Justin Timberlake and Timbaland have been announced as the new music curators for ESPN’s Monday Night Football.
Earlier this week, ESPN unveiled their partnership with Timberland and Timberlake to curate music for select Monday Night Football games throughout the 2023-24 NFL season. The music selected will be played during promotional spots, live telecasts and pregame shows over a seven-week period.
Timbaland, Timberlake and fellow ’00s pop star Nelly Furtado‘s new collaboration ‘Keep Going Up‘ will be used in a week one promotional spot. See what weeks the Grammy Award-winning duo will curate the music for Monday Night Football below
Justin Timberlake and Timbaland’s music curation schedule for Monday Night Football
Week 1: Buffalo Bills versus New York Jets
Week 6: Dallas Cowboys versus Los Angeles Chargers
Week 11: Philadelphia Eagles versus Kansas City Chiefs
Week 16: Baltimore Ravens versus San Francisco 49ers
Week 18 Doubleheader: Teams TBD
Wild Card Round (Postseason): TBD
Divisional Round (Postseason): TBD
In a statement, ESPN’s senior director of sports marketing Curtis Friends spoke about the new venture. “Football and music go hand-in-hand, like the iconic Timbaland and Justin Timberlake duo, who collaborate on music to near perfection,” he said. “ESPN’s Monday Night Football music curatorship is popular with fans given the access this partnership provides to new and unexpected combinations of music with sport.
“We’ve had Diplo, DJ Khaled, Drake, and Marshmello and this fifth season, for the first time, we have two curators in Timbaland/JT [who] we know will energize all us fans for this NFL football season.”
Timberlake and Timbaland have been working together for two decades, most noticeably on the former’s second studio album ‘FutureSex/LoveSounds’. The duo’s new collab with Furtado comes 16 years after the trio’s first with ‘Give It To Me’.
In other news, Timbaland confirmed that Justin Timberlake’s next album is “finished” and will have a similar sound to his Grammy Award-winning second album. “[The album]’s like ‘FutureSex/LoveSounds’ but nothing too heavy, just giving you what you expect from us,” he said. “We had songs that maybe were too complicated, so we said we want it to feel like ‘FutureSex…’ part two. So, we did songs that will fit that.”
Timberlake’s new album will be his first since 2018’s ‘Man Of The Woods’. In a three-star review, NME wrote “Do not be fooled by JT’s new outdoorsy image… he’s still the funky pop magician we know and love.”