Everything I Thought It Was

Everything I Thought It Was is the sixth studio album by American singer-songwriter Justin Timberlake. It was released through RCA Records on March 15, 2024. The album serves as the follow-up to his previous album, Man of the Woods (2018) and features guest appearances from Fireboy DML, Tobe Nwigwe, and Timberlake's band, NSYNC. Production was handled by Timberlake himself, Danja, Federico Vindver, Calvin Harris, Timbaland, Louis Bell, Cirkut, Ryan Tedder, Rob Knox, and others. The album was preceded by two singles, "Selfish" and "No Angels", as well as the promotional single "Drown". The album received mixed reviews from music critics.

Everything I Thought It Was debuted at number four on the US Billboard 200, giving Timberlake his sixth consecutive top five album in the country, while the lead single "Selfish" reached the top 20 on the Billboard Hot 100. The album also reached the top five in several other countries, including Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. To promote the album, Timberlake embarked on his seventh concert tour, The Forget Tomorrow World Tour in April 2024.

Background
In 2023, Timberlake reunited with his former band members of NSYNC and released the single "Better Place" in support of the Trolls Band Together soundtrack, as well as a collaboration with Timbaland and Nelly Furtado titled "Keep Going Up." In addition to "Keep Going Up," Timberlake had also collaborated with Romeo Santos on the song "Sin Fin," with Jack Harlow on his album Come Home the Kids Miss You, on the song "Parent Trap;" a remix of Coco Jones' "ICU," and a further remix of the song "3D" by Jungkook. Timberlake had also worked with Calvin Harris, producer of "Fuckin' Up the Disco" and "No Angels," on his song "Stay with Me," alongside Pharrell Williams and Halsey.

A few months after the release of the singles, the singer-songwriter unveiled a trailer for an upcoming project titled Everything I Thought It Was on January 19, 2024, narrated by actor and Reptile co-star, Benicio del Toro. He announced the album on January 25, alongside the release of the lead single "Selfish." About the album, Timberlake revealed that it has "incredibly honest" moments but is also "a lot of fucking fun." He would call it his "most straightforward" record to date, referring to it as "complex within its simplicity." While in an interview with Zane Lowe for Apple Music's New Music Daily promotion, Timberlake said that the album title was inspired from when a friend, after listening to the album, told him, "This sounds like everything I thought I wanted from you." The title appears at the end of the opening track "Memphis".

Release and promotion
On January 19, 2024, Timberlake performed a free one-night-only concert at the Orpheum in Memphis where he live-debuted his new single "Selfish" after teasing a new project on social media in previous days. On January 25, 2024, Timberlake appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon; he announced the release of "Selfish" and revealed that the album had taken four years to produce. Timberlake appeared as a musical guest on the January 27, 2024, episode of Saturday Night Live, singing "Selfish" and "Sanctified". On January 30, he appeared on The Kelly Clarkson Show and held a concert at Irving Plaza in New York City on January 31, his 43rd birthday.

Timberlake appeared as a musical guest on The Graham Norton Show where he performed "Selfish" on February 22, 2024, the night before he cancelled A One Night Only concert, to be held at the Roundhouse, London, on February 23, 2024. He was recovering from an illness. Timberlake then appeared on Complex Networks Sneaker Shopping on March 11, 2024, and mentioned the release of his new album at the end of the video. On March 13, 2024, Timberlake performed a one-off concert at The Wiltern in Los Angeles. The show featured a surprise reunion with his NSYNC bandmates, with the group playing a medley of hits and the new album track "Paradise." Timberlake then performed on NPR Music's Tiny Desk series on March 15 for a half-hour-long concert. He also announced the release of a documentary showing the album's creation process.

In the weeks leading up to release, Timberlake also revealed the vinyl LP's "deluxe edition", which included a limited edition merchandise, as well as a look at the LP's exclusive artwork, influenced by Federico Fellini's 8½, as well as the album's back cover, which was inspired by Mel Stuart's 1971 film Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, an adaptation of Roald Dahl's novel, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. In April 2024, Timberlake opened the iHeartRadio Music Awards, performing "Selfish" and "No Angels".

Singles
"Selfish" was released as the album's first single on January 25, 2024. The song's official music video premiered on the same day. It debuted at number 19 on the US Billboard Hot 100, marking Timberlake's highest debut in six years on the chart. It became his 39th career solo entry on the Hot 100, and his 29th to reach the top 40. In Canada, the track debuted and peaked at number 22 on the Canadian Hot 100.

"Drown" was teased by Timberlake in an Instagram post on February 19, 2024, and released as a promotional single on February 23. "No Angels" was released as the second single; an official music video, directed by Ti West, was released on March 15, 2024. He performed the single live on Jimmy Kimmel Live!.

