“He needs this right now,” an audience member said at Saturday's concert, as Justin Timberlake soaked up the crowd's praise four songs into the night. Given the singer's recent arrest for drunk driving (which resulted in his mug being widely publicized on many fans' T-shirts), it's not hard to disagree. But it's also true that Timberlake needs it all the time, and on the first of his two-night run at TD Garden, he tried hard to get the love he craves.
Not that he was straining himself; beyond a little sweat, there was little to his performance that seemed difficult. Timberlake has been a pro since he was literally a child, and the choreography, the airy falsetto, and even the charm and joy of public performance are now burned into his very core. If he remains an enigma (one of the reasons his arrest was so shocking was that it cut through the nature of his relative obscurity), he was above all an effortless showman.
From the crisp swell of opener “No Angels” to the vodka-chicka guitar and tuttle flute of “Infinity Sex” to the semi-tropical Copacabana echoes of “Imagination,” many of Timberlake's offerings were essentially ultra-modern, if not futuristic, disco. “My Favorite Drug” was driven by a bubbly bass, and “Rock Your Body” sounded like a Chic-produced Michael Jackson.
But Timberlake had other ideas: The purposeful, bouncy “Sanctified” unfolded with compressed, bluesy moans and a pulsating beat of flat, robotic swing, and the downtempo but sharp, grown-up contemporary funk of “Until the End of Time” was the closest he'd come to bringing his musical essence to audiences. “SNL“ Classic”[Body Part] On “In a Box,” he was confident and triumphant with the crisscrossing synth slash of “SexyBack,” while “My Love” was a tremulous fusion of ideas — jazz piano smashes, Latin freestyle percussion thuds and a screaming guitar solo — that coalesced into a trembling sound.
Meanwhile, Timberlake and his dancers barely stopped moving, the choreography was precise, not particularly bombastic, just small, precisely synchronized movements, and a giant, moving LED block spun across the stage, sometimes functioning as a Damocles platform dangling above Timberlake's head and eventually as a stage on which the harnessed singer could lean out at a 45-degree angle above the audience.
That eagerness to entertain sometimes resulted in songs like the creeping “Cry Me a River.” Timberlake didn't really embody the lyrics, just got a lift from singing them. And maybe his joke about his latest troubles — “Anybody here driving tonight?… No, I'm kidding” — turned a serious (and potentially deadly) situation into a flippant wink. But Timberlake is show business, and show business is Timberlake. He just pivoted to the next song and shone.
Justin Timberlake
Where: TD Garden, Saturday
Mark Hirsch can be contacted at officialmark@gmail.com Or Bluesky @spacecitymarc.bsky.social
