You may have heard the pop music buzz this week about a rivalry that seems to have come straight out of 2002; Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake are battling it out.
No, not on the dance floor (I don’t know if that post-breakup dance floor battle ever really happened, but it was a fun rumour after they split), but on the iTunes chart.
The whole thing started when Timberlake released his first solo single in six years, “Selfish.” Spears fans decided to stream her 2011 song, “Selfish”, and the end result was Spears’ 13-year-old song beating Timberlake’s on the iTunes charts.
But which is the better song?
I’m not going to eviscerate Timberlake’s lead single as much as Consequence did (highlight of the review: “And lest you think that he’s kept up with modern technology, the line, ‘Every time the phone rings, I hope that it’s you’ feels like a time capsule from the days before the vibrate setting and Caller ID — the last era when Timberlake was relevant.” – ouch!). But even as someone who’s been a fan of both *NSYNC and Timberlake for a good two decades, this song is…pitiful.
It’s a pop/R&B-lite track produced by Timberlake, as well as Louis Bell (known for working with Taylor Swift and Post Malone) and Cirkut (Maroon 5, The Weeknd). It’s the kind of blasé pop music you hear in the grocery store; an unremarkable chorus, bland lyrics (“Put you in a frame boo, baby who could blame you, glad your momma made you”), and a completely forgettable backing track that sounds like a Casio-keyboard preset.
For a lead single – a comeback single at that – it’s pretty disappointing. It sounds like one of Timberlake’s B-sides from Justified, or yes, a Justin Bieber B-side – basically the kind of track you’d expect to be buried amongst a bunch of upbeat, flashier tracks, not an album’s lead single. Unoffensive, unremarkable, completely trite.
I also can’t help but think that if this is Timberlake’s response to all those cheating rumours with Jessica Biel, surely, he could’ve come up with a more passionate track to display his love?
On the other hand, we have Spears’ “Selfish.” I wasn’t a huge fan of her Femme Fatale album as a whole, and this song isn’t that great, either; again, generic pop music, but just in a different way. This was in Spears’ electro-pop era, and this song sounds terribly dated now, with the Cascada-esque backing track and Spears crooning, “Tonight I’m gonna be a little sellll-fish” during the choruses.
Top 10 hit-makers Stargate (Beyoncé, Katy Perry) lead the production, and while the track isn’t one I’d go out of my way to listen to, I could see it going off a bit in a club somewhere. At least it’s got a danceable chorus, and the breakdown towards the middle of the song probably inspires some fun drunken dancing if you’re out on the town.
But if we’re really doing a battle of the “Selfish” songs, I have one true winner: *NSYNC’s 2001 ballad, “Selfish.” I know I’m dating myself here, but truly, this is the best of the three songs.
From *NSYNC’s last album, “Celebrity”, the pop/R&B ballad was produced by Brian McKnight, and you can certainly tell that from the treacly melody, and equally sugary lead vocals from Timberlake and JC Chasez. But who did have an unrequited love in the 2000s where lines like, “And you can call me hopeless, baby, ’cause I’m hopelessly in love” didn’t fit right in?!
Maybe I’m just yearning for the glory days of *NSYNC (even though their track for the Trolls’ soundtrack last year was lame), or maybe all this Britney v. Justin stuff has me nostalgic, but I’d easily pick *NSYNC’s track as the best one.
Either way, this has been a fun journey back to 2000s nostalgia. How I wish I were still 14, listening to Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake in my bedroom adorned with their posters again. Well, not really, but it’s been fun reminiscing.
Ratings:
Justin Timberlake, “Selfish”:
Britney Spears, “Selfish”:
*NSYNC, “Selfish”:
Snippets 