh, yeah? And the follow up to what are you going to do with all that meat, which he then suggests

you should barbecue. He asks, what are you going to do with all that beast, followed by when I leave the cage open? And there is a giant animal roar. Right. And what's you going to do? That beast. Walk to me. I love that, though. Isn't that kind of so silly and fun? It is. I'm fascinated that you mentioned, because I was also interested in this lyric for a different reason, which is that the last time we talked about Justin Timberlake, it was his song, Can't Stop the Feeling. And we were looking at Justin Timberlake as a great exponent of one of our favorite musical techniques, word painting, something he's used in every song from what goes around

to Can't Stop the Feeling. And now, in a very perhaps obvious way in this song, where we have in this line two moments of word painting. First, we have the beast represented by a literal beast roar. and then ooh Charlie and then he leaves the cage open and everything kind of like opens up right yeah and we have this sort of space as though a door has just been opened and avoid there's a third one actually immediately after he says then huh walk to me and then that sort of synthy growly thing comes back in almost kind of like it's pacing and walking in okay triple text painting I love it triple text painting and I was interested in this moment too because I think it allows us to think about this I identity crisis now in another way. And we've thought about it musically.

Now we can think about it sort of lyrically. And as you were starting to do at the end of the last half, sort of in terms of Timberlake's larger career, because, I mean, it's hard not to hear this song as something of an intentional departure from our last encounter with Justin Timberlake, where he was very family-friendly, writing a song to accompany an animated movie called trolls. And now it's hard not to think. oh, okay, he's really trying to like separate himself.

He's trying to be more mature. He's trying to be literally filthy or flannely or whatever he is. But it's like it's serious, right? It's like grown up and mature and serious. Ish. Ish. Okay. And that ish seems to be important to me because at once he's trying to be serious

and yet he's created to me this lyrical world that sounds like the 2018 equivalent of like 1960s jazz beat poetry where you just like say these random sentences that don't really mean anything haters going to say it's fake uh got me singing ooh ooh all right i'm not with you know the saint the clean version everybody's smoking i mean it's like it has no coherence again i don't necessarily mind that but it just seems at odds with the maybe intended message here i'm gonna have to respectfully disagree with you well respectfully come at me then i think you're losing the forest for the trees. Please expand.

If you look at any one individual stanza, it's filth, it's silly, it's cliche, it's self-aware. But I think we have to dig into that, that self-awareness. I think just as the music is giving us clues about where Justin's sound is going to go, if we accept this as sort of an overture

to where the album will evolve, then I think we can look at some of this lyrical content and actually suggest that He's playing with our expectations just as the music is. He's giving us these kind of cliches that we would expect of a, you know, a fun, silly, R&B track. And at the same time, I think if you look at the very beginning and the ending, he's giving us hints about what's really going on here. Okay.

And what hints? Clearly I'm no, uh, Poirot. I've not picked up on the clues here. Sure. So the first thing that he does is he asks. hey, if you know what's good, right? So he's kind of egging us on and saying, are you an attuned listener?

Uh-huh. He later says, going into the bridge, come on, break it down if you know what's good. I'm wondering if this is maybe even like a command of like, we've got to break this thing further down. Just as the music's falling apart, his lyrics need to be broken down, such that by the time we get to the end,

he's basically cut off. He's going into another verse. The song ends on a verse, which is very strange, right? Yeah, now that you mention it, it is rather strange. He gets caught off by this female narrator. Do you see me? Can you find me? Look closer through the trees.

Do you see it? Okay, now we're disoriented. And he's already set up this disorientation, not just through the music, but also in his addressing his critics. Hater's going to say it's fake, so real, which is both an internet meme and perhaps a commentary on the era of post-truth. And most of all, setting up this idea from the very beginning, hey, you either know what's good or you're a hater and you don't know what's good. And there's this dichotomy between what is this thing going to be. It's filthy, it's silly,

it's stupid. But I think he's doing that to give us all the expectations of what we might think he's going to make. And then he's going to give us some much more interesting and profound material potentially coming up in the next song. Okay, potentially, but that's a big if. And maybe we will revisit this when the album drops. But, and I'm about to go off. So everyone just, you know, prepare yourselves. I have one.

Okay, let me defend myself one more time. Okay, wow. I haven't even attacked you and you're defending yourself. Okay, go ahead. One more thing. His vocal production style. This song is weird. He's not present in the center of the mix.

Do you hear that? Yeah. Like, it kind of feels like he's off to the side. Totally. That's so true. Like, you can't really, I often find myself, like, playing with the volume of my, you know, whatever medium I'm using to listen because I'm like, wait, where's his voice? It's like somewhere out there on the margins and I like can't totally hear it.

Okay. Exactly. Exactly. So they're doing that with like chorusing and some slap back delays, I think. And they're making his voice not front and center. Yeah. What's like a good example of this that we might find in the track? Oh, I mean, from the very beginning.

Just start on the first verse. Let's do a little experiment here. Let's take a listen to an earlier track. Let's listen to, I think, is one of his first solo hits, right? Cry me a River. Check out the vocal production here. Also done by Timbaland. And yet, Justin is front and center.

