Love notes, Bieber style
Canadian singer sounds great on ultraromantic album
LOS ANGELES Justin Bieber still doesn’t get the credit he’s earned.
The string of celebrity relationships, the bad-boy behaviour, the tattoos and ever-evolving hairstyles and hues — all these things have had a tendency to distract from the obvious, which is: That boy can sing. His R&B tendencies are natural and unforced and, most important, never flashy. And he’s never sounded better than he does on Changes, his fifth studio album.
He’s never felt better, either, from all indications. Changes is the sound of a reformed romantic closing the blinds to shut out the world, then spending a long weekend in bed with the object of his affection, coming up with different ways to say, “You complete me.”
And therein lie its limitations: For as many ways as there are to say, “You complete me,” Bieber keeps skimming their surface. His voice and the production are flawless, and his soul is in the right place — but there’s something airless about the album, too, like he could have let some sunshine in.
In the decade since Bieber burst onto the scene, the Canadian singer-songwriter has shown growth as both a vocalist and a recording artist, never releasing the same album twice.
My World 2.0, in 2010, was awash in the sort of happy-golucky pop that dominated the decade before it. Believe negotiated the dance sounds that were popular circa 2012 while starting his slow swerve into the R&B lane. Purpose kept one foot in EDM pop and the other in soul, and now, with Changes, Bieber goes all the way to the latter side. It’s his most unabashedly R&B album yet, steeped in the trap sound of the times.
The spare, acoustic opening track All Around Me floats into the gently percussive Habitual, which floats into the springtime step of Come Around Me, like an extended love suite. Bieber is more concerned with setting a mood than pumping out hooks, and then Intentions, all jaunty, roof-down swinging, comes along and offers the closest thing to a conventional pop melody on the album. Yummy, a track with a maddeningly and irresistibly repetitive hook that extols the pleasures of making love stoned (“Light a match, get litty, babe”), comes next.
This is not just a formidable soul man’s coming of age. It’s also the emergence of a brand new Bieber, a happily married 25-year-old with everything to lose.
In the five years since his last album, there have been romantic entanglements, bad-boy tantrums and a near-meltdown that had Bieber cancelling dates on his Purpose tour and quitting social media. He hints at those demons here, but never digs too deep.
He’s now presumably happily married to Hailey Bieber, and the redemptive power of her love is strong. “Every time I go the wrong way, you turn me back around,” he sings on Forever. It took a coterie of writers and producers to construct the songs on Changes, but the lyrics sound 100 per cent Bieber.
We get the reformed romantic, but it’s not until 16 tracks in, on At Least for Now, that he finally explores the stark reality and uncertainty of conscious coupling. “Never mind me watchin’ you, never mind the tension / Please excuse me while I dance, I forgot to mention I’m going on strike,” he sings.
It’s a welcome dose of depth that comes a little too late, after nearly 45 minutes of uncomplicated declarations over slow to mid-tempo grooves. By the end of its 51 minutes, Bieber has drilled home the point: He’s hopelessly in love.