“He needs this right now,” someone in the audience said about Justin Timberlake, when he took a moment four songs into Saturday’s concert to bask in the adulation of the crowd. Given the singer’s recent arrest for DWI (which resulted in a widely seen mug shot that appeared on the T-shirts of more than one fan), it wasn’t hard to disagree. But it’s also likely true that Timberlake needs it at all times regardless, and on the first of two nights at TD Garden, he worked hard to earn the love he craved.
Not that he was straining; beyond a bit of sweat, there was little sign of any difficulty in his performance. Timberlake has been a professional since he was a literal child, and the choreography, the weightless falsetto, and even the charm and joy of performing that he presents publicly are all things that are now baked into his very core. If he remains a bit of a cipher — one of the reasons his arrest was so jarring, a piercing of his relative unknowability — he was, above all else, an effortless showman.
From the crisp bump of the opening “No Angels,” much of what Timberlake had to offer was essentially ultra-modern if not futuristic disco, from the wocka-chicka guitar and tootle flute of “Infinity Sex” to the vaguely tropical “Copacabana” echoes of “Imagination.” “My Favorite Drug” rode on burbling bass, and “Rock Your Body” was like Michael Jackson produced by Chic.
But Timberlake had some other ideas as well. Deliberate and with a bounce, “Sanctified” ran on a compressed bluesy groan and a ticking-clock beat with a flat, mechanical swing; the downtempo but sharp adult-contemporary funk of “Until the End of Time” was as close as he came to giving the crowd his “SNL” classic “[Body Part] in a Box” and he was cocky and winning with the crisscrossing synth slashes of “SexyBack.” “My Love” was an amalgam of ideas, including jazz-piano runs, Latin freestyle percussion clonks throughout, and a screaming guitar solo, all fusing into a juddering whir.
Meanwhile, Timberlake and his dancers rarely stopped, with choreography that was precise without being especially big, just exact little moves in synch. And a giant moving LED block made its way across and around the stage, sometimes serving as a platform of Damocles hanging over Timberlake’s head and eventually serving as a stage on which the harnessed singer could lean over the crowd at a 45-degree angle.
That drive to entertain sometimes resulted in songs like the creeping “Cry Me a River,” where Timberlake didn’t really embody the lyrics, only rode the high of singing them. And maybe his joke about his recent troubles — “Is there anyone here tonight who is driving… no, I’m just kidding” — turned a serious (and potentially fatal) situation into a glib wink. But Timberlake is showbiz and showbiz is Timberlake. He simply pivoted to the next song and gleamed.
JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE
At: TD Garden, Saturday
Marc Hirsh can be reached at officialmarc@gmail.com or on Bluesky @spacecitymarc.bsky.social.