Skip to main content
It's easy to forget how long Justin Timberlake has been famous. Even though I'm well aware that he shed the boy-band image more than a decade ago, until last night part of me imagined his shows were still filled with a sea of teenage girls screaming themselves hoarse. There was plenty of screaming happening at the Moda Center, but the sources were varied. There was the scrawny 16-year-old kid in the suit and bowtie. There was the burly dude on crutches, who became the subject of onstage patter. There were the couples dressed like they were going to see Tony Bennett at the Schnitz. There were Blazers. Ages ranged from prepubescent to cougar, though the mean demographic skewed toward "old enough to get really excited over a Bel Biv DeVoe cover." An entire generation can legitimately claim to have grown up listening to Justin Timberlake, something Timberlake himself acknowledged off-handedly, quipping "I'm getting too old for this shit" as if he were a singing, dancing Roger Murtaugh.
Indeed, Timberlake is an A-list pop icon and all-around celebrity whose star is not dependent upon album-cycle hype. Still, JT hit Portland pretty late this time around. The final installment of The 20/20 Experience, the two-part album for which his current tour is named, came out last September. He's already done this show around the world, and is essentially batting cleanup now. That means we got an exceptionally well-oiled production, delivered by a consummate entertainer. It also couldn't help but feel a little stale.
Don't get me wrong: Despite confessing to feeling the drain of a two-and-a-half hour performance when he was only halfway through, the 33-year-old Timberlake isn't actually Danny Glover in Lethal Weapon, just biding his time until he can retire from the road and go home to Jessica Biel. His voice was crisp, his dancing smooth, his soul-orchestra backing band sharp, and nary a hit was left off the setlist, whether it belonged to him or someone else (in addition to BBD's "Poison," he also covered "Heartbreak Hotel," "Jungle Boogie" and, ballsiest of all, Michael Jackson's "Human Nature").
But with any arena show, I want one of two things: for the artist to either shrink the room or use its caverns to deliver a total, balls-out spectacle, preferably with giant inflatable poop emoji. Instead, Timberlake gave us a show that was big but not outsized, personable but not intimate. He emerged in shadow against a honeycombed backdrop before his band, the Tennessee Kids, rose out of the stage floor, and it was one of only a few fleeting moments when he was ever truly alone up there. Even when the front of the stage lifted off the ground, detached and floated to the other side of the arena, depositing him at a small platform with an acoustic guitar for the requisite "stripped-down, in-the-round mini-set," he was flanked by backing singers and dancers and other musicians who made the trip with him. And while it might sound odd to say that a show featuring a floating stage was not a spectacle, Timberlake's current mode is suave sophistication, which means monochrome color palettes, projections of artfully nude women and no giant emoji, fecal or otherwise. Even the lasers were tasteful.
Basically, it was a show befitting his stature, and entering this final lap of the tour, he wasn't going to downscale nor blow things up. But even when going through the motions, the motions were still pretty impressive. And though the majority of us never got that one-on-one (or one-on-20,000) moment, at least two fans got to share a tequila shot with him. Both were celebrating 30th birthdays, which means they've probably been dreaming of that shot for half their lives. I'm sure they'd say it was worth the wait.
WWeek 2015