At the Super Bowl, Justin Timberlake plays a high-stakes game
IT’S HARD TO THINK OF A BIGGER, more consistently successful star than Justin Timberlake. Since his charmed beginnings as the front man of 1990s boy band ’N Sync, Timberlake has triumphed in all of his endeavors. His solo music career includes a long string of hits, from “Cry Me a River” to “Can’t Stop the Feeling!” His roles in movies like The Social Network and Friends With Benefits established him as an affable but sensitive actor seemingly custom-made for the early 2010s. His appearances on Saturday Night Live and The Tonight Show turned his musical virtuosity toward a just-subversive-enough sort of comedy that went viral by default. These accomplishments earned him a reputation as the sort of entertainer who reigned in the Sinatra generation.
Yet it’s exactly this track record that makes Timberlake an uneasy fit for this moment. The Super Bowl halftime show, at which he is set to perform on Feb. 4 in Minneapolis, seems like just the right venue for an entertainer who has spent his career striving to deliver entertainment to the biggest possible
