re: The 20/20 Experience = album of the year?

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Timberlake has never been what you'd call a visionary, but on his last album, he showed a great sense of the pop refrain. This time, he's just plain timid. The songs have no edge, no zip — they're generic medium-tempo loops that last way too long, with a few clocking in at close to eight minutes. The length allows Timberlake to bring you your full daily requirement of mindless clichés. Track one: love as drug. Track four: love as sugary bubblegum. Track six: love as something that happens in a spaceship built for two.

There's a real art to lightweight feel-good pop. And for the most part, it's missing from Timberlake's latest. What we have, instead, is a celebrity feeling out his place in 2013, and you hear his worry. He's making calculations about the market, serving up a dim, cynical and decidedly limited vision of what pop music can be.

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