Justin Timberlake in 2016.
Jordan Strauss/AP/Jordan Strauss
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Jordan Strauss/AP/Jordan Strauss
Justin Timberlake in 2016.
Jordan Strauss/AP/Jordan Strauss
Justin Timberlake has released a new song and accompanying video.
“Selfish” teases the release on March 15 of the Grammy Award-winning artist’s upcoming album, Everything I Thought It Was — his first in five years.
The video, which had received close to 300,000 views on YouTube within a few hours of launching on Thursday, is very meta. It shows Timberlake’s trial-and-error approach to making the video.
YouTube
Timberlake first performed his new single live at a concert in Memphis, where he was born, five days ago. He introduced the performance with a nod to the gray suit he was wearing. “We didn’t get dressed up for nothing, did we?” he said.
The 42-year-old’s last album, Man of the Woods, snatched the top spot on the Billboard 200 with the biggest first week sales at the time of its release in 2018.
Since then, the artist has mostly stayed out of the pop music limelight. He’s collaborated with other artists like SZA and Pharrell Williams, appeared on movie soundtracks, and reunited briefly with NSYNC, the boyband that launched his music career in the 1990s.
Listeners greeted the new single with excitement on social media. “I’m so happy he did a sweet ballad,” wrote one fan, Brittany Edwards. “I’ve been missing those. It sounds like it could’ve been an NSYNC song honestly. This will be on repeat.”