It was a long-awaited revival for his fans, myself included, but Justin is back and better than ever! And here we are today with his first single of 2014, "Not a Bad Thing". Let's listen in.
Uh, guys? Would you mind? I'm... I'm trying to listen here.
All right, let's just go to the audio version. Rude people, talking about love over a love song. Let the man sing!
Ehh... boring. Get the other people back, at least they seem to know what love is.
This is a huge disappointment after songs like "Suit & Tie" and "Take Back the Night". This is just... nothing. Nothing at all.
So don't act like it’s a bad thing to fall in love with me
'Cause you might look around and find your dreams come true with me
It's Justin playing off of this girl's past breakups, and then saying "Oh no, I'm not like those guys. I'm special." Normally Justin's at his best when stroking his ego. Like a peacock showing his beautiful feathers. But here he takes the egotistical subtext and puts it right into the text.
And that worked perfectly fine for a song like "Sexyback" which is at least about sex and sexual appeal. But for a love song, where ego shouldn't really come into play? Well, it works about as well as you'd think it would.
Justin tries to compensate for his massive ego by saying "baby you're worth my love" and the like, but it just makes him seem like more of a jackass, to be honest. I think "Mirrors" worked a lot better as a Justin love song, because he left himself out of the picture for the most part. But this?
But I could be that guy to heal it over time
And I won’t stop until you believe it
'Cause baby you’re worth it
Timberlake as Superman and this girl as Lois Lane... no, it's not working out for me.
This song is just too self-absorbed to be a love song. See, Justin knows that people break hearts and promises. Justin knows that people cut other people's hearts open with knives. It's... it's like he's playing some omnipresent demigod role, knowing about all the struggles in love that these poor, underprivileged women must suffer. And by underprivileged, of course I mean "haven't gotten the chance to see Justin in action yet", and that's a kind of roleplay that I just can't get behind.
I really didn't want to dislike this, especially after my recent bouts of negativity, but... I do. It just doesn't work on any level for me. I might even call this my least favourite Timberlake song. It's boring, vapid, and horribly confused in its message. It may not be a bad thing to fall in love with JT, but it's a bad thing to listen to this when you could be listening to much better Justin Timberlake songs.
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