Tour
Timberlake promoted the album on The Forget Tomorrow World Tour, which began on April 29, 2024, in Vancouver, Canada. In March 2024, prior to the tour launching, Trace William Cowen of Complex reported that The Forget Tomorrow World Tour had become Timberlake's fastest selling tour to date. They stated that the tour had amassed over $140 million globally in initial ticket sales from over 70 dates and that more than one million attendees are expected. Cowen concluded that "Justin Timberlake's Forget Tomorrow World Tour Is Set to Become His Biggest Yet." On February 23, 2024, Timberlake announced summer 2024 Europe tour dates. On May 20, 2024, Pollstar announced that nine additional shows were added due to "overwhelming demand" and reported that over 1 million tickets were already sold, becoming Timberlake's fastest selling tour to date. The Forget Tomorrow World Tour received generally positive reviews.

Critical reception
At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 51 based on 17 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews". The review aggregator site AnyDecentMusic? compiled 13 reviews and gave Everything I Thought It Was an average of 4.6 out of 10, based on their assessment of the critical consensus.

Frazier Tharpe of GQ gave the album a positive review. He found that "Timberlake brings grown-and-sexy back on Everything I Thought It Was. The NSYNC reunion will make headlines, but as usual, it's Timberlake and Timbaland for the win." Chuck Arnold of The New York Post also gave the album a positive review, writing: "Timberlake gets his groove back and reunites with NSYNC on [his] comeback album." He concluded that "on Everything I Thought It Was, Timberlake, now 43, is back to being a Man of the Dance Floor, a Man of the Bedroom and even, once again, a Man of the Boy Band." Associated Press critic Maria Sherman stated, "In its better tracks [...] Everything I Thought It Was, is a return to form for the musician. In the moments when his immediately recognizable falsetto eases into a familiar kind of future funk, it works. In others, it feels like poorly timed nostalgia."

Neil Z. Yeung of AllMusic gave the album three out of five stars. He felt that Everything I Thought It Was "is at least better executed than the uneven Man of the Woods and on par with The 20/20 Experience. Some focus and editing would have really helped because there's a great album buried somewhere in here." Meanwhile, writing for the Evening Standard, El Hunt was more critical of the album, criticizing the sex-focused lyrics and writing, "At 18 tracks long, Everything I Thought It Was certainly has stamina, but to heavily paraphrase an ancient adage, it's not the size of your album that really matters." Pitchfork editor Owen Myers noted that the album "is less of a faceplant than a comfortable rehash of past glories. [Timberlake] scales his stuttering electro and squelchy '80s funk into hollow, expensive-sounding maximalism."

Commercial performance
Everything I Thought It Was debuted at number four on the US Billboard 200, earning 67,000 album-equivalent units, calculated from 31.13 million on-demand streams and 41,000 pure album copies. This marks Timberlake's sixth consecutive top five album in the country.

In Germany, the album debuted at number five; at number three in the Netherlands, In the UK, Everything I Thought It Was debuted at number five on the UK Albums Chart. Additionally, the album debuted at number one on the Album Downloads Chart, and at number 15 on the UK Vinyl Albums Chart. In Australia, the album charted at number 23, becoming Timberlake's first album to not reach the top ten in the country.

Track listing
Notes
 * undefined signifies a co-producer

Personnel
Musicians


 * Justin Timberlake – vocals
 * Elliot Ives – guitar (tracks 1, 3, 4, 8–10, 12, 14), bass (3)
 * James Ford III – flugelhorn, trumpet (1, 9, 17)
 * Raymond Monteiro – flugelhorn, trumpet (1, 9, 17)
 * Robert Avallone – flugelhorn, trumpet (1, 9, 17)
 * Fred Jackson – flute, saxophone (1, 9, 17)
 * Keith Fiddmont – flute, saxophone (1, 9, 17)
 * Leon Silva – flute, saxophone (1, 9, 17); tenor saxophone (13)
 * Phillip Whack – flute, saxophone (1, 9, 17)
 * Louis Van Taylor – saxophone (1, 9, 17)
 * Kevin Williams – trombone (1, 9, 13, 17)
 * Stephen Baxter – trombone (1, 9, 17)
 * Wendell Kelly – trombone (1, 9, 17)
 * Adam Blackstone – bass (tracks 4, 11, 13)
 * Damien "Dammo" Farmer – bass (track 8)
 * Chris Payton – guitar (tracks 13, 18)
 * Larrance Dopson – keyboards (tracks 13, 18)
 * Sean Erick – trumpet (track 13)
 * Danja – piano (track 16)
 * Kenyon Dixon – piano (track 16)
 * Peter Lee Johnson – strings (track 16)
 * *NSYNC - vocals (track 17)

Technical
 * Randy Merrill – mastering
 * Chris Godbey – mixing (all tracks), engineering (tracks 1–5, 7–10, 12, 14, 16, 17)
 * Justin Timberlake – mixing
 * Damien Lewis – engineering (tracks 1, 2, 4, 9, 10, 12, 14, 18)
 * Louis Bell – engineering (tracks 6, 11, 13, 15)