Girl, I refuse - you must have me confused with some other guy

Continuing my trip back through the 2003 album charts.

08/06/03 : Justified - Justin Timberlake

My second visit with JT and last time I said I didn't mind a bit of the lad, but a whole album was too much. This is peak-JT though, isn't it? So it can't be too bad, can it?

I recognised "Like I Love You", "Rock Your Body" (the Superbowl "wardrobe malfunction" song) and obviously "Cry Me A River" which is a fine track indeed. As for the rest of it, I did enjoy it but I couldn't help but have a sneaking suspicion it had just worked out what buttons it needed to press and then it all it did was jab at them repeatedly. I also wasn't getting the impression that Justin was massively into it - he was just doing whatever someone thought he needed to, so maybe it was all a bit soulless?

We're at #5 in the charts this week on his 31st week of a massive 70 week run, with it having spent seven weeks at #1, including four of the past five weeks. The rest of the top five were Stereophonics. an S Club 7 best-of, Metallica (all new entries and I bet Metallica weren't happy about losing out to the others) and Evanescence and the next highest new entry was UB40 (#10) with Labour Of Love volumes 1, 2 and 3 - some people really are suckers for punishment, aren't they?

Wikipedia has loads on the album (362 milliPeppers) and it tells us it's his debut solo album, written and recorded in a six week period while NSYNC were taking a bit of a break. Most of the rest of the entry goes into a ridiculous level of detail on the singles which is all very dull but there were a couple of interesting nuggets in there. Justin toured the album with Christina Aguilera who was promoting Stripped - I reckon they must have been decent gigs. It also told me (which I feel I must have known, but I didn't remember) that Justin recorded the "I'm loving it" jingle for McDonalds - and he got paid $6 million for it! Back to the album, the critics were mostly nice enough about it, particularly as a transition away from his NSYNC pop roots. Commercially, it blew up globally, although it only got to #1 here and in Ireland, getting to #2 in the US.

"Customers also listened to" NSYNC, Usher, Jennifer Lopez and Destiny's Child - yeah, I can see the links there.  I liked this album but I couldn't shake the nagging feeling it was playing me - maybe I should have just ignored it and enjoyed the smoothness, because I do have to admit it's all done very well.

01/06/03 - A good example of that sort of thing
15/06/03 - Surprisingly bearable