So, to recap: Justin Timberlake famously threw himself back into music this year with his comeback single “Suit & Tie,” which some derided as sounding like a knock-off Robin Thicke record. Thicke then scored the No. 1 song in the country with the fun and slinky “Blurred Lines,” a Pharrell-produced track that is what plenty of Timberlake devotees imagined his comeback might sound like. “Blurred Lines” was sent to the top of the charts thanks in part to its cheeky video, which has proven to be divisive because of the way in which it uses nude women. Now Timberlake has struck back (in this completely invented war) with the video, directed by Jonathan Craven, for his new single “Tunnel Vision.”
The clip features an array of set pieces in which projections of Timberlake interact with nude dancers, a fractured dynamic that mirrors “Tunnel Vision” itself. In some scenes, Timberlake’s face appears over the women’s bodies while in others the projection conducts choreographed dances with the models. Like his new album The 20/20 Experience, in which half the songs run longer than seven minutes, the “Tunnel Vision” video is self-consciously artistic and mature. But the video is also at times effective, particularly when the editing gets choppier during the bridge.
In any event, it’s better than him singing “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”
