Strawberry Bubblegum

[4] Jean Bentley of Hollywood.com found the song influenced by electro,[5] while Pitchfork Media's Ryan Dombal said that it evokes music by Barry White, Sly Stone, and Drake's "ambient R&B" style.

[13] ABC News reporter Allan Raible wrote that "such a move seems engineered to make gullible teen girls in the audience scream".

[13] According to Clyde Erwin Barretto of Prefix Mag, "Strawberry Bubblegum" takes its R&B style in a more avant-garde direction, but its second half is more classic-sounding.

[15] Craig Manning of the Western Herald said that the first half of "Strawberry Bubblegum" draws from Frank Ocean's psychedelic style of R&B, while the outro is more comparable to the music of 'NSYNC, Timberlake's former group.

[2] The Boston Globe's James Reed wrote that the lyrics are silly, but irresistible,[18] while Sarah Dean of The Huffington Post found "Strawberry Bubblegum" as seductive as its title, but according to her, "if you had too much of it you might end up feeling a little sick".

[15] Kitty Empire of The Observer wrote that the "surface silliness" of the song "deepens to a feeling of respect a few plays in, when the penny drops, and everything suddenly makes sense".

[23] Robert Copsey of Digital Spy wrote that while "Strawberry Bubblegum" is musically "rich and rewarding", the lyrics are "embarrassingly cliché".

[9] Lauren Martin of Fact wrote that "if you're going to release an eight minute song with only two verses and a hook", singing the words "strawberry" and "bubblegum" 34 and 20 times respectively "begins to grate".

[25] Tom Hawking of Flavorwire found the verses "Little girl won't you be my strawberry bubblegum/ Then I'd be your blueberry lollipop/ And then I'd love you 'til I'll make you pop" to be offensive.

[27] Wearing varsity baseball-style jackets, Timberlake and his backup singers "shook and finger-snapped" through the song, according to Rachel Brodsky of MTV Buzzworthy.

[28] For the week dated March 17, 2013, the song debuted on the South Korea Gaon International Chart at number 22 with sales of 7,089 digital copies.