Fans Think Justin Timberlake’s New Single “Drown” Is, Once Again, All About Britney Spears

“Cry Me a River,” 2024 edition? After an (over)analysis—maybe.

Justin Timberlake released his new single, “Drown,” yesterday, and the track—which will appear on Timberlake’s forthcoming album Everything I Thought It Was, out March 15—seems to hint at a failed relationship. Many fans, naturally, think it’s about one Ms. Britney Spears. After all, it wouldn’t be the first or even the second time Timberlake has penned a song about his ex—2002’s “Cry Me a River” was about her, as was “What Goes Around…Comes Around,” which came out four years later, in 2006. 

Timberlake co-wrote “Drown” with Louis Bell, Henry Walter, Amy Allen, and Kenyon Dixon, and it reflects a relationship that went wrong after an ex “showed” him who they “really were.”

“You left me alone out in the dark with all of your demons,” Timberlake sings in the song’s first chorus. “Got caught up in the tide of all the tears you cried / You know I was blinded by my heart, sinking from the start / Should’ve never followed you this far / Now I’m in the deep end.”

Speculation that the song is about Spears and their messy breakup is running rampant, especially on the heels of the release last October of her memoir, The Woman in Me, where she heavily references her relationship with Timberlake (which lasted from 1999 to 2002). The pair broke up after rumors that Spears cheated on Timberlake with choreographer Wade Robson. 

Back to the “Drown” lyrics: Timberlake also questions if the relationship could have worked out had the situation been different. “Sometimes I sit and fantasize / Maybe sometime in another life / We could’ve got it right, got it right,” he sings in the bridge.

Timberlake, naturally, hasn’t confirmed who the song is about (and maybe never will). A source told Us Weekly that, after Spears’ tell-all came out, Timberlake was taken aback by how much he was featured in it: “Justin thought Britney might talk about their ups and downs in more general terms, not air out their very personal dirty laundry,” they said. “He’s disappointed she went this route decades after they split up.” A second source added back in October that Timberlake is remorseful, saying “Justin regrets that he hurt Britney. He was young. He thinks Britney has every right to tell her story and hopes they can move on now.”

There was hope for that, especially after Spears seemed to issue Timberlake an apology on Instagram. “I wanna apologize for some of the things I wrote about in my book,” Spears wrote alongside a clip of Timberlake performing during a segment on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. “If I offended any of the people I genuinely care about I am deeply sorry. I also want to say I am in love with Justin Timberlake’s new song ‘Selfish.’ It is so good and how come every time I see Justin and Jimmy together I laugh so hard ???” 

Shortly after Spears’ apparent apology to Timberlake, he performed a show in New York and, while introducing “Cry Me a River,” he said, pointedly, “I’d like to take this opportunity to apologize to absolutely f—king nobody”; Spears quickly retracted her apology.

“Someone told me someone was talking s—t about me on the streets !!!” she wrote on Instagram earlier this month. “Do you want me to bring it to the court or will you go home crying to your mom like you did last time ??? I’m not sorry !!!”

In regards to Timberlake using her as lyrical fodder, Spears wrote in The Woman in Me that he got “power” from “shaming” her for their breakup, and that she was labeled as a “cheating slut” and a liar. For his part, Timberlake opened up about “Cry Me a River” in his 2018 memoir Hindsight: & All the Things I Can’t See in Front of Me, writing that he wrote the hit after feeling “scorned” and “pissed off” about the split.

“The feelings I had were so strong that I had to write it, and I translated my feelings into a form where people could listen and, hopefully, relate to it,” he wrote. “People heard me, and they understood it, because we’ve all been there.”