 -- Justin Timberlake has spent more than 20 years in the entertainment business, but none of that quite prepared him for the trials of fatherhood.

In a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the singer opened up about being a dad with wife Jessica Biel.

He admitted the first few months were pretty rough.

“At first, it broke me down,” Timberlake said. “Those first eight months felt like those old [Ed Sullivan] shows where people are balancing spinning plates on poles -- except if you drop one, they die.”

Timberlake, 36, and Biel, 34, were married in 2012. They welcomed son Silas more than two years later.

"You go through your life with your own traumas, big and small, and think, 'It's not that bad, I have a lot to be thankful for, my parents did the best they could,'" he said. "But then you have a child of your own, and suddenly it opens all the floodgates, and you're like, 'No, no, no! That childhood trauma really did f--- me up!'"

While 22-month-old Silas has been known to sing his dad’s hit “Can’t Stop the Feeling!” around the house, Timberlake isn’t so sure he wants Silas to follow him into show business.

“If he wanted it bad enough, I suppose I could teach him a lot about what not to do," he said.

For his next album, the singer told THR he’s getting even more in touch with his roots.

"It sounds more like where I've come from than any other music I've ever made," he said. "It's Memphis. It's Southern American music. But I want to make it sound modern -- at least that's the idea right now."