Justin Timberlake talks ahead of Birmingham arena show

Justin has sold 32 million albums and 56 million singles globally. The icon has also scooped 10 Grammy Awards, four Emmy Awards, three Brit Awards, and nine Billboard Music Awards. According to Billboard in 2017, he’s the best performing male soloist in the history of the mainstream top 40.

Man of the Woods was released in February, giving Justin his fourth consecutive US number one and selling more than a million copies.

He no longer feels it necessary to be defined as an R’n’B artist, even though that’s what helped him to make his name when he released his 2006 mega-hit Justified.

“I was like, ‘Wow I really made an R’n’B album’. I really wanted to make an R’n’B album. “Then every review was like ‘pop album, pop album, pop album’ and it really did put in my brain that if I’m always going to be looked at as a pop artist, more than anything, what does that mean?

“I just felt like, ‘Let me do whatever I want’. I’m going to do whatever I want.”

Man of the Woods is his most introspective album and came about after years of conversation with Pharrell and record label deals that prevented the two music powerhouses from working together. The record has a Southern American flavour, which has dazzled fans.

“There’s this sonic real estate that’s so available. [Pharrell] kept pushing me and pushing me to say, ‘No but you’re the guy who has to do it because you’re from there. You can put a positive thing out there about the South and we can do it with sound’. He kept telling me, ‘I can hear it’.

“For a long time, I was not able to work with Pharrell out of a – and I’ve got to say this the right way, ‘cause I don’t want to blame anybody for anything, but it did change the course of things for a minute’. Everyone remembers Clipse. Clipse was signed to Jive Records, which I was signed to. I don’t know what went on with their deal, but I do remember that Pharrell was very adamant about getting them out of the deal, so it became, from my understanding, it became challenging for him to work with any Jive artist at that point.”

The record helps Justin to shed his sex-symbol soul supernova image and instead casts him as an affable bro who enjoys the funk, soul and disco of the 1970s. The music is tactile and warm: erotically lush disco with offhand Southern gospel and casual country-funk.

He released the record in February, to coincide with his headline performance at the Super Bowl LII halftime show.

And he described the record as having been inspired by his family: “This album is really inspired by my son, my wife, my family, but more so than any album I’ve ever written – where I’m from.”

It was also inspired by the star’s love of the outdoors. “The outdoors is the inspiration for a lot of these songs. That’s the main idea. The tour will be able to bring the outside in. How can we bring that to life? I want people to see the inspiration for how it ended up sounding. I’ve never seen that done before: Bring the outside in.”

Justin has had a remarkable career. His first two solo albums both sold more than 10 million copies, though he put his music career on hold from 2008-2012 so that he could focus on acting. During that time, he had starring roles in The Social Network, Bad Teacher, Friends with Benefits, and In Time.

He returned to music in 2013 with his third and fourth albums The 20/20 Experience and The 20/20 Experience – 2 of 2, exploring neo soul, partly inspired by the expansive song structures of 1960s and 1970s rock. The former became the best-selling album of the year in the US and spawned the top-three singles Suit & Tie and Mirrors.

His fifth album gave him the chance to return to his musical roots. Ahead of its release, he said: “I think where I grew up in America has a lot of influence. Growing up in Tennessee – very central of the country – Memphis is known as the birthplace of rock & roll, but also the home of the blues, but Nashville’s right down the street so there’s a lot of country music.

“It sounds more like where I’ve come from than any other music I’ve ever made . . .”