Justin Timberlake Bringing Back Baseball, Cologne in 2008

In the lull since FutureSex/LoveSounds, Justin Timberlake keeps finding non-musical ways to occupy his time. The singer, who starred in Black Snake Moan, Southland Tales and Alpha Dog, will hit the big screen again, this time as a minor league baseball player in the film The Open Road. JT will play Carlton Garrett, a member of the Corpus Christi Hooks. The plot revolves around Garrett's trying to reconnect with his star athlete father (played by Jeff Bridges) and caring for his ailing mother. But filming isn't enough for Timberlake, as the singer will also collaborate with Parfums Givenchy to develop a new men's fragrance that will hit nostrils in the fall.

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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