Justin Timberlake bringing ‘Forget Tomorrow Tour’ to Cleveland, but he may want to forget the past week or so

CLEVELAND, Ohio – Justin Timberlake has had a relatively rough couple of weeks in terms of his public persona. The singer-songwriter-actor — who will be bringing his “Forget Tomorrow Tour” to Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse on Sunday, July 7 — may instead want to forget the recent past. Timberlake recently got popped by the police for driving while intoxicated in the Hamptons, which has gifted pop culture with another celebrity mug shot to laugh at and a nominal perp walk that has given countless TikTok and Instagram folks new material to creatively lampoon.

Adding some pointed insult to his public image injury, one of the arresting officers was too young to recognize a guy who was one of the most famous pop stars in the Western world just a decade ago and social media was ablaze with thousands of smart alecks with working smartphones and opposable thumbs.

Adding yet another heaping of insult to the minor legal injury, many of the “breaking news” stories about the arrest took as much space re-litigating Timberlake’s less-than-noble treatment of ex-love Britney Spears, although realistically, the couple was very young and partially raised by Disney, where maintaining healthy interpersonal relationships in the spotlight is probably not part of the Mouseketeer Indoctrination Program.

But Timberlake’s quick and complete public abandonment of Janet Jackson following the famous 2004 Super Bowl “wardrobe malfunction,” was simply an act of cowardice and worthy of being periodically reexamined.

Not only did he take absolutely no responsibility at the time, in the immediate aftermath, he spoke of the incident as if he had been home on his couch watching it happen instead of being on stage (and by extension also in rehearsal) with Jackson, ripping off the allegedly malfunctioning piece of wardrobe.

As is often the case, the woman with the “offending” exposed body part got vilified, and the pretty white dude skated away relatively free in the press and a decade later was invited back to the scene of the crime for which he was an accessory . Since then, after being repeatedly taken to task in the post-Me Too era, Timberlake has publicly apologized to both women, so he’s got that going for him, and perhaps he and spouse Jessica Biel, will raise their two young sons to do a bit better.

Spears, of course, got a modicum of revenge, if that’s what she values, in her recent memoir, “The Woman in Me,” where she airs Timberlake and NSYNC out for cultural appropriation and “trying a bit too hard” to fit in, be accepted by and befriend all the groovy and cool Black artists they were meeting and hanging out with at the time.

New public embarrassment aside (those old turn-of-the-century photos of “hip-hop” Justin with cornrows or the full denim outfits he and Spears wore at the 2001 American Music Awards will never not be embarrassing), Timberlake has a tour to complete. Though footage of the arrest shows him vocally worrying about whether this legal kerfuffle will hinder his ability to do his primary job, Timberlake appeared on time at the scheduled Chicago show shortly after the arrest.

“We’ve been together through ups and downs, lefts and rights,” he said at the show.

“It’s been a tough week, but you’re here, and I’m here, and nothing can change this moment right now,” the 43-year-old said to reassuring cheers from the crowd as soft piano chords tinkled in the background.

“I know sometimes I’m hard to love but you keep on loving me and I love you right back. “Thank you so much,” he said.

Several days later in Boston, he lightly joked about the DWI, saying to the crowd, “So uhhh, is there anyone here tonight that is driving?” before quickly adding “No, I’m just kidding,” and going into some standard stage banter.

In March, Timberlake released his sixth album, “Everything I Thought It Was,” coming six years after his uneven “mature” Southern-infused record “Man Of The Woods.”

If record sales and streaming numbers tell one tale about an artist’s continued or resurgent popularity (think Kate Bush and “Stranger Things”), the road is where artists truly find out who still loves them through fans paying way too much for tickets, parking, food and beverages just to share a big room and watch and listen to the star on stage.

If “love” is in the ticket sales, then many folks still love them some JT as the “Forget Tomorrow” tour has done boffo business. Removing the available verified resale ticket market, JT fans can expect a near-full house at Rocket Mortgage on Sunday night, and hopefully those fans also truly love “Everything I Thought It Was,” as Timberlake has been performing up to 11 of the little -bit-too-long new album’s 18 songs.

“Everything I Thought It Was” should satisfy JT fans (Justies? Lakies?) who were underwhelmed by “Man of the Woods.” It has the feel, if not quite the consistent quality, of the multi-platinum “Future Sex/Love Sounds” and minus the experimentation of its follow-up “The 20/20 Experience.”

The longtime Timberlake/Timbaland songwriting/production team is still in place along with Timbaland acolyte/co-producer Danja but minus The Netptunes, who produced much of Timberlake’s debut and most of “Man of The Woods.”

But there are plenty of slinky, mid-tempo groove beds on which Timberlake lays down his still malleable high tenor and smooth falsetto. Songs such as “Imagination,” “No Angels,” and the boasting “Infinity Sex” ride variations of the familiar head-nodding, club-ready neo-disco bounce heard on “SexyBack” and the relative ballad “Drown” recalls the sparse , low-end thump of “Cry Me A River.”

But the 43-year-old also contemporizes his sound with the reggaeton-adjacent beat of “Liar” featuring the very contemporary rapper-singer Fireboy DML and the mutant trap power ballad “Sanctified” finds Timberlake using the jittery cadence of contemporary rappers and R&B singers to reasonable effect.

But there’s also the second NSYNC reunion song following the “Trolls Band Together” tune “Better Place.” The ballad “Paradise” is led by those chaste, starry-eyed boy band lyrics and an uninspiring pop melody that doesn’t do much for the 76-minute album beyond adding another four and a half minutes.

Although “Man of the Woods” may not have burned up the pop or critical charts for long, Timberlake brought the accompanying tour to Cleveland twice in the same year, in March and October of 2018, selling out both shows, proving again that the best expression of true love for an artist lies in putting up your dollars and cents to spend some quality time with them.

Chances are, Timberlake will give his now-grown fans, who will seemingly forgive him anything, mostly what they want, though 11 new songs seems like pushing it a bit. He even walks through the crowd to get to a smaller B-stage for some up-close-and-personal songsmithery.

So Timberlake’s not just a man of the woods, he’s a man of the people.