By Drew Wilson
This review covers the pop track Justin Timberlake – Not a Bad Thing.
This particular track was released in 2014 and is one of the tracks for the album The 20/20 Experience – 2 of 2.
This track attempts to be one of those slow romantic type tracks. There’s a slow tempo and supposed to be a calm soothing vocalist put in. Hard to go wrong, right?
Well, what really caused this track to go downhill for me was the fact that the lyrics were pretty much crammed full of cliche’s. There were so many cliche’s, the meaning throughout the track get’s pushed off into the boring category for me. I’ve heard these lyrics a million times in other tracks. By the time I got to the end of this track, I was really left feeling that this track was highly unoriginal.
The drum kit used in this track was was nothing I hadn’t heard already, but to give this track some credit, there’s not a whole lot I can come up with that would not only fit with the theme of this track, but deviate greatly from what was present. The only thing that I can say is that there needs to be more audible variances in the percussion section because this track quickly becomes tired by the time you get 2:00 into it.
The guitar portion at the beginning really does little to add to the track. There are guitar guitar sounds that might add to the overall feel of this track, but this wasn’t one of them. Beyond that, the acoustic guitar strumming would have added a fair bit, but it get’s drowned out by the vocals and a few other instruments in some portions of this track.
The overall audio atmosphere you get in this track is generic, generic, generic. Very few tracks can pull off generic sounds and still be decent, but when it comes to a track that’s supposed to be about love, generic is about the last thing you want to hear. You want to hear something special and something different, yet pleasant to the ears. Unfortunately, I don’t really hear anything beyond the vocals that even comes close to that and the vocals are nowhere near enough to accomplish this task.
At the end of the day, this track is supposed to be romantic, warm, and soothing. Because of its generic sound, it isn’t enough for me to even leave a phone number.
Score
3/10
Drew Wilson on Twitter: @icecube85
