Justin Timberlake recorded 100 songs for his new album.
The singer admitted one of the biggest challenges he faced with his upcoming sixth studio album, Everything I Thought It Was, was narrowing down the tracks, but he is very proud of what made the cut.
“I worked for a long time on this album and I ended up with 100 songs. So, narrowing them down to 18 was a thing, and then, yeah, I’m really excited about this album. I think every artist probably says this, but it is my best work,” he told Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1.
The “Like I Love You” hitmaker explained the title for the record came as a result of the feedback he was getting from his friends.
“I was playing it for people around me. They’re like, ‘Oh, this sounds like everything we know you for.’ And then another friend of mine was like, ‘Oh, this sounds like everything I thought I wanted from you,'” Timberlake said.
“It was like that sort of phrase, in one way or another, was in the air. And I thought to myself about how some of the songs are more introspective and some of them are more what I think people know me for,” he added.
The “SexyBack” hitmaker — who has two sons with wife Jessica Biel — felt “really good” to be able to speak honestly through his lyrics on the record.
“It just really feels good, the thoughts, and emotions and feelings that came to me in writing these songs and the people I collaborated with and got to share these moments with,” he said.
“And so how I feel like I was able, on some of the songs, to look back at the past and have a real, not a refracted perspective of what it was because they always say … you always hear that thing about, well, there’s never any truth,” The Social Network star said. “There’s just everybody’s perspective of what happened. But to really look at it and be able to metabolize and verbalize my perspective on it, I don’t think I’ve ever really done that before.”
