There’s No Music on this Justin Timberlake Album

I reviewed Justin Timberlake’s extremely unassuming concept album Man of the Woods and it’s easily the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. There’s (almost) no music on it whatsoever, and yet art must be examined and explored, so here it is, a track-by-track journey through the brazenly weird and indulgent spectacle.

1. “Filthy”
From the get-go, Timberlake is sure as hell what he wants to do without really knowing what he wants from it. He explains his album’s concept to a therapist, not directly to the listener, about his eagerness to record everything he does and separate the great from the good. In the process, he’d like to “disappear from the filthy life [he’s] known.” The inspiration, as it turns out, comes from Dave Grohl. See, toward the end of the ’90s, the Foo Fighters frontman was drinking himself into oblivion in Los Angeles. Feeling the weight of indulgence and the filth of the city, Grohl bought a quiet house in Virginia and turned the basement into a studio. His two bandmates — “this was before they started sizing up like the Polyphonic Spree,” clarifies Timberlake — joined him and all the three of them did was hang out, barbecue, and work on There Is Nothing Left to Lose, arguably their strongest record. “It just always sounded like the best recording process imaginable,” Timberlake says. He’s not wrong either. I’m entirely onboard at this point. Then…