I watched Justin Timberlake's 'Can't Stop The Feeling' and now I can't stop the feeling of needing to punch a wall
You know this is going to end with JT weeping on Ellen about bringing joy to the world
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Your support makes all the difference.For a while it looked like we might make it through the summer of 2016 without an omnipresent, saccharine pop banger - a ‘Get Lucky’ or a ‘Happy’ - firing out of every car window and greetings card shop like a Super Soaker loaded with syrup and fizzing in the background of every ‘Brits enjoying the sunshine’ montage on TV. But then Justin Timberlake decided he needed a new waterfall on his already multi-waterfall-tiered swimming pool.
So identical in every way to Pharrell Williams’ Minions soundtrack contribution ’Happy’ I feel like Universal could probably sue, Trolls lead track ‘Can’t Stop The Feeling’ knows exactly how to rack up what I’m sure will end up close to a billion YouTube hits, combining a catchy, relentlessly upbeat chorus and lyrically meaningless and easily translatable vocal hook with a pastel-coloured music video consisting of random people on the street that you wouldn’t expect to find dancing, dancing. A mechanic! Body-popping in his overalls! Whatever next!
The video was directed by the same guy who did Johnny Cash’s ‘Hurt’, let’s watch them both back-to-back so you can get the true measure of the track:
Look, I’ve got nothing against JT. He’s an incredible singer, dancer, actor and musical aesthete, and there are plenty of tracks in his discography that you can point to in evidence of him having written genuinely interesting and substantive music, but god damn this is some fresh hell.
‘Can’t Stop The Feeling’, along with ‘Happy’, are so calculated in their monetisation of hope, spreading the fallacy that all your troubles will just melt away if you do jazz hands in a supermarket or sing into a banana.
I guess Kendrick Lamar’s ‘Alright’ was the antidote to these songs, promising that we're "gonna be alright" and only alright, along with Sia’s ‘Chandelier’, which was about partying through the pain rather partying through the BEST DAY EVER OF ALL TIME LET’S JUST BE FRIENDS FOREVER BECAUSE YOU AND ME WE’RE GOING NOWHERE YEAH WOO SO LET’S DANCE DANCE DANCE DANCE.
Maybe it's okay, and if this song - in all its knowing superficiality - brightens one person's day for a few minutes it's worth it, or maybe it invites us all into a wide-eyed, foaming at the mouth, sunny and dangerous apathy. Maybe I just really dislike that white denim jacket.
Because DreamWorks and Justin Timberlake would want me to tell you, 'Can't Stop The Feeling' is available now on iTunes, Spotify, Amazon and Google Play.
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