Justin Timberlake says a friend's breakup inspired his hit song 'What Goes Around... Comes Around,' rejecting the long-standing theory that the song revisited his separation from Britney Spears. He recalled asking permission to use the experience and receiving a response that gave him the song's central phrase: 'Yeah, torch that bitch. What goes around comes around.'
The singer addressed the speculation on Complex's Re-Rank series on Thursday, 5 November, while ranking his favourite songs from his catalogue. The track had often been interpreted as a follow-up to 'Cry Me a River,' whose music video featured a woman resembling Spears.
Justin Timberlake Reveals the Song's Origins
'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. 'It's actually a personal story from a friend's. I asked permission.'
He recalled that his friend was 'just going through it' and describing what had happened when he asked whether he could write about the experience. The friend's response supplied the phrase 'What goes around comes around,' and Timberlake recalled thanking him before leaving.
'This song was written in, I mean, damn near 20 minutes,' Timberlake said, describing the speed of the writing rather than the time needed to complete the recording. 'Like, it was just flowing,' he added.
Timberlake also described it as the first song he wrote for FutureSex/LoveSounds, the 2006 album on which it appeared. The track became the album's third single and reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and number 4 at the UK Singles Charts in March 2007.
Timberlake Places the Track Among His Best
Timberlake said he would put 'What Goes Around... Comes Around' at 'one or two' in his catalogue, placing it among his personal favourites. His other top-five selections included 'Mirrors,' 'My Love,' 'SexyBack,' and 'Cry Me a River'.
He praised the interlude and the 10-minute music video starring Scarlett Johansson, explaining that the different elements had worked together particularly well. 'This just hit on all cylinders for me,' he said of the project during the Complex interview.
Why Fans Linked the Song to Britney Spears
Timberlake and Spears dated from 1999 until 2002, the year he released his debut solo album Justified, which included 'Cry Me a River.' The earlier song was widely associated with their separation, and its video's use of a Spears lookalike reinforced that connection.
'What Goes Around... Comes Around' arrived more than four years after their breakup, but its lyrics about heartbreak and dishonesty encouraged listeners to hear it as a continuation of the earlier track. Its narrator confronts a former partner with the words, 'It's breaking my heart to watch you run around', before returning to the refrain about what goes around coming around.
Spears discussed the reception of 'Cry Me a River' in her 2023 memoir, The Woman in Me, writing that she had been portrayed as 'a harlot who'd broken the heart of America's golden boy.' She also alleged that Timberlake had been unfaithful several times during their relationship.
After what we saw today, we should all be supporting Britney at this time.
— Justin Timberlake (@jtimberlake) June 24, 2021
Regardless of our past, good and bad, and no matter how long ago it was… what’s happening to her is just not right.
No woman should ever be restricted from making decisions about her own body.
Spears acknowledged kissing choreographer Wade Robson while she and Timberlake were dating, an incident she said they agreed to move past. Reflecting on her emotional state after the breakup, she wrote: 'The truth: I was comatose in Louisiana, and he was happily running around Hollywood.'
