Justin Timberlake – Mirrors

Written Four Years Before He Married Her

Released on February 11, 2013 as the second single from The 20/20 Experience, “Mirrors” became Justin Timberlake’s first UK number one in nearly five years, topping the chart for four weeks beginning March 17 and earning silver certification for 200,000 copies sold. In the United States, the eight-minute progressive soul ballad peaked at number two on the Billboard Hot 100, kept from the summit by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis’ “Thrift Shop,” though it spent thirty-five weeks on the chart and ranked sixth on Billboard’s year-end list for 2013. What made this deeply romantic declaration particularly poignant was that Timberlake had first conceived the song in 2009 during writing sessions for Timbaland’s Shock Value II, four years before he actually married Jessica Biel in October 2012. The song sat waiting while he proposed, while they planned the wedding, and while he watched his grandfather William Bomar slowly succumb to heart trouble and dementia before passing away on December 29, 2012, just weeks before the single’s release.

The track demonstrated extraordinary international reach beyond the US and UK markets. It topped charts in Australia, Bulgaria, Lebanon, Poland, and South Africa, while reaching number two in Canada, Belgium, and New Zealand, and number five in Germany. The song spent seventeen weeks in the top forty on the Hot 100 and reached number one on Billboard’s Mainstream Top 40 chart. The 20/20 Experience album debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 with first-week sales of 968,000 copies, the biggest sales week of 2013, and eventually became the year’s bestselling album in America. The track earned three million digital downloads in the United States alone, while its music video surpassed 1.3 billion views on YouTube by January 2025, making it Timberlake’s second-most viewed clip behind “Can’t Stop the Feeling!” The song competed against Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines,” Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky,” and Lorde’s “Royals” for dominance throughout 2013, holding its own with sophisticated production that balanced emotional depth with radio accessibility.

Timberlake wrote “Mirrors” with Timbaland, Jerome Harmon, and James Fauntleroy, drawing inspiration from two sources of enduring love: his relationship with Jessica Biel and the sixty-three year marriage of his maternal grandparents William and Sadie Bomar. The mirror metaphor came from Timberlake’s belief that the most valuable thing in a relationship is being able to constantly change and be individual while looking to the other side knowing they’re changing as well, but somehow you two can mirror each other and be the other half of that world that you both create. He elaborated in his 2018 book Hindsight that when he wrote it, he and Biel were living together but not yet engaged, noting it was years before he proposed. The concept of two reflections into one represented his vision of love as transformative and reflective, showing how a partner can inspire growth, self-awareness, and emotional completeness. Harmon later revealed that the eight-minute final version consisted of two distinct pieces, with the rock-influenced first half written in 2009 and the more R&B-oriented second half created years later and independent of the original track.

Recording details remain somewhat guarded, though sessions took place during 2012 as Timberlake worked on The 20/20 Experience following his six-year hiatus from solo music. Timbaland and Jerome Harmon handled production alongside Timberlake himself, with the track incorporating live strings that some critics felt were mixed too low compared to other instruments. The song was composed in E-flat major with a moderately slow groove of seventy-seven beats per minute, featuring Timberlake’s layered vocals creating hypnotic echo effects on the refrain. The arrangement built gradually from minimal instrumentation to a fuller sound, with the second half segueing into a different musical section that felt like its own song. Engineer mixing sessions refined the balance between the progressive pop elements and soul influences, creating what Rolling Stone later ranked number seven on its list of 100 Best Songs of 2013 while Billboard editors placed it at number ten on their 20 Best Songs of 2013.

The 20/20 Experience was Timberlake’s third studio album, released on March 19, 2013 by RCA Records after seven years since FutureSex/LoveSounds. The album incorporated neo-soul styles with elements of older soul music, with Timberlake serving as executive producer and enlisting Timbaland and Jerome Harmon for most tracks. He’d begun working on the album in June 2012 with no rules or end goal in mind, publicly announcing his return to music in January 2013 with lead single “Suit & Tie” featuring Jay-Z, which peaked at number three. The album spawned additional singles including “Tunnel Vision” and tracks from the second volume The 20/20 Experience – 2 of 2 released later that year. Timberlake supported the album with the Legends of the Summer Stadium Tour alongside Jay-Z and later The 20/20 Experience World Tour, one of his most successful tours to date and the highest-grossing led by a solo artist in 2014. The album received a Grammy nomination for Best Pop Vocal Album, while “Mirrors” earned a nomination for Best Pop Solo Performance.

The music video directed by Floria Sigismondi premiered as the highlight of an hour-long special on The CW network in March 2013 and became one of the year’s most talked-about clips. Choreographed by Noemie Lafrance, the video depicted a tale of two lovers through several decades, opening with a dedication to William and Sadie. The narrative showed an elderly woman packing her deceased husband’s belongings while his ghost mimicked her every move, then flashed back through their bobby-socks courtship in the fifties, a rough marital patch in the sixties, and scenes of the widowed Sadie living with her husband’s spirit and still mirroring his moves. Timberlake himself didn’t appear until the five-minute-forty-five-second mark when the song segued into its coda. His grandmother Sadie told Italian weekly Grazia that Justin surprised her with the video, saying you have to see this, just you sit down and watch it, and that it brought tears to her eyes as a lovely tribute. The video won Video of the Year and Best Editing at the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards, where Timberlake also received the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award and briefly reunited with NSYNC for a performance medley.

The song spawned numerous covers within months of release. Boyce Avenue teamed with Fifth Harmony for an acoustic version featuring gentle piano intro and lush harmonies shared among all five group members, released on their 2013 album Cover Collaborations, Vol. 2. Ellie Goulding performed a toned-down acoustic version for BBC Radio 1’s Live Lounge in 2013, accompanied simply by guitar, piano, minor percussion, and gospel choir backing vocals, slimming the eight-minute track to under five minutes. Other artists who covered it in 2013 included Anthem Lights, Madilyn Bailey, Our Last Night, Kidz Bop Kids, and Hollywood Ending, demonstrating the song’s immediate cultural penetration. The original appeared in numerous films and television shows throughout the decade, while Timberlake performed it on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Saturday Night Live, and at the 2013 Brit Awards on February 20 where he debuted the live performance. The song became a setlist staple on all his subsequent tours including the Legends of the Summer Stadium Tour with Jay-Z, The 20/20 Experience World Tour, The Man of the Woods Tour, and The Forget Tomorrow World Tour where it closed the show performed on a floating stage.

The dedication to his grandparents added layers of meaning that transcended typical pop romance. William Bomar had inspired the name of Timberlake’s clothing line William Rast, and his death just weeks before the single’s release turned what might have been a simple love song into something more profound. In the video’s most touching scene, when the fictional Sadie’s wedding ring falls off, her grandson deftly catches it, hinting at Timberlake’s intention to carry on the Bomars’ legacy and hopefully enjoy a union with Jessica that matched their sixty-three years. Critics were divided, with Andy Kellman of AllMusic unfavorably describing it as less an epic than a drawn-out midtempo pop ballad, while others praised the ambition and emotional resonance. The track has sold over three million digital copies in the United States and continues charting periodically on streaming platforms. Looking back, “Mirrors” stands as one of Timberlake’s most personal compositions, proof that sometimes the songs we write years before major life events can become prophecies we fulfill, transforming inspirations from our grandparents’ enduring love into promises we make to our own partners about the life we hope to build together.