Justin Timberlake denies major claim about Britney Spears song
Justin Timberlake has finally denied a major speculation regarding Britney Spears.
The 45-year-old singer released the track, What Goes Around… Comes Around in 2006 and many fans speculated it had been inspired by his 2002 break-up from the Toxic singer, who was divorcing Kevin Federline at the time.
But he has now explained he wrote the song after talking to a friend about their own relationship breakdown.
Speaking on Complex’s Re-Rank YouTube series, he said, “Maybe I should dispel a rumour at this point, which has gone around forever, which is like, it’s not a personal story from mine.”
Timberlake continued, “It’s actually a personal story from a friend’s that I asked permission [to use].”
“He was just going through [a break-up] 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 b****. What goes around comes around.’ And I was like, ‘I have to go. Thank you,’” he further recalled.
Timberlake then proceeded to write the song in “damn near 20 minutes” and the track, which had a 10-minute-long music video, “hit on all cylinders” for him.
It is pertinent to mention that Timberlake and Spears met on The All-New Mickey Mouse Club as children and began dating in 1999.
In her 2023 memoir The Woman in Me, Britney slammed her former boyfriend over the music video for his song Cry Me a River, in which he appeared with a woman who looked like the Gimme More hitmaker and argued it made her look like a “harlot who’d broken the heart of America’s golden boy.”
In the book, Britney also alleged Justin had cheated on her “several times” and claimed she had a termination when she was 19 because Justin “wasn’t happy” at the idea of being a father.
But in 2024, the 44-year-old star apologised to the SexyBack singer.
Alongside a clip of Justin performing with classroom instruments with friend Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show, she wrote on Instagram, “I wanna apologize for some of the things I wrote about in my book. If I offended any of the people I genuinely care about I am deeply sorry…”
“I also wanted to say I am in love with Justin Timberlake’s new song ‘Selfish’ It is soo good and how come every time I see Justin and Jimmy together I laugh so hard ??? Ps ‘Sanctified’ is wow too. (sic)” Britney Spears wrote at the time she apologized to Justin Timberlake for some claims she made in her 2023 memoir, The Woman in Me.
