Justin Timberlake concert review: Pop star launches tour in Vancouver

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If you were at the Rogers Arena launch of Justin Timberlake’s Forget Tomorrow World tour at Rogers Arena last night, you know you caught the best show the singer has ever played in Vancouver.

Rehearsing in town for almost a month, Timberlake, his incredibly sharp 11-piece backing band the Tennessee Kids and crack half dozen member dance crew arrived ready to pull out all the stops in a two hour-plus performance that showcased a firm Southern R&B sound with more in common with vintage Stax/Volt soul sides than the singer’s more electronically-tinged previous work.

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We’ll just leave Man of the Woods out of the discussion as JT dropping into Cabela’s to score some plaid shirts never really rang true. Particularly coming from someone with a hit titled Suit & Tie.

Opening with some strains of Memphis before shifting into No Angels, the second single of his sixth studio album Everything I Thought It Was, it was clear that the headliner was feeding off of the energy coming from the hyped out fans dancing in the stands. It was almost redundant when he queried “Vancouver, B.C., did you come to have a good time tonight?”

Welcoming the crowd to “numero uno, night one of the Forget Tomorrow tour,” he was all-action slide-stepping from one end of the stage to the other with effortless fluidity as the band grooved hard behind him. There is something so on about a brass section blowing hard in a live setting that Timberlake clearly understands. This tour is bringing sax-y back.

Tuba too!

LoveStoned, Like I Love You and My Love came and went in a flash of funk before the live debut of the new tune Technicolor. This one is a for sure fan favourite as well as one of the longer songs in the set. It gave the audience a moment to appreciate the clean lines and high-tech design of the production, which boasts an impressive array of computer projections mimicking everything from flashpots to falling stars at lightning speed.

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It suited the uptempo bent of the set list which played to Timberlake’s strength as a one of the best dancers in pop music as well as his classic old school falsetto. While a lot of the lyrical content of his material could be judged less than inventive with its near constant references to sex, dominance and devotion, his songwriting collaborators sure know how to lay on those addictive dance-heavy hooks. A perfect example of this is Can’t Stop the Feeling, which even made a Trolls movie groovy.

A lot of the new material shines live, with Sanctified and Imagination standing out for their banging drive. But Timberlake didn’t reach this level of stardom on those songs. Fans wanted to hear classics such as Cry Me A River and FutureSex/LoveSound. Both of these hits were given marquee productions, including the shifting light wall/floating obelisk that moved up stage to showcase some pixelating embryonic robot coupling that some parents might have to do some explaining about to their kids who attended.

For all of his sex-obsessed lyrical content, Timberlake is one of the least foul-mouthed contemporary pop stars today. I counted one F-bomb all night. Well, not including the super set closer F**kin’ Up the Disco, but that’s a lyric.

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With a shift to the back of the venue second stage to perform six songs, including a great rearranging of the new single Jealous as an acoustic guitar-driven doo-wop five part harmony number, and a flying finale of Mirrors with JT on top of the floating light box, there was plenty of sharing across the venue so everyone got to be — sorta — more close and personal with the star.

Yes, there were strings attached to the former N’Sync’er for the aerial break.

Perhaps most telling about the reinvigorated sound and presentation by the ace showman was that his breakout hit SexyBack actually sounded sort of dated up against the rest of the new material. Exactly where any artist would want to find themselves at this stage in their career.

The Forget Tomorrow Tour puts JT back in the star chamber for sure.

Mystery solved

The question of who was warming up the JT show was a trending topic pre-show.

The answer to the question came at 8:15 when DJ Andrew Hypes hit the mixing board to spin a set of mash-ups for folks who like their music in TikTok-length snippets.

Shouting out for his nineties and eighties babies and letting them know who was headlining the evening, Hypes hyped for an hour.

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He has previously turned up at a few one-off JT shows.

If you need someone who can get the crowd freaking with the Friends theme and gems like Montell Jordan’s This Is How We Do It, Hypes is your guy.

It is nice to see people still get a rise out of Sir Mix-A-Lot’s I Like Big Butts.

sderdeyn@postmedia.com

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