Justin Timberlake denies ‘What Goes Around... Comes Around’ is about Britney Spears after decades-long rumor
Justin Timberlake denies ‘What Goes Around... Comes Around’ is about Britney Spears after decades-long rumor
Daysia TolentinoSat, November 7, 2026 at 9:47 PM UTC
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Justin Timberlake; Britney SpearsCredit: Matt Baron/BEI/Shutterstock; Image Group LA/Disney Channel via Getty ImagesKey Points -
Justin Timberlake said that his hit 2006 song “What Goes Around... Comes Around” is not about ex Britney Spears.
Although it’s not about his relationship with the pop star, he revealed the true inspiration for the song.
Timberlake added that he believes the track is one of his best songs.
Justin Timberlake is clearing up the rumors around one of his biggest songs.
His hit “What Goes Around... Comes Around,” which was the third single off of his album FutureSex/LoveSounds, has long been speculated to be about his ex Britney Spears. Although the former couple had been broken up for over four years at the time of the song’s release, that didn’t stop people from thinking that the track was a sort of sequel to “Cry Me a River,” which had a music video with a Spears lookalike.
“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 said on Complex’s “Re-Rank” YouTube series, which features artists ranking their best songs. “It’s actually a personal story from a friend’s. I asked permission.”
The 45-year-old explained that he was inspired by his friend, who had been going through a breakup.
“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,’” he said.
The “Can’t Stop the Feeling” singer shared that he wrote the song quickly and felt that the creative process for it was smooth.
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“This song was written in, I mean, damn near 20 minutes,” he said. “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.”
Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears at the 2000 MTV Music Video AwardsCredit: Dave Hogan/Getty
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As for where he would rank the song in his discography, he said he would put it at “one or two.”
While this track wasn’t about Spears, his song “Cry Me a River,” from his 2002 debut album Justified, had been inspired by her. When he used an actress that looked like her in the music video, the “Overprotected” singer admitted that she was heartbroken.
“In the news media, I was described as a harlot who’d broken the heart of America’s golden boy,” Spears wrote in her 2023 memoir The Woman in Me. “The truth: I was comatose in Louisiana, and he was happily running around Hollywood. May I just say that on his explosive album and in all the press that surrounded it, Justin neglected to mention the several times he’d cheated on me? There’s always more leeway in Hollywood for men than for women. And I see how men are encouraged to talk trash about women in order to become famous and powerful. But I was shattered.”
on Entertainment Weekly
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
