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Fatherhood has changed everything for Justin Timberlake — including his music.
The singer’s upcoming Man of the Woods is his first new album since welcoming son Silas Randall with wife Jessica Biel in April 2015, and the 2½-year-old served as an unexpected inspiration.
Timberlake told Beats 1‘s Zane Lowe that he was talking with Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo of N.E.R.D. about where to begin with the new music when they began to chat about parenthood.
“I named [Silas] after my grandfather and my great-grandfather. My parents divorced when I was young, my grandfather was very much a father figure to me,” he explained.
“But obviously, from two generations removed, just tough as nails, and like, ‘I don’t need to go to the doctor,’ ” adds Timberlake, 36, joking, “And I’m like, ‘I need my ENT,’ you know.”
Williams asked what the name ‘Silas’ meant, and Timberlake had to admit that he didn’t know. “I literally just went on Google [and searched] ‘the meaning of the nameSilas,’ ” he shares. “It sent me to this site and it said of Latin origin meaning ‘man of the woods.’ ”
Timberlake adds, “We were having all these discussions and he goes, ‘Man, you know what, that’s a really really good name for a song.’ And I was like, ‘That’s a really good name for an album.’ ”
” ‘Man of the Woods,’ the title track, was the first song we wrote for this album and the whole thing just took flight from there,” he reveals.
The “Filthy” singer also feels that his upcoming album — which will be released Feb. 2, just days before he takes the stage for the Super Bowl LII halftime show — is deeply personal and shows how he’s matured since becoming a father.
“I talk about everything before Man of the Woods is aspiration and then Man of the Woods really is inspiration because when you have kids, all of a sudden you’re faced with your own childhood, good and bad,” he explains. “And, ‘Am I going to completely mess this kid up?’ ”
Timberlake continues, “I feel like the success of parenthood is feeling like I failed all day today, but I get to wake up tomorrow and do it again … and hopefully they turn out to be a good human being.”
Man of the Woods drops Feb. 2, but is available for pre-order now.
This article originally appeared on PEOPLE.
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