Mirrors

I had *NSYNC posters up in a way that felt essential at the time, and I’m still not over it entirely—those songs still land when they turn up. Bye Bye Bye, Tearin’ Up My Heart. Something about them was exactly right for that moment.

Justin Timberlake solo came next, and there’s nothing wrong with it objectively. The guy’s magnetic, technically skilled, the whole package. But the distance opened up somewhere between then and now. The earnestness of the boy-band version gave way to something more controlled, more beautiful, less human.

Mirrors is from The 20/20 Experience, and it’s the perfect example—introspective, lush, produced to the limit of what you can do. The video is mirrors and reflections, which is on the nose but works. It’s genuinely impressive. But there’s something cool and polished about it that I can’t quite reenter.