User:Tomica/Sandbox38

Composition and lyrical interpretation
"Cry Me a River" is a pop ballad with an instrumentation that features clavinet, guitars, beatboxing, synthesizers, Arabian-inspired riffs and Gregorian chants. The instruments are arranged into what critics described as a graceful and mysterious melody. Jane Stevenson of Jam! said the single combines gospel and opera. Tyler Martin of Stylus Magazine enjoyed the way that the song unconventionally mixed a range of experimental sounds. According to Martin, the wave synth affects the real strings to create a strange dissonance. The song's chorus devolves into a choral reading in which Timberlake pleads over the group. "Cry Me a River" finishes with a Timbaland vocal sample.

"Cry Me a River" is written in the key of B major, in common time, with a tempo of 74 beats per minute. Timberlake's vocal range spans from C♯4 to B5. Billboard magazine critics called "Cry Me a River" a bittersweet funk song, in which Timberlake's "familiar tenor belting" is tempered with a soulful falsetto and a "convincingly aggressive rock-spiked baritone" rasp. David Browne of Entertainment Weekly labeled the song "a haunted, pained farewell".

Lyrically, the song is about a brokenhearted man who moves on from his past. A Rolling Stone reviewer called the song a "breakup aria". According to Caroline Sullivan of The Guardian, "Cry Me a River" stands out for its "slow-building sense of drama", which highlights Timberlake at his "husky best". The song begins with the phrase "You were my sun, you were my earth", which according to Timbaland was Timberlake's inspiration to write the song. Tanya L. Edwards of MTV News observed that Timberlake was wronged and said this is demonstrated by the lyrics: "You don't have to say whatcha did / I already know, I found out from him / Now there's just no chance." The chorus contains the lines: "Told me you loved me, why did you leave me all alone / Now you tell me you need me when you call me on the phone." Slant Magazine's Sal Cinquemani called Timberlake's 2007 single "What Goes Around... Comes Around" an ostensible sequel to "Cry Me a River" both lyrically and musically.