His voice is present. You can hear it. Totally. as if it's in your head Yeah Now listen back Just the intro of Filthy Justin is everywhere

But in your head He's kind of like swirling around you You can't quite grab it No matter how much you turn the volume up He's kind of out on the margins I think that this style of vocal production contrasts with the message of the sort of silly, filthy, cliche lyrics that he's singing. It calls them into question whether or not they're really valid.

It deprioritizes them as just sonic information. And so I think that the producers are through the way that they're constructing these vocals, deprioritizing these lyrics in such a way that it gives us the appropriate clues that it's likely that we're going to go in a different direction throughout the rest of the track. And if I have to defend myself one more time, D'Anga did say that the rest of the album sounds a fair bit different than the opening. So I did a little homework and cheated. Fair enough. And I appreciate your defensiveness. I mean... Okay. So take me down. I mean, it does seem in line with the defensiveness that Timberlake

displays from the start of this record. Defensiveness that you've mentioned we hear in Taylor Swift. And so maybe as I go off on a screed for a moment, I will acknowledge that perhaps you're right, that it's only within a larger cultural context that you might look at this identity crisis

and say who cares about the existential quandaries of uber wealthy white cisgendered pop stars. Fair. Very fair. And to me, I actually find your interpretation of the vocal production, not just the vocal production

and the vocal rhythms themselves, which, I mean, it was so wild to listen to Crimea River. It's like he holds out so many beautiful notes. And here it's all staccato, like da, dat, da, dat, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. Oh, and oftentimes he's not even hitting pitches, right? He just went this, uh, right? So as you point out, I agree, he's essentially, or his producers are essentially relegating Timberlake himself into irrelevance on this track.

That's kind of fun. Leading to this moment that, again, I find so fascinating where that might, like, be the ultimate unsustainability of any interest we would have in someone like Justin Timberlake's identity crisis. And I'm certainly reading this against an article that my partner Whitney showed to me called Justin Timberlake is rebranding as a white man that was published in outline. Maybe you saw that as well. Yeah. Yeah. Seeing Timberlake, along with other pop stars like Miley Cyrus's, having this ability to suddenly transform from artists steeped in R&B and black song forms into like white country, mountain, whatever artists, like these like essentially pure white artists or something.

In that respect, I find this breakdown at the end, like maybe as a really interesting lens into Justin Timberlake's sort of deepest fears, which is that, his appropriation of this culture and now potentially an abandonment of it is something that will leave him sort of without any true identity lost in the forest looking do you see it what is it who am i asking these questions that might not be answerable hmm who okay wow now i'm exhausted i find that argument really compelling right this sort of reassessment of the way in which racial privilege allows some artists, primarily white artists, to be able to shape-shift, blend, and appropriate from other cultures. And now, appropriately, there's been a backlash and a questioning of to what degree that is earned, or to which it's just an abuse of power.

How do you think that this is complicated by the fact that he's working with some of the biggest producers in hip-hop and R&B who are producing the music in these tracks alongside him? It's a great question. This whole thing is complicated, but I still think you can read this song as a sort of glimpse into the interiority of a pop star and the sort of fragility of their psyches and their sense of belongings and their sense of who they are and what their artistry is and where it comes from. And so I don't know. I mean, again, and this is all, you can easily not hear any of this in the song, but just given the moment and the sort of, I think really beautiful treatments that critics like Anne Derek Gaiot have brought in her piece makes me hear this song in a different way and in a way where I still enjoy it, but also hear the problems in it.

So I'm curious what's next for you because we've sort of established that this is a, perhaps an overture and that there's going to be maybe different kinds of sounds and music throughout the rest of the album. We're not sure, but behind the scenes, that's what we've been told. If we're watching Justin Timberlake, like so many other artists like Miley and Taylor Swift, go through an identity crisis, where are you at? What are your expectations at? What do you want to hear? Do you think that this is recoverable? Or is this kind of, again, as you said, an unrelatable problem? No, I think it's absolutely recoverable. And I think for what I'm discovering for me on this track, I think we'll have to see the rest of the album. But for this track, I think for me it's about, again, really listening to the music and the lyrics. almost on two different levels because they're each, I think, telling their own stories, but one is telling it maybe more effectively.

So that's the one I want to celebrate here is the music of Timberland and Danger, which I find so compelling. And then maybe as less of an object of musical joy and pleasure and more as an object of cultural criticism are the lyrics in Justin Timberlake's identity crisis, which is sort of maybe not something I want to spend as much time. thinking about. I agree. I'm still interested in sort of the artistry of some of the vocal production and how he goes about singing certain things, but that's probably just covering up for the fact that I'm nodding my head to a great track, and I want to enjoy it, even though the words underneath are

just totally, no doubt. And I totally agree that vocal deduction is great. He's just that he should be saying anything. He should just be doing more Ken Nordine beat poet style word jazz. And I would love this song even more. I want you to know that I love my baby. Oh, that's bought me. A short time ago, we went out together to a place called Far Out. This episode of Switched On Pop was produced by Nate Sloan, edited and mixed by Bill Lance. Our design is by Luke Harris, and you can find more episodes of Switchdown Pop at a website

www. www.switchdownpop.com. You can reach us on Twitter at Switched On Pop or email us at Contact at Switchedonpop.com. Please subscribe to Switched On Pop on Apple Podcast or Spotify, and we are a proud member of the Panoply Network. We'll be back again in two weeks with a fresh episode, and until then, thanks for listening. Thanks for listening.