Saturday Night Live: Justin Timberlake sings ‘Sanctified,’ ‘Selfish’

Not only did we know that Justin Timberlake was performing on Saturday Night Live tonight, it felt easy to predict the song.

Given that over the past few days the former ‘NSYNC member turned solo artist hyped up his brand-new single “Selfish,” it was not too hard to fathom why he would want to perform it on this venue. He’s got such a longstanding relationship with the sketch show, so why not use this to make your grand debut?

Well, here’s the funny thing: Timberlake actually went with another new song in “Sanctified” for his first performance, one that was a little more up-tempo. He was accompanied here with a lot of background singers and a band, and this felt like him combining more genres in his music than we’ve seen in a long time. He also had a featured artist on the performance in Tobe Nwigwe.

We’ll give Timberlake this — there’s never been any question about his ability to deliver an energetic show. He did that here with the help of a lot of brilliant people around him. We are curious to see what the general public reaction will be to this, mostly because this has been a more controversial last year for him than arguably at any other time that he appeared on the show in the past.

As for the second performance…

This is where Timberlake busted out “Selfish,” which is probably the one of the two songs that is lined up for widespread commercial success. It sounds familiar similar to some of his other singles over the years, albeit somewhat evolved.

The strangest thing to us coming out of this episode is that we have to somehow associate Justin with a different era now, mostly because for so much of our young adulthood he was considered one of the top stars in music. It’s easy to feel old now…

Related – Go ahead and grab other updates on Saturday Night Live, including who is hosting the show next

What did you think about Justin Timberlake performing “Selfish” on tonight’s Saturday Night Live?

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