Justin Bieber’s seventh album is entitled Swag. One can only hope that the ex-children’s star who meant ironically. But that’s not sure. Like many young people who were drawn by adults too early by the pop manege, Bieber, in the 2010s, noticed the model of many (pre-) pubescent, recently primarily due to erratic behavior in public and bizarre postings.
Recommendations of the editorial team
The artist has recently become a father and has now been covered with tattoos from head to toe, as if he wanted nothing to be left of the children’s old skin. It’s just a shame that instead of surprising or even dangerous, the album commutes arbitrarily between red light r’n’b, flat pop and unspectacular hip-hop. Good ideas, such as exhibiting the vocoder and installing analog instruments as in the track “Daisies”, remain exceptions and are the most refreshing moments on an album that wants a lot but gives little.
If it becomes emotionally as in “Dadz Love” or “Go Baby”, in which the son or wife is sung, the songs for Mantra’s eternal repetitions of individual words (“You’re My Diamond”, “Angel”), and countless ohs and UHS. To do this, a synth and a beat there ripples and you think directly into the bedroom, but not to brew the sheets there. Bieber would have wished more confidence to leave the old paths. And maybe just one instead of ten producers. The approaches are there, but all good ideas (“All I can take”) only stay moments before there are again the R’n’B slon, which is through the eye arrest. Swag is an album that, with all the glitz and artificial deepness, fades out.
This review appears in the Musikexpress 09/2025.
Author: Saskia Timm