Getting a proper screencap was, er…
[Video][Website]
[5.78]
Alfred Soto: The rattling percussion redeems the musty arrangement, straight out of 2007-era 50 Cent. As for the star, he’s as serious as a deacon.
[4]
Crystal Leww: This definitely grooves, but I still wish that I were listening to “What Goes Around…Comes Around” instead. Timbaland still does pretty much that one thing…
[5]
Will Adams: It is astonishing that the unfortunate Shock Value II era was only 4 years ago. Timbaland’s attempts to fit into pop’s burgeoning affinity for house music resulted in awkward collaborations and watery dance songs. Enter The 20/20 Experience, and my faith is restored. “Tunnel Vision” is one of the album’s best productions, highlighting what Timbo does best: saturating the sonic field with a unconventional combinations of unconventional sounds. Frenetic percussion, stuttering vocal samples (a nice nod to the baby talk of “Are You That Somebody”), and a floating synth scale are just a few elements that make up “Tunnel Vision”‘s dense soundscape. There’s something new to be found in each listen. Unfortunately, Justin remains the least appealing part of his music. He makes his leeriness seem like some condition out of his control, And when he makes it seem endearing to be singled out and gazed at exclusively, it’s even less palatable. Here’s hoping for an album of instrumental versions.
[7]
Jer Fairall: That hot-button video is several disappointingly missed opportunities, all failures easily chalked up to the unquestioned advantages of the “male gaze.” For one, consider that J.T. doesn’t mind showing his ass (literally) in bad rom-coms, but this fleshy clip ignores the fact that some two thirds of his audience probably wouldn’t mind seeing a bit of skin from the man himself. Additionally, the stalkery tone of the track is not well served by what is essentially an excuse to get numerous beautiful women naked in something that plays like an R-rated James Bond credit sequence; if this is actually about the singer’s “tunnel vision” for a particular subject, shouldn’t the video reflect some combination between eroticism and danger between J.T. and his (un?)willing prey? The track itself? One of the stronger moments on the bloated but occasionally seductive parent album, restrained but unsettled, sensual but anxious, woozy but inexorable. In other words, everything that the video should have been.
[7]
Anthony Easton: I know we need to review the song and not the video, but his scopophilic language, especially the line about the movie shoot, and the lens as phallus, suggests that this cannot be read as anything but a piece where the visual reinforces the auditory. In Robin Thicke’s videos the nudity is usually a set of negotiated positions. He is in an undershirt or shirtless as often as the woman is in underwear or less. That’s what made Blurred Lines so complicated, that and figuring out irony in straight boy odes to getting down is always a bit of a trick. Justin Timberlake splits the comedy and the art pretty much straight down the middle. His Lonely Island stuff isn’t as funny as he thinks it is. His solo work sounds so expensive, and so empty. The emptiness rests on how he depicts women here. The women are only nude. The nude women are like Yves Klein’s live canvases — just because we think that he’s making art, doesn’t mean that the art isn’t hacky — and one of the biggest ways of being hacky, is the women nude/men clothed.
[3]
Katherine St Asaph: Nothing needs saying about the video, except that its coming out so simplified so soon after “Blurred Lines” proves that where women see empowerment, men just see tits. Even when you win, there’s no winning. (And doesn’t it scupper the lyric, anyway, to expand “tunnel vision” to every model on set? Titillation, senselessness, etc.) But if you imagine it’s on purpose, it works. On The 20/20 Experience, which to the detriment of everyone but Timberlake consists of fucked-up love songs that play sincere, “Tunnel Vision” is the refreshing outlier: a fucked-up love song that plays fucked-up. “Pusher Love Girl,” for all its exhaustive drug references, sounds like Justin’s on nothing stronger than candy cigarettes; here, he’s trailing “I’m so gone” like the Weeknd and sounding about as sinister. First, “I know you like it” twisted to sound like “I know you lie” from a leering child — not that the former’d sound benign. Next, negging (“I don’t know why, but girl, I’m feeling close to you — maybe it’s this ocean view”). Next, a filmmaking metaphor that’d be like Frank Ocean “feeling like Stanley Kubrick” without yet realizing he’s just gone (or that Kubrick was kind of a dick). Throughout, a lonely dungeon of a production for Timbo and Justin to choreograph their creepshots. Even the conceit is dark. “I’ve got that tunnel vision for you”; has he got you in his heart, or his crosshairs?
[8]
Brad Shoup: So when Live Nation gives a megastar 20 days to record an album, we shouldn’t be surprised that he grasps for the paparazzo’s glossary. Timbaland’s speaking late-’90s: croaking orders, blowing raspberries, triggering curlicue beats. Even his backwards melody hits. Justin treads water except for the occasional languorous melodic climb. It’s lush and overlong, a lot of words choking out a vintage production effort.
[6]
Patrick St. Michel: A really strong, slightly disorienting song for about four minutes. Then it becomes excessive, everything pointlessly padded out for no real good reason.
[6]
Scott Mildenhall: Such an apt title for a song marked by flagrant disregard for commercial convention. For an album supposedly created in obligation, it’s odd that The 20/20 Experience often felt like an exercise in self-indulgence; like something dreamed up by someone whose days of greatest popularity were well behind them “just for a bit of fun” in “a shed at the end of the garden” (a massive personal studio at the back of their massive house), not meant for anyone else to hear. Even a stopped clock points at “Mirrors” twice a day though; for one minute and fifteen seconds longer than this in fact, and yet it probably wouldn’t seem that way on a blind guess. Whereas that felt like half its playing time even when not butchered into it by radio people, this feels twice it even when scanning past it to the next station playing something less of an effort to get through. Exorbitance can be wonderful, but its not a virtue in itself; rather, “Tunnel Vision” suggests lack of vision in how to turn some good ideas into something a bit more laconic.
[6]