CSPC: Justin Timberlake Popularity Analysis
It was supposed to be his time. Over a period of two months Justin Timberlake starred in Woody Allen‘s latest film, released his fifth solo album Man of the Woods plus two singles, and performed at the Superbowl. Too good to be true.
Theaters-wise, Wonder Wheel has been a disaster, the worst results of the director since his title September released 30 years ago. It becomes only more worrying when we know that Allen issues one movie per year on average.
Feedback from his Superbowl performance were chaotic too. His tribute to Prince was seen as fairly insulting considering the opinions of the late singer who clearly stated he hated those post-mortem duets. The audience was also disappointing, the lowest in 9 years.
He is left with his new album. The lead single Filthy debuted at #9 thanks to downloads by his fanbase but it dropped out of the Top 50 after sitting there for only 3 weeks. Abroad it missed the Top 10 almost everywhere including in the UK, Germany and France. Say Something, a duet with Chris Stapleton, was rushed to take over the promotion of the album. While the song debuted at #9 inside the Hot 100, we still have to wait and see how it holds during the upcoming months.
If the start of year is less promising than first hoped, the career of Timberlake has been impressive. With only five albums, spread over 4 eras, he piled up plenty of hits including Cry Me A River, Rock Your Body, SexyBack, My Love, What Comes Around… Goes Around, Summer Love, Suit & Tie, Mirrors and Can’t Stop the Feeling!. He also contributed to hits like Where Is The Love?, Signs, Give It to Me, Ayo Technology, 4 Minutes, Dead and Gone, Holy Grail and Love Never Felt So Good. Is that enough to top the total of his former boys band, NSYNC? The group is on 44 million equivalent album sales in total. Another target for Timberlake is to beat his main challengers for the Prince of Pop crown. So far, studies resulted in Ed Sheeran‘s last update totalling 45,5 million, Justin Bieber‘s tally of 47 million and Bruno Mars‘ figure of 47,7 million. Among male acts from the last 25 years, Drake is close to 57 million, Usher is on 59,5 million, Michael Bublé on 62,1 million and, of course, Eminem is way ahead at more than 155 million.
As usual, I’ll be using the Commensurate Sales to Popularity Concept in order to relevantly gauge his results. This concept will not only bring you sales information for all Timberlake‘s albums, physical and download singles, as well as audio and video streaming, but it will also determine their true popularity. If you are not yet familiar with the CSPC method, the next page explains it with a short video. I fully recommend watching the video before getting into the sales figures. Of course, if you are a regular visitor feel free to skip the video and get into the figures.