Justin Timberlake took an extended break between "FutureSex/LoveSounds" and "The 20/20 Experience," but when he returned this year he revealed that he had not one, but two albums for release. His manager Johnny Wright told Rolling Stone that all the pieces just sort of fell into place.
"We had a month prior to Justin shooting a movie with Ben [Affleck], "Runner Runner," so the idea was to get into a studio and see if the chemistry was there," he said. "Those guys got into a groove and cut a record every day. In the end, they had more than 20 songs."
Timberlake didn't want to dump any of the new material, but he knew that he had too much to fit on one album.
"Because the songs weren't just three minutes long, if we put all this on one record, we'd probably have a three-hour experience, and that's too much music," Wright said. "So we had the conversation about splitting it up and putting them both out in one year."
Wright said that Timberlake broke the songs down into two categories in order to split them into two separate albums.
"Some of the songs to him felt happy and lively, and some felt kind of dark," he said. "So we turned the two pieces into, like, seasons. Everyone's going to have a different opinion. But for me, the first half is about new love, the honeymoon, when you're just getting into a relationship. And when you get to the second part, the relationship is established and things are going on."
