Justin Beiber – Changes

R&B/SoulRap

Seasons, Bieber’s slick new docuseries, charts his prolonged time of psychological turmoil. This is his first album since the 2015 smash hit, Purpose. Public missteps, breakups, and other events have cast a shadow over the adult life of this up-and-coming celebrity who has been hugely popular since his teens. Changes rejoices in the stability he’s at last found: Bieber reminds us, song after song, that he’s young, in love, and doing great, thank you.

There’s an endearing newness to the way he sings about his wife, Hailey, a gorgeous model who shares the Christian values he’s been talking about all his life.  On “Forever,” he wonders, “Could you be here with me forever?” He begs for close physical proximity on “All Around Me”: “I need you all around me.” On “E.T.A.” he wonders just how long he will have to wait for his wife to get home (“Be honest, what’s your E.T.A.?”).

In the end, this album lacks Bieber’s endearingly flexible artistic style. Though he has positioned Changes as a “R&Bieber” record, the dangerous eroticism that characterised his great 2013 mixtape Journals—a real R&Bieber moment—is absent from his new music. There, we heard of a star entering a new phase of his life, adulthood, and a readiness to inject some spice into his bland bubblegum by putting himself at the forefront of then-dominant pop, R&B, and rap movements.

The slightly shoddy execution of Journals only added to its enjoyment, and it started Biebz on a trend-hopping adventure of daring that ultimately placed him at the captivating epicentre of genres like EDM and trop-pop. This long-undefinable pop star, however, sounds more like he’s drifting aimlessly in shallow season

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Justin Beiber’s Changes Tracklist