Happy New Year! Oceans shall rise, heroes and villains will be made, and Justin Timberlake will find new ways to win the hearts of the public. After several teases of a new release over the weekend, he has announced an album called Man of the Woods, due out February 2, in a trailer that spends a whole minute screaming “I AM MAKING A ROOTS-POP ALBUM” in flaming, kilometre-high letters.
Atop snippets of new, Justin-Vernon-meets-Timbaland-sounding music, JT hangs out in snowy fields, making campfires, and welcoming Jesus while wading in streams. According to the extremely earnest voiceover, the album will be inspired by Timberlake’s home state of Tennessee and will also “sound like mountains” (if he’s right, this likely means one thing and one thing only: mandolin solos). He does not, however, address why he’s wearing a tanktop in winter weather at one moment but a seasonally appropriate jacket in the next. Perhaps it’s a metaphor for the many directions he’ll take on this release. We’ll have to find out when the first single drops January 5. In the meantime, the Man of the Woods trailer is above.
Videos by VICE
Phil is on Twitter and glad to be back.