![]() Jordan: I don’t doubt that he might have felt like his career spiraling, or that much of the public hated him, because it seems like they did! In the bubble of celebrity it was probably pretty easy for him to convince himself that things were going very poorly, and I don’t doubt that people like Scooter Braun were telling him that exact thing. He’d be better off just doing the former. He may be growing up, but he’s still playing show and tell. Nothing from a pop star says “sorry” quite as well as a good pop song, and Bieber has released three of them from this album (I’m counting “Where Are Ü Now”). No need to apologize for the most riveting spectacle of your career, my man! Given the mildness of his crimes, all of the overt apologizing and hand-wringing over his image (“My life is a movie, and everyone’s watching, so let’s get to the good part and past all the nonsense,” he sings in “I’ll Show You”) strikes me as disingenuous. Rich: That’s the thing: I’ll take Bieber pissing in a bucket to Bieber babbling, “Who’s got the heart? Whose heart is the biggest? Wear it on your sleeve then we can make a difference” any day. ![]() But, like, “Sorry,” which is this album’s second single, is supposedly an apology song, and though it’s a very good pop song, who wants to hear Justin Bieber sing an apology song, let alone an apology album? What is he even apologizing for? In any event, in the defense of the narrative, I do think it’s worth noting that “Where Are Ü Now” was a genuine kinda out-of-nowhere hit, as much as a song starring Justin Bieber could be. He was kind of just a mild punk? The worst thing he did, legally speaking, was drag race and smoke pot. America loves a good comeback, right? The funny thing is that it’s not like Bieber did anything that bad. Jordan: I guess there was nowhere else for the Bieber narrative to go. It arrives in a year when multiple profiles of the Weeknd amounted to, “This guy wants to be Michael Jackson, and so he made a more commercial-sounding album.” These are the narratives we are dealing with! Music is telling some boring stories this year-and I don’t think that’s journalists’ fault (though for the most part, they aren’t helping). How that differs from any other album of his-none were meant to be anything but feverishly consumed by the masses-is lost on me. The “story” of this album, via the music press, is that this is Bieber’s comeback album, his bid back into mainstream favor. But given who we’re dealing with here, that’s kind of a low bar, right? I think this album is well done (not in the meat sense, although maybe?). I, like you, am a white man and I do not like this new Justin Bieber album that I feel weirdly obligated to consider. But where did he go? What do you mean, music press? And, most importantly, why should we care? Below we attempt to unravel these great mysteries. 1, in fact), which has helped shape a narrative that this album marks a comeback for Bieber. They’ve all gone Top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 (“What Do You Mean” debuted at No. ![]() Preceding this album has been a string of derpily titled singles-“Where Are Ü Now,” “What Do You Mean,” “Sorry”-that work on their own as proper songs and don’t require built-in fandom for appreciation. ![]() Today sees the release of the fourth proper Justin Bieber studio album, Purpose, an album that contains a fair amount of listenable material from Bieber (at least three songs!). ![]()
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