Justin Timberlake continues to prove himself quite the Pop force.
Sixteen months have passed since the singer made a triumphant return to the charts with comeback album ‘The 20/20 Experience’. Fast forward to today, the LP, its ‘Part 2’ extension, and combined set (aptly sub-titled ‘The Complete Experience’) have amassed total global sales of over 6 million units.
The incredible feat (which is rendered even more remarkable given the worldwide dip in music sales) saw Timberlake presented with a plaque backstage at his Hammerstein Ballroom show in New York last week. Peep the celebratory pic, which sees the star surrounded by his label and management, above. {Source}
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Congrats are certainly in order for JT and his team. That said, we remain perplexed as to how he’s sold so many units and yet few outside his fanbase could name four songs on the album that weren’t singles.
After all, with fellow mega-sellers such as Adele and Beyonce, the musical and cultural impact of their dominance was incredibly hard to escape. Indeed, wasn’t the world chanting “surfboard” in unison? Didn’t everyone from Times Square to Antarctica know at least one song back to front on ’21’? And yet with JT there was…‘Mirrors’…and even that was a generic box-ready radio number; one hardly equipped with the ability to sell this many albums.
Hey, who knows. Perhaps, we’re being unjustly harsh because, from our vantage point, the LP’s hype far outpaced its quality. Still, the uneven balance between the album’s success and cultural penetration does make us wonder…wonder…wonder.
