I was prepared to hate the new Justin Timberlake Playboy interview. The writer opens the piece by calling him the “coolest dude on the planet”, on par with George Clooney and Keith Richards.

Sit DOWN.

Then he compares Timberlake to Frank Sinatra and Young Elvis.

WHAT?????????????????

To be fair, those words come from the journalist. You can imagine though, for Justin, when you walk around and everyone tells you this, how he got to be so far up his own ass.

But I didn’t hate the interview. At all. I don’t want to spoil it for you by pulling out the best parts, because it is really one of those that reads very well, that you’ll want to enjoy for yourself from start to finish as a conversational flow. What I will tell you though is that at one point Pippy drops some Henry David Thoreau and I had to laugh. Because he must have memorised it like The Social Network before meeting with the magazine.

Still, there is a lot of honesty here. And humility. He doesn’t talk about how “God gave me this gift, and I must share it”. Rather, Justin speaks of hard work, very hard work, and no matter how much I dislike him, I don’t doubt he did work hard, and I will always respond more to real hard work, like the authentic kind, the immigrant kind, the Malcolm Gladwell 10,000 hours kind, than a divine explanation for success.

There’s some golf talk (he claims he’s shortened his backswing), there’s a standard “I won’t discuss about my personal life” speech, he’s pretty candid about Lady Gaga’s future, and he’s also very, very kind about Britney. Almost...gentle. It actually broke my heart a little.

If there were 5 Gossip Wishes that could be granted by a Gossip Genie, no doubt, on that list of 5, I would, every day and always, say that I want Britney and Justin to get back together. If you were around during that time, you know what I mean. I bring this up because Justin brings up the matching denims. Of course you remember the matching denims.

I know it can never be. Of course it can’t. But that’s why you play the Gossip Genie game anyway.

Also, I really love it when he says he was sh-t when he performed with Mick Jagger.

Click here to read the entire interview. Like I said, you’ll hate the opening preamble, but the second page gets a lot more interesting.

PS. I just thought of something: do you think for this generation, Justin and Selena are like our Justin and Britney? This is giving me the shakes.


File photos from Jeffrey Mayer/LUCY NICHOLSON/Gettyimages.com