From today’s New York Times (first-time visitors will need to register to view the whole thing):

“He won over the teeny-boppers long ago, but in his incarnation as a sexy-smooth crooner with a hip-hop edge, Justin Timberlake has gained some unusual fans: hipsters. ”

One expects to see Timberlake’s peach-fuzz visage staring at us from the cover of Entertainment Weekly or Rolling Stone. But the last time I checked, the New York Times still prided itself on being a newspaper and not a cog in the publicity-industry machine.

I don’t have anything against Mr. Timberlake personally–unless he gets serious about hooking up with Scarlett Johansson — but c’mon. He’s led a charmed life: He regularly consorts with internationally famous objects of desire (Jessica Beil; Cameron Diaz; Britney Spears). By his own admission, he’s never worked a “real job.” He rose to fame in a sappy boy band that was no better in any distinguishable way from the Backstreet Boys. He pretty much threw Janet Jackson under a bus during that whole “wardrobe malfunction” at the Super Bowl in 2004. And let’s face it — his music just isn’t that great. (Am I the only one who can’t sit through one of his “edgy” new tracks?) Is this really the kind of privileged entertainer the indie-rock community is embracing these days?

Jumping ahead a bit:

“Unlike his former boy-band colleagues, Mr. Timberlake has even won over musicians who prefer lo-fi thrash to the slicker sounds of mainstream albums. Last month, in a Greenpoint club in the farthest reaches of hipster Brooklyn, Matt Johnson, 25, of the keyboard-and-drums act Matt and Kim, admitted his authentic Timberlake love.

“In fact, he told the crowd, he had recently dreamed about playing a show with Mr. Timberlake, a one-time Mouseketeer. (The audience cheered this prospect.) And in December Pitchfork, the online music review bible, anointed Mr. Timberlake “the new King of Pop,” and named his song “My Love” the No. 1 of 2006 above indie stalwarts like TV on the Radio and Joanna Newsom, and an honor no Backstreet Boy could hope to achieve.

“I don’t think he’s as prefab and contrived as other artists,” said Tony Croasdale, 30, a punk promoter in Philadelphia and a singer, as Tony Pointless, for an anarchist hardcore band called R.A.M.B.O. “I like him because I don’t think he oversings.”

Okay, so he doesn’t rely overmuch on melisma like, say, his former Mickey Mouse Club colleague Christina Aguilera. But really? Not prefab? Not contrived? Seriously?

And then there’s the last line of the piece…

“Believe it or not,” he added, “Justin Timberlake has some major fans in the anarchist punk community.”

This is just another instance of indie-rock stalwarts embracing a pop star to show how open-minded they are, like when everyone jumped on the Kelly Clarkson bandwagon two years ago. The difference is, that was entirely justified (pardon the unintended Timberlake album reference); Breakway is still a remarkably solid pop album.

The endorsement from Pitchfork doesn’t affect me one way or the other. But the Times is a little more troubling. This isn’t the first fusillade in the Times’ agenda to reposition Timberlake as a star that you might as well embrace, because hey, everyone else is. And one doubts it will be the last. But I for one am not buying it. I’m not degrading Timberlake’s talent or his place in the entertainment firmament: He’s a pop star, and he deserves to be at least as much as Spears or Aguilera. He’s been decent on Saturday Night Live. He might even be a good actor. But seriously: Enough already.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 7th, 2007 at 9:22 am and is filed under What's Shaking, Music Rants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.