We Reshot Justin Timberlake’s ‘Man of the Woods’ Photos with His NSYNC Doll
Doll photos by Taji Ameen

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We Reshot Justin Timberlake’s ‘Man of the Woods’ Photos with His NSYNC Doll

Doll of the Woods.

Look, folks. We were gonna sit here and write a long explanation about why we spent a perfectly good afternoon taking photos of Justin Timberlake’s NSYNC doll from the year 2000 and inserting them into the promo shots for his new album, Man of the Woods. We planned on rationalizing it by saying something about how all the controversy and critical panning currently surrounding the once harmless pop star has made us long for the simpler time of Y2K, when a 19-year-old Timberlake was the standout member of a boy band and HitClips were our primary source of music. And maybe, on a subconscious level, that’s true. But the real reason is: We just wanted to see the doll in the dang woods!

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Why did we have the doll handy? What purpose does this all serve? Are we trying to make some sort of larger statement? No, seriously, why did we have the doll just lying around? These are all valid questions but answering them would take up valuable time where we could be enjoying photos of the doll in the woods. In fact, you’re probably not even reading this right now. So, with that, we are proud to present: Justin Timberlake’s Doll of the Woods.

Here's a press photo we found of Justin Timberlake being outdoors among a buncha freaking horses. So we went ahead and swapped him out for the doll version of himself. Not bad if you ask us!

Here's the cover of Justin's new album, which he titled Man of the Woods since he seems to be into hanging around outside these days like some kinda lumberjack or something. We haven't listened to it yet but from the cover it looks like a mashup of The Life of Pablo and the first Bon Iver album. Is that right? Anyway, we put the doll on the album cover, which looks pretty neat.

Here's another one of him kneeling on the friggin' grass like he's a dang emo shepherd or something. He looks like he's asking God why He has forsaken him with bad reviews of his album. There were no horses in this one though on account of he must've blown through his horse budget on that other photo. (How many horses did you count in that photo, by the way? We found seven but our pal Steve is saying six. Either way, that's a lot.) Anyway, check out the doll doing his thing!

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This is Justin in a teaser video for his album or something. We're not sure because we didn't watch it but if you just search "Justin Timberlake Man of the Woods" on Google, you can find this image from it without having to watch anything. Man, Google's got everything! Our buddy Taji shot these photos, by the way. He's a funny dude who is into doing cool skateboard tricks and pulling video pranks and what have you. You should Google him, actually. Notice the doll, by the way? Pretty cool!

Uh oh, Justin's art director musta goofed because it looks like this photo is ripped in half. We tried our best to work the doll in but honestly, if you don't like this one, that's on JT's art director. Someone should've proofread those things.

Here's another press photo of Justin which Google tells us was shot by Ryan McGinley. This guy did a much better job of making sure the darned photo wasn't torn in half. Honestly, this one was challenging for us because the doll wouldn't stay up straight. It originally had these marionette strings that were supposed to help him stand but we cut them off because they looked dumb as hell. At one point he rolled down a great big hill and landed in the dirt so that's why he's got so many dirt stains on him. We took his little shirt off to throw it in the laundry and discovered that Doll JT was rockin' a pretty sweet six-pack. Good for you, bud!

Whoops, another photo that got ripped up. Word to the wise, folks: That's what happens when you shoot photos outside where there's all kinds of wind and other wild nature stuff, and not in the safety of an indoor studio. But on the upside, the doll looks very distinguished here!

So that's it. That's Doll in the Woods. Thank you and we're sorry.

Dan Ozzi is on Twitter. Taji Ameen is on Instagram.