He’s bringing ‘Sophie’ back, yeah.
Goodshirt’s ‘Sophie’ music video is one of the most instantly recognisable New Zealand music videos of all time. Featuring a woman listening to the song on headphones while her entire house is burgled behind her, the video won the New Zealand music award for Best Music Video in 2003, was added to Nga Taonga’s best 100 music videos of all time in 2009, and was featured in Anthems: New Zealand’s Iconic Hits in 2019.
In 2020, ‘Sophie’ garnered attention once more after a strikingly similar video was released by American rock band Eels, in which headphone-wearing Mad Men star John Hamm is burgled while listening to music. “It’s a crazy coincidence that we ended up with something so similar,” said Mark Oliver Everett of Eels. “The nice thing about this being called to our attention is now I know the band Goodshirt.”
And now, just last month on The Graham Norton show, Justin Timberlake performed his new song ‘Selfish’ while a number of men, clad in black, removed all his possessions. It is unclear whether Timberlake had seen the Eels video (Google’s only eel-based connection was that Katherine Ryan called him a “grubby little eel face” last year), or the Goodshirt video (the only useful result for Justin Timberlake + Goodshirt is this).
So, is Justin Timberlake bringing SophieBack? “I’ve got no idea,” said Gareth Thomas of Goodshirt over email. While being extremely complimentary towards the camerawork and choreography, he wasn’t about to claim that any kind of copying had taken place. “It’s nice to be part of the creative continuum,” he wrote. “After all, we stole the burglar idea from silent films such as the Keystone Cops and Charlie Chaplin.”
Let us assess the evidence and find out if Justin Timberlake will be the next big international celebrity crying a plagiarism river.
The main character
The central subject in ‘Sophie’ is a young woman (let’s call her Sophie) who, wrapped in a towel and fresh out of the shower, eschews risk of electrocution and plonks headphones onto her wet hair. She listens to ‘Sophie’ and becomes so transfixed by the fascinating true-to-life story, she doesn’t notice that her whole house is being pillaged by black-clad burglars.
Justin Timberlake could not be further from wearing a towel. In fact, the man is dressed as Dr Evil. While Sophie remains unaware of what’s going on behind her, Timberlake’s burglar dynamic is much more nuanced and complex. Not only can he very clearly see them, but at one point he watches one walk away while singing “I know I may be wrong, but I don’t wanna be right”. Inside job?
The set dressing
Sophie’s house is filled with thrilling trinkets such as a lime green iMac G3, a surfboard, a birthday cake and an inflatable whale. Justin Timberlake’s house looks like a Citta-laden therapist waiting room, and the only interesting object is a vinyl record that turns out to be his own bloody upcoming album. Once again we ask: inside job?
The burglar conduct
Sophie’s burglars are played by the members of Goodshirt. While only one of them wears a black balaclava (band member Gareth Thomas was unable to make the shoot so needed a stand-in), all of them are equally frenzied in executing their heist. This likely had something to do with the fact that they shot the whole thing around 20 times to get the timing just right.
Justin’s burglars are much more calm and collected, with one of them even helpfully stopping to present the above album cover to the camera. Some of them are wearing boiler suits with rags hanging out of their pockets like mechanics. Another is wearing a cheese cutter. It certainly raises the question: are these even burglars at all, or is Timberlake simply relocating his therapy practice?
The dance moves
Sophie sits entirely still for the duration of the song, moving only to change chairs and tuck into a piece of birthday cake. When he’s not doing what can only be described as “fancy footwork”, Timberlake is sliding off chaise lounges, ducking under couches, and moonwalking between the hardened criminals robbing him out of house and home.
The song
Both ‘Sophie’ and ‘Selfish’ start with the letter S? Coincidence?
The ending
In the final moments of ‘Sophie’, Sophie turns around and realises that she has been the victim of a serious home invasion. She drops the piece of birthday cake she is eating and clasps her hand around her mouth to stifle the screams. Her life’s possessions are gone. The bean bags: gone. The stuffed crocodile: gone. Wearing only a towel, she will have to rebuild again from scratch.
By comparison, Justin Timberlake is basically cracking up the whole time as he is reduced to nothing but the grey villainous smock on his back. After the last curvaceous chrome lamp exits stage left, Timberlake beams, moonwalks once again over to his last remaining chair, and drops down in time with the curtains. The room is plunged into darkness and the audience erupts.
The man’s lost all his Citta wares, but at least he’s brought SophieBack into the zeitgeist.
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