Justin Timberlake has finally denied What Goes Around… Comes Around was written about Britney Spears.
The 45-year-old singer released the track in 2006 and many fans speculated it had been inspired by his 2002 break-up from the Toxic singer – who was divorcing Kevin Federline at the time – back in 2002, but he’s now explained he wrote the song after talking to a friend about their own relationship breakdown.
Speaking on Complex’s Re-Rank YouTube series, he said: “Maybe I should dispel a rumour at this point, which has gone around forever, which is like, it’s not a personal story from mine.
“It’s actually a personal story from a friend’s that I asked permission [to use].
“He was just going through [a break-up] and he was telling me what had happened, and I said, ‘Do you mind if I write about this?’ And I quote, my friend said, ‘Yeah, torch that b****. What goes around comes around.’ And I was like, ‘I have to go. Thank you.'”
Justin wrote the song in “damn near 20 minutes” and the track, which had a 10-minute-long music video, “hit on all cylinders” for him.
Justin and Britney met on The All-New Mickey Mouse Club as children and began dating in 1999.
In her 2023 memoir The Woman in Me, Britney slammed her former boyfriend over the music video for his song Cry Me a River – in which he appeared with a woman who looked like the Gimme More hitmaker – and argued it made her look like a “harlot who’d broken the heart of America’s golden boy.”
She added: “I was comatose in Louisiana, and he was happily running around Hollywood.”
In the book, Britney also alleged Justin had cheated on her “several times” and claimed she had a termination when she was 19 because Justin “wasn’t happy” at the idea of being a father.
But in 2024, the 44-year-old star apologised to the SexyBack singer.
Alongside a clip of Justin performing with classroom instruments with friend Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show, she wrote on Instagram: “I wanna apologize for some of the things I wrote about in my book. If I offended any of the people I genuinely care about I am deeply sorry…
“I also wanted to say I am in love with Justin Timberlake’s new song ‘Selfish’ [rose emoji] It is soo good and how come every time I see Justin and Jimmy together I laugh so hard ??? Ps ‘Sanctified’ is wow [starry eyed emoji] too.(sic)”