Sparkle, Justin, sparkle!

Notice the "just plugged the toilet" grin on his face.

Justin Timberlake has been known to try way too hard to be "bad ass" and credible. Paticularly this time with a new single on the radio and a new album to drop on September. He tells the press that he--gasp!--takes drugs. He tells the Brit magazine The Observer: " “I've done way too many drugs already. I've already inhaled and I've already ... who knows? I'm just like everyone else, I get completely plastered [How seventies!], I've done my fair share of drugs and I've been caught places with my pants down. It's just I make sure there are no cameras around.” He went on to complain that people hold him to a higher standard because of his Mickey Mouse Club past. “I don't show up drunk to functions and the drugs I do have been in my own private time--If Courtney Love shows up to a function it's like: ‘Oh that’s Courtney Love,’ but if I show up drunk it's like: ‘Oh my God.’”

Can anyone smell how contrived this "admission" is? He lives out in L.A. and he works in the music industry; it's not like drugs are hard to come by there. It's like when he caused the wardrobe malfunction to Janet Jackson on the Super Bowl; his "I'm a playa" veener quickly devolved into a wimpering mama's boy who cried "I'm sorry" every which way the wind blew.

Why is it that American "pop" acts like Justin and Britney Spears try so hard to be "credible?" Britney runs around in a slutty schoolgirl uniform and straddles a python on the MTV awards, and she has the most serious look on her face like she's come up with the cure for cancer. Quit fronting it girl, you're just a fucking pop tart for chrissakes. Which is one reason why I follow the European pop stars like Robbie Williams and Kylie, who IMHO have a healthier attitude towards pop; they don't go award saying po-faced that they're "artists" regardless how bubble-gum the music sounds. Robbie might come from a boy band just like Justin, but he doesn't go around acting like he's a black kid from the ghetto when he's a white kid from the suburbs, doesn't rent a busload of rappers for his records, and he doesn't rip everything off from Michael Jackson circa Off The Wall. And he makes better music, and he doesn't sweat it trying to be "street" and "credible" in the process If America listened more to Robbie Williams and less to Justin, their music scene would be a better and less pretentious one. And probably a better country as well.