Justin Bieber’s new album, “Justice” Is Unfocused

In July 2017, Justin Bieber pulled his emergency parachute. He was on the last leg of a colossal world tour to publicize his colossal fourth album, Purpose, and he just couldn’t do it anymore. With 150 shows in 40 countries completed – an exhaustive run that lasted 16 months – Bieber had only 14 shows to go, but he was done. He offered a brief apology and a vague note from Scooter Braun, his manager, filled in the rest of the gaps. “The soul and well-being of a man I really care about comes first and we all must respect and honor that,” wrote Braun on Instagram.

That was the end of the tour. More than a year before that – just a few months after the start of the tour – a New York Times review noted that Bieber looked so shocked during the show that you would think he was watching a “suspected kidnapping in progress, subject forced to high – labor intensive. ”Fourteen more months of that life couldn’t have helped.

So Bieber left. Sure, he appeared on a guest feature here and there (and, yes, the songs mapped, because come on, it’s Bieber), but for all intents and purposes, he was out. He got married. He grew a mustache. He got rid of the mustache. He grew up again. He seemed content to trust his fame and the sporadic location. For three years, he did not tour. When he returned with a new album – 2020’s To alter, the first in five years – it looked like he had ejected correctly from the mega pop machine and landed safely somewhere he would rather be. To alter sees Bieber in his most coherent form – he’s totally comfortable in R & Bieber mode, his voice sounds as silky and effervescent as ever, his vocal runs confident and cheerful. It was a full-fledged album, with no radio-guided missiles, but with constant bops. It was less a game for the commercial domain, more just … a vibe. The singles did well, but far from the stratospheric hits of “Sorry” and Purposeother offers from. And he didn’t seem to care much! Screw pop stardom, it looked like he was having Fun.

With To alter, we also found out what prompted him to leave. The album’s release included a series of ten-part documentaries (I know) on YouTube, during which Bieber reveals how dark things got on the tour: “Man, I was like, dying. My security and other things were coming into the room at night to check my pulse. Like, people don’t know how serious it got. ”Although Bieber produced the series, it stood firm as an intimate and honest look at his darkest moments. Your doctors show up. The message wasn’t exactly subtle: frantic levels of fame during Purpose they weren’t working for Bieber, and he needed to relinquish his King of Pop throne for his own well-being.

If fame were the condition, and To alter it was the recipe, it’s intriguing, so to see Bieber pick up sonically where Purpose left out. Your sixth album, Justice, arrived last week. It’s an eclectic range of reigning pop modes – vaguely EDM hooks, acoustic soul, smooth ballads and, yes, R&B-infused jams – joined by great consistent choruses and brilliant production (and vexing appearances by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.). It is an inconsistent album with transcendental trebles and tolerable bass. Many songs will dominate the charts and the radio. But is this what Bieber wants?

Justice sees Bieber collaborating with veterans of pop. Skrillex, which produced the infectious Purpose the hits “Sorry” and “Where Are U Now?” they are on the deck again with the smooth opening of the piano “2Much” and the cinematic “Somebody”. The Monsterz & Strangers collective, which had a large participation in Dua Lipa Nostalgia for the future last year, they were involved in four songs, including the hymn “Anyone”, with a chorus built for an arena near you. And Andrew Watt and Louis Bell, essential ingredients in the secret sauce of Post Malone’s hit-making consistency, ended up Justice, infusing songs like “Deserve You” with Post’s nebulous bouncy and bop aura.

A person missing in Justice it’s Poo Bear, one of Bieber’s longtime collaborators and an established R&B hitmaker who worked with names like Usher and Chris Brown (and gave us 112’s “Peaches and Cream” – thanks, Poo Bear, we’ll never forget). Poo Bear has appeared on all Bieber albums since 2013 Daily, but it is noticeably absent here. On Of justice predecessor, To alter, Poo Bear wrote and produced credits in every song.

This is to say: Justice sees Bieber coming out of the cocoon he has lived in for the past four years. This is a competitive album. He’s throwing his hat in the ring. Enlisted producers and writers signal that this album was made to fight the singles of Post Malone and Dua Lipa and company. It is an album that has its eyes firmly on zeitgeist.

You hear it in songs like “Die for You”, a synthesizer game from the 80s that is musically in conversation with the latest offers from Weeknd. The list of invited stars also feels intentionally cured to reach all angles of the pop spectrum – Kid LAROI, a rapper / singer / TikTok sensation who has already been mentored by Juice WRLD, lends a hand to “Unstable” and the Afrobeats star Burna Boy joins in “Loved by You”, while the famous wife Guy Chance, the Rapper’s guests in “Holy” and Khalid sings in “As I Am”. Justice he firmly refuses to choose a path, opting instead to launch a total attack on all existing pop aesthetics.

The clearest sign of the album’s ambitions is not in the music, however – it is in the positioning of the album. It is mysterious that the first voice you hear on the album is not that of Bieber, but that of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The first track opens with Dr. King’s now familiar statement “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere ”. And, look, this is definitely true, but it has absolutely nothing to do with the song that follows, about how much Bieber loves his wife. This remains true when we get to the midpoint and MLK appears again, in “MLK Interlude”, a 100-second excerpt from a speech about defending justice, regardless of what it costs, followed by another song about how much Bieber loves his wife.

To say the theme of justice in Justice it’s fine is to give a lot of credit. It just doesn’t appear anywhere else. It looks like a forced adjustment, a bland attempt to inject the album into relevant social justice conversations that are unfolding, but it comes out as a Gushers Black Lives Matter statement: “Justice” was less of a framing device on the album, yet another attempt hollow to land a news cycle or two.

It’s hard to imagine Bieber insisting on positioning the album that way. I’m not privy to Bieber Machine’s marketing meetings, so that’s just speculation, but it’s hard to conjure up an image of Bieber turning to an associate and saying, “Can we get MLK at this location?” The gesture is a metaphor, not just for what Bieber and co. thought. It only serves to highlight how vague Justice it is – musically, commercially, socially, it’s all so off-center.

Justiceultimately suffers from the same weaknesses as Purpose – albums with bangers, to be sure, but records that are fundamentally shapeless, featuring a pop star puppet passing through the pop star movements. Both albums disrupt Bieber’s voice, making use of his best skills. Bieber is not the guy in the big pop chorus, and he never was. Often, your voice does not have the power to launch these hooks. Bieber’s skills lie in sliding smoothly, and on both albums, we find him restricted behind rigid, high-production choices.

It should come as no surprise that R&B gestures at Justice transcend. “Peaches”, by far the best song on the album and a high career for Bieber, sees him teaming up with Daniel Caesar and GIVĒON for an exceptional effect. It is lively, fun and unimpeded, and destined to become the music of the summer. You get a deeper look at how extremely your shit music is (and, it’s worth noting, too extremely my shit) watching him perform a slower version of “Peaches” on an NPR Tiny Desk Concert. This is Bieber in his element, and it is a delight.

Bieber is endowed with an impressive voice and command of the fundamentals of R&B. He’s at least convincing when he’s playing a megastar / king of pop, but he looks more confident and comfortable in the intimacy of R&B. When album charts are updated, Justice it will probably be his eighth album # 1. While his label and manager celebrate this incredible achievement (and they should), it may not occur to anyone in the room if this current offering neutralizes the star’s obvious musical superpowers or restricts his dreams. It may not occur to anyone to let Bieber sing his little songs and do his little vocal executions and then go home and be the wife he is. It may not occur to anyone that there are dangers associated with the rise of the pop mountain again. If this occurs to them, the thought may be brief and fleeting, drowned out by the soft purring of the soda machine. ●