If high-voltage pop showmanship was an Olympic sport, Justin Timberlake would be in Paris right now, twirling around the podium with medals bouncing off his permanently bestubbled chin. Back with his first album in six years, Everything I Thought It Was, the 43-year-old singer is leaving nothing to chance on his Forget Tomorrow world tour. His Birmingham show was a precision-tooled spectacular of lavishly arranged disco-pop crowd-pleasers, tireless dance-bot moves, cinematic visuals and relentless cheesy lyrics about being an insatiable sex machine. “Is it date night in Birmingham tonight?” the former boy-band star grinned, to predictably huge cheers.
Timberlake arguably has something to prove with this tour, working hard to reclaim his place on pop’s Mount Olympus after a string of indifferent albums and declining sales, not to mention the toxic revelations about him detailed by former girlfriend Britney Spears in her 2023 memoir, The Woman in Me. None of which appears to have dented his live appeal, as these shows have been a huge success so far, attracting sell-out crowds and rave reviews. The Tennessee-born singer turned on the boy-next-door charm in Birmingham, showing flashes of humour and humility alongside a steely determination to work the room like a seasoned pro.
One surprise aspect of this show was just how few all-time classic hits Timberlake has amassed during his 22-year solo career. Cry Me a River brought towering operatic melodrama, Sanctified was a head-banging blues-rock monster, and SexyBack a totalitarian raunch-funk anthem. But otherwise, pleasantly anodyne blue-eyed soul-pop dominated this packed two-hour set. Even so, the singer successfully masked this songwriting deficit with maximalist big-band arrangements, razzle-dazzle choreography and stunning widescreen visuals.
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Conceived in conjunction with Silent House, the LA-based stage production company that also worked on Taylor Swift’s blockbuster Eras tour, this show featured a humongous video backdrop ablaze with psychedelic desert landscapes, cavernous virtual nightclubs and more. Disappointingly, the high-wire finale of Timberlake’s US dates, which featured him soaring above the crowd on a floating section of stage, did not make it to Birmingham.
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Late in the set, Timberlake and band danced through the arena to a smaller secondary stage, where they played a half-hour selection of more intimate, stripped-down numbers. The voluptuously blended voices of his backing vocalists really shone during this section. The singer’s guitar-strumming version of his recent single Selfish, complete with teasing quote from George Michael’s Careless Whisper, also worked a treat. A few more of these warm-blooded, emotionally tender, less-is-more songs would have made a good show truly great. Timberlake’s midlife comeback tour proves he is still an Olympian pop champion, but this was a silver medal performance, not quite a gold.
★★★★☆
Touring to Aug 12, justintimberlake.com
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