Hours later Justin Timberlake was arrested for allegedly driving under the influence, jokes about his encounter with the police began to go viral. After twenty years as a pop superstar, he was reduced to a meme.
Page Six reported that when stopped by police, Timberlake said, “This is going to ruin the tour.” When the officer, who didn’t seem to recognize him, asked, “What tour?” Timberlake reportedly replied: “the world tour.”
That exchange, as well as jokes about Timberlake being unknown to law enforcement and his glassy mugshot, took over social media. It’s not the first time Timberlake has been shunned (for years, “It’s Gonna Be May” posts on April 30 were unavoidable) but rarely have the jokes been so clearly at his expense.
Twitter has been training for the arrest of Justin Timberlake for almost twenty years.
— Matt (@MattBerry05) June 18, 2024
Timberlake once dominated the airwaves with hits like “Cry Me a River” and “SexyBack,” rising from child artist to NSync breakout star to bona fide solo hitmaker. But concerns about Timberlake’s treatment of women, especially in retrospect, recently began to tarnish his reputation.
When he headlined the Super Bowl halftime show in 2018, people began to reevaluate his 2004 halftime performance, in which he caused a wardrobe malfunction for Janet Jackson called ‘Nipplegate’. She bore the brunt while Timberlake escaped unscathed.
In a similar vein, as the public began to reexamine the tabloid’s 2000s treatment of Britney Spears, the way Timberlake was viewed during their relationship was reevaluated. They dated between 1999 and 2002, and when they broke up, he suggested through his “Cry Me a River” music video that she was cheating on him.
The 2021 documentary Framing Britney Spears sheds more light on Spears’ complicated relationship with Timberlake. After facing widespread backlash, Timberlake apologized to both Spears and Jackson on Instagram.
“I would like to specifically apologize to Britney Spears and Janet Jackson, both individually, because I care about and respect these women and I know I failed,” he wrote in the post. “I also feel compelled to respond partly because everyone involved deserves better and, most importantly, because this is a bigger conversation that I wholeheartedly want to be a part of and grow from.”
Spears’ October 2023 memoir The woman in me revealed more of her side of the story of their divorce, claiming that he encouraged her to have an abortion and that he had repeatedly cheated on her. Over the years, Timberlake has also faced multiple accusations that he cheated on his wife, Jessica Biel, but he has denied them.
On January 25, Timberlake released “Selfish,” a single from his first solo album since 2018. On January 29, Spears apologized on Instagram to anyone she “offended” with her memoir and praised Timberlake’s new song. However, something happened offline between then and January 31, as Timberlake told the audience at his free concert in New York City that night that he would “like to take this opportunity to apologize – to absolutely no one.” before singing “Cry Me a River.” Both Spears and Timberlake have deleted their apology posts.
Brittany Spanos, who writes about pop music for Rolling Stone, told Yahoo Entertainment that Timberlake’s choice to release new music so soon after Spears’ book release was “bizarre.”
“His relationships and experiences with Britney and Janet have been at the forefront of everyone’s minds over the years, and Britney being so explicit about how bad their breakup was ultimately became the final nail in his public image coffin,” she says. said.
The growing anger for Timberlake seemed to culminate in his March 2024 album, Everything I thought it wasdebuted to the smallest number of listeners of his solo career.
Spanos said it didn’t help that Timberlake is no longer in the “zeitgeist of pop music” — and that might explain more of his failure than his reevaluated reputation. She said he has not been able to release music as quickly as his peers, such as Beyoncé or Usher, and his previous album, Man of the forest, was lukewarmly received by critics and fans.
“There was no excitement or hunger for a new Justin Timberlake album, especially one that can’t match the excellence of his first three solo releases,” she said.
Spanos said some people — especially fans of Spears — might be excited to see Timberlake “face the consequences and fail.”
“He’s always had a pretty pristine image, even when he tried to be a bit more of a pop ‘bad boy’ when he started his solo career,” she explained. “Given the public messiness of Britney’s life and image, I think those who are big fans of hers … want to see him stumble and hit rock bottom.”
Still, even after Timberlake’s arrest, his next world tour performance went ahead as planned. There, the pop star thanked his fans for their support during his ‘tough week’.
“I know it’s hard to love me sometimes, but you keep loving me and I love you right back,” he said.
To repair his public image, Spanos said Timberlake will have to “address the public’s issues with him in a very honest and straightforward way.”
“This weirdness isn’t enough to mask the pretty shattered relationship he currently has with his own celebrity,” she said. “Not even NSync nostalgia could save his album, which is pretty dire.”
