Singer and his 14-member band perform seven tracks — but only one from Everything I Thought It Was – in his 25-minute set for NPR’s concert series
Justin Timberlake’s promotional tour in support of new album Everything I Thought It Was, out today, included a Tiny Desk Concert, where the singer nearly set a record for most musicians crammed into one of the NPR sessions.
Timberlake and his band of 14 musicians and backup vocalists crammed into the cubicle-sized space to perform seven tracks. “I forget how many of us there are. Y’all really lived up to the name ‘Tiny Desk,’” Timberlake quipped mid-set. “Yesterday, trying to get all of us in here was like a game of Tetris, but we did it.”
While the gig was in celebration of his new LP, oddly, one track from Everything I Thought It Was — first single, “Selfish” — was played during the 25-minute set.
Instead, Timberlake and company mined his back catalog, opening with two tracks from Justified (“Senorita,” “Rock Your Body”), three from FutureSex/LoveSounds (“Until the End of Time,” “What Goes Around… Comes Around,” and a set-closing “SexyBack”), and The 20/20 Experience’s “Pusher Love Girl.”
Timberlake and company will thankfully play on more spacious stages when they embark on their world tour later this year.
In Rolling Stone’s review of the new album, we wrote, “Timberlake recently told Apple Music that Everything I Thought It Was is his ‘best work’ yet. It’s not. This was actually disproven during the very first song. But nearly every track on the record having a one-to-one parallel to other moments in his discography does feel like a timely reminder… You can call Timberlake a lot of things, but never a mediocre performer or an insignificant figure in pop history. Not only does he have the hits to prove it, now he also has an entire album of songs that feel like B-sides to make an ironic case for his once-gilded greatness.”