Justin Timberlake has finally revealed that his 2006 hit “What Goes Around… Comes Around,” long assumed to be about his ex-girlfriend Britney Spears, is not about that pop singer.
Nearly 20 years after the FutureSex/LoveSounds single was released, Timberlake addressed the rumors about the song’s inspiration in a new video interview with Complex, At the time of the “What Goes Around… Comes Around” release, listeners believed the song was a sequel of sorts to “Cry Me a River,” a 2002 track that was about Spears, right down to a lookalike in the music video.
“Maybe I should dispel a rumor at this point, which has gone around forever, which is like, it’s not a personal story from mine,” Timberlake told Complex of “What Goes Around… Comes Around.” “It’s actually a personal story from a friend’s. I asked permission.”
Timberlake didn’t elaborate who the friend was but added that the friend was going through their own breakup, and that the track was modeled after Timberlake’s own public split. “He was just going through it and he was telling me what had happened and I said, ‘Do you mind if I write about this?’ And I quote, my friend said, ‘Yeah, torch that bitch. What goes around comes around.’ And I was like, ‘I have to go. Thank you,’” Timberlake said.
“This song was written in, I mean, damn near 20 minutes. Like, it was just flowing. The interlude that goes with it, like it’s just, and then you put the video with it, there’s a 10-minute video we shot for it, like this just hit on all cylinders for me.”
Timberlake will continue to take a retrospective look at his career in a newly announced docuseries, which will also feature Timberlake and Janet Jackson revisiting the infamous Super Bowl “wardrobe malfunction.”