Justin Timberlake: How the NSYNC leader was relegated to a meme of himself

On the night of June 18, things went into a tailspin for Justin Timberlake. The 43-year-old artist from Memphis, Tennessee seemed to be back on track after a complicated few months. A new album and a tour were trying to get him back on top of things. But then came a dinner at the American Hotel in Sag Harbor—just a short helicopter flight from New York—a night out with friends, and one Martini too many, or so the story goes. When he got behind the wheel, everything took a turn for the worse, literally. Timberlake was weaving down the street and a young police officer pulled him over and arrested him for DWI driving: he was veering off his lane, ran a stop sign and refused to take a breathalyzer test.

Within a couple of hours the news had spread around the world, but, as is often the case on these occasions, it took just a minute to become a talking point and become part of popular culture (only time will tell if it will last). The mugshot didn’t take much longer to make waves. But probably the most global phenomenon were the jokes about his conversation with the officer, who didn’t even recognize the 10-time Grammy winner, who had his last number 1 on the charts more than eight years ago, with Can’t stop the feeling, from the soundtrack of the children’s film Trolls, and which Time rated as the worst song of the year. “This is going to ruin the tour,” the singer reportedly said. The officer replied, “What tour?” And Timberlake retorted, “The world tour.” This, along with Timberlake’s red eyes in his mug shot, soon became viral content. All of which helped to build a story of an artist who seems to have had his best moments years ago and whose arrest was the final straw that turned him into a walking meme and a target of criticism.

It is true that the singer, who first rose to fame as a cast member of Disney’s Mickey Mouse Club (alongside other stars such as Christina Aguilera and Ryan Gosling), had his true golden age 20 years ago, when he was a young talent leading a successful band, NSYNC, following in the footsteps of Take That and Backstreet Boys. Back then, everything he did was viewed with a smile. His resentment turned into a song about his ex, Britney Spears (and his repeated mockery of her, even on national television), or the time that he lifted Janet Jackson’s nipple shield at the 2004 Super Bowl were not viewed with the magnifying glass with which they are viewed 20 years later, where they are seen as clear episodes of a sexism that was difficult to understand at that time.

But time puts everything and everyone in their place, including Timberlake. And if anyone had accounts to settle, it was Britney Spears. The singer has remained silent for 15 years, partly out of choice (the overexposure was exhausting) and partly because she remained under the legal guardianship of her father, and therefore tied hand and foot, for 13 years. So when, in mid-October, the singer began to publish excerpts from her long-awaited book, The Woman In Me, and announced that her fans deserved to “hear it directly” from her, many searched for Justin’s name among the pages.

Speaking about her first public boyfriend, she said that not only had he dumped her via text message, without a face-to-face conversation, but that she had also become pregnant during that relationship, when she must have been just 18 years old. “It was a surprise, but for me, it wasn’t a tragedy. I loved Justin so much. I always expected us to have a family together one day. This would just be much earlier than I’d anticipated. But Justin definitely wasn’t happy about the pregnancy. He said we weren’t ready to have a baby in our lives, that we were way too young.” And then she stated: “If it had been left up to me alone, I never would have done it. And yet Justin was so sure that he didn’t want to be a father. To this day, it’s one of the most agonizing things I have ever experienced in my life.”

Public opinion then turned to see Timberlake’s reaction. And it wasn’t the best, but that wasn’t new, either. Almost a quarter of a century ago he presented Spears as the unfaithful one in their relationship and exposed her publicly in the song Cry Me a River, in whose music video he showed a blonde woman, similar to Spears, abandoning him; Britney said that the media were framing her as a “harlot who’d broken the heart of America’s golden boy,” but she now said in her book that nothing could be further from the truth: “I was comatose in Louisiana, and he was happily running around Hollywood,” she wrote, explaining that after a controversial interview with the TV host Diane Sawyer she felt “like I had been exploited, set up in front of the whole world.” The catharsis of the book has been her first and only one in all these years; Timberlake, however, has continued to talk about her and joke about that relationship and about the supposed virginity that they both agreed to maintain (something that did not happen, as it emerged later).

Come 2024, the situation has not improved either. If at the end of January Spears posted (and deleted) a comment on her Instagram profile praising a new Timberlake song, he came out a few days later and, on stage, when he turned 43, he said to the audience: “I’d like to take this opportunity to apologize — to absolutely fucking nobody.” A surprising attitude that is far from being effective in helping him mend and reinforce his public image. It was also very different from the only time he did apologize, when he was applauded for what seemed to be a really sincere comment, in February 2021. “I am deeply sorry for the times in my life where my actions contributed to the problem, where I spoke out of turn, or did not speak up for what was right. I understand that I fell short in these moments and in many others and benefited from a system that condones misogyny and racism,” he said then. “I specifically want to apologize to Britney Spears and Janet Jackson both individually, because I care for and respect these women and I know I failed.” He then opened a door to “a larger conversation that I wholeheartedly want to be part of and grow from. The industry is flawed. It sets men, especially white men, up for success. It’s designed this way. As a man in a privileged position I have to be vocal about this. Because of my ignorance, I didn’t recognize it for all that it was while it was happening in my own life but I do not want to ever benefit from others being pulled down again.”

That door, however, seems to have closed. His silence regarding Spears’ book, his sarcastic non-apologies, do not help the situation. Neither does showing up at a police station in the Hamptons. And even less so when at his hearing on July 26, which he did not attend (he had a concert in Poland, but did not even show up virtually), his lawyer repeated and swore that his client was not drunk.

A problem with the court papers has moved the singer’s hearing to August 2. At that time he will be between Berlin and Antwerp, but without a show that night, although he is not expected in court either. It is true that the misdemeanor charge is a minor matter, but the outcome may determine his public image in the coming years.

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