{"id":58161,"date":"2025-07-11T23:59:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-11T23:59:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/58161\/"},"modified":"2025-07-11T23:59:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-11T23:59:08","slug":"justin-bieber-swag-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/58161\/","title":{"rendered":"Justin Bieber ‘Swag’ Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tJust in case it\u2019s not clocking to you, Justin Bieber<\/a> is so standing on business right now. The pop superstar is back with his excellent new surprise album Swag<\/a>, a comeback he announced<\/a> only hours before it dropped. It\u2019s been four years since we\u2019ve gotten new music from Bieber, and he\u2019s got a lot to say, since he\u2019s been through it in recent years. It\u2019s got slick R&B, raw voice-memo rock guitar sketches, experimental collabos with Mk.gee<\/a> and Dijon. He throws down with Cash Cobain<\/a>, Gunna<\/a>, and Sexyy Red<\/a>. Yet it\u2019s all him, as he chronicles the day-to-day struggles of Bieberhood.<\/p>\n

\n\tBieber\u2019s last album was his 2021 Justice<\/a>, a star-studded breakthrough spawning the hit \u201cPeaches,\u201d the most sensual tribute to the erotics of fruit since Harry Styles<\/a>\u2019 \u201cWatermelon Sugar\u201d and \u201cCherry.\u201d But at 31, he\u2019s taking stock of his adult life. He spends Swag addressing his tribulations, whether personal or business. As you may have heard, this guy\u2019s had some issues lately \u2014 becoming a dad<\/a>, cancelling a massive tour <\/a>to attend to mental health concerns, well-publicized altercations<\/a> with the paparazzi, chaotic smoke-and-post social media rants<\/a>, gossip about his marriage<\/a>, descootifying his business life<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere is so much healing going on in this album, it\u2019s no surprise Bieber includes three different \u201ctherapy sessions\u201d with the comedian Druski<\/a>, getting up close and personal about his life. \u201cThat\u2019s been a tough thing for me recently, is feeling like I have had to go through a lot of my struggles as a human, as all of us do, really publicly,\u201d he confides. \u201cAnd so people are always asking if I\u2019m okay, and that starts to really weigh on m\u0435.\u201d That takes a toll. \u201cIt starts to make me feel like I\u2019m the one with issues and everyone else is perfect.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut if he\u2019s looking to answer all the \u201cwhat the hell\u2019s happening to this guy?\u201d headlines, he couldn\u2019t do much better than Swag, because the musical energy and imagination here is Bieber at his most confident. Serious question: has he ever done as a song as appealing as \u201cButterflies\u201d? A song this open-hearted, this melodic, this effusive, with a bittersweet R&B tune and pop uplift, plus a quivering guitar hook that comes straight from (of all people) the Smashing Pumpkins? Swag isn\u2019t just Bieber out to prove he\u2019s doing okay \u2014 he\u2019s out to top himself.<\/p>\n

\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n

\n\tHe covers so much ground here musically, with the R&B pop glitz of \u201cAll I Can Take\u201d and \u201cGo Baby,\u201d but also lo-fi acoustic demos. He works with ace producers like Carter Lang, Eddie Benjamin, and Tobias Jesso Jr, with a woozy Eighties R&B vibe. (Bieber, like the rest of us, has clearly been dangerously obsessed with SZA\u2019s SOS.)<\/p>\n

\n\tSome of the \u201ctherapy sessions\u201d might hit the cringe button, but then, so do yours, probably. Druski shouldn\u2019t even bother applying for his therapist license, since his approach to counseling is to keep offering the patient a hit on some dubious cigar while cracking jokes. He assures Bieber, \u201cYour skin white, but your soul Black, Justin. I promise you, man.\u201d\u00a0But he also clowns him about the infamous clip where he yells \u201cI\u2019m standing on business\u201d at the paparrazzi. (\u201cYou can\u2019t pronunciate every word when you doing that!\u201d)<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSweet Spot\u201d is a slightly different kind of therapy session, where Bieber informs Sexyy Red, \u201cI like it sticky between the sheets.\u201d These two explore a little sexual healing for a freaky slow jam. \u201cAt first I was shy, but I\u2019m a dog when I be in them sheets,\u201d she raps. (Wait, when exactly was Sexyy Red\u2019s shy era? Did we just miss that?) \u201cThat\u2019s my G-spot, he make my coochie pop\/I\u2019m a changed woman, used to be a thot-thot\/That\u2019s my boyfriend, I love him a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBieber spends a lot of time here singing about hanging on to his wife Hailey, with the pensive \u201cWalking Away.\u201d \u201cGirl, we better stop before we say some shit,\u201d he sings, in a genuinely wise lightbulb moment. \u201cWe\u2019ve been testing our patience\/I think we\u2019re better off if we just take a break and remember what grace is.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n

\n\tHe\u2019s making sure nobody doubts his commitment to being a husband and dad. \u201cGo Baby\u201d gives Hailey a pep talk, especially impressed by the fact that she built a lucrative beauty brand around a phone case. He sings, \u201cThat\u2019s my baby, she\u2019s iconic\/iPhone case, lipgloss on it.\u201d He celebrates fatherhood with \u201cDadz Love,\u201d teaming up with the most based of gods, Lil B. They turn it into a universal we-are-family anthem, as Lil B urges, \u201cWe need more people to get together.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cDevotion\u201d is a Dijon collaboration that goes even beyond what you\u2019d hope: even warmer, more uplifting, more understatedly gorgeous, with discreet echoes of pedal-steel guitar over the country-soul harmonies. Along with \u201cButterflies,\u201d it\u2019s the most immediately embraceable track on Swag. \u201cDaisies\u201d teams up with Mk.gee for a Phil Collins-style mid-Eighties synth-pop bop with distorted beats and Mr. Mister-style guitar, the kind of retro shopping-mall trip that makes you picture Toto listening to wild dogs cry out in the night.<\/p>\n

\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n

\n\tBut some of the best moments on Swag come when he leaves the pop production behind and goes lo-fi. \u201cZuma House\u201d is a stripped-down acoustic-guitar ballad in the mode of Neil Young\u2019s Hitchhiker, 83 seconds of raw beauty, while \u201cGlory Voice Memo\u201d is a bluesy micro-jam; both tracks sound like they got recorded on a phone and just uploaded straight to the album. \u201cYukon\u201d is a slightly glossier version, with chipmunked vocals aiming for the Prince effect of Camille-era classics like \u201cIf I Was Your Girlfriend.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFor the big finale, he gets his praise on for Jesus in \u201cForgiveness,\u201d with gospel star and pastor Marvin Wayans. Swag definitely makes it clear that Bieber\u2019s got issues \u2014 his issues have issues. But he channels it all into some of the most genuinely creative and wide-ranging music of his life. \u201cYou can\u2019t spread your wings in a bird cage,\u201d as he sings in \u201cFirst Place.\u201d But all over Swag, he\u2019s taking flight.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Just in case it\u2019s not clocking to you, Justin Bieber is so standing on business right now. The…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":58162,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[42398,42399,171,20635,24495,12303,33458,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-58161","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-cash-cobain","9":"tag-druski","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-gunna","12":"tag-harry-styles","13":"tag-justin-bieber","14":"tag-sexyy-red","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114837321412795263","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58161"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58161\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}