Justin Bieber is still a wife guy on his new album Swag. The singer announced the surprise album less than 12 hours before its release, with billboards and a flurry of Instagram posts signaling its arrival.
With how fraught the last few years of Bieber’s life and career have been, many were curious about what the sound and themes of his new album would be. Since 2021’s Justice, Bieber’s been relatively quiet on the career front. He canceled most of his Justice tour dates, needing to prioritize his physical health after battling Lyme disease and Ramsay Hunt syndrome. Then, in 2023, he sold his entire music catalog for $200 million. As the deal was announced, it seemed that the following two years evolved into the dissolution of his friendship and working partnership with manager Scooter Braun, who retired entirely from artist management.
Meanwhile, Bieber’s personal life has remained a point of tabloid fascination. He and his wife Hailey welcomed son Jack Blues last August. In the months following the birth of their son, fans and gossip magazines worried about Bieber’s mental health due to an uptick in erratic Instagram posts, mostly of him smoking blunts. After an especially strange comment about Hailey’s Vogue cover, where he indicated that during a fight, he once told her she would never be on the cover of Vogue, rumors swirled that their marriage was on the rocks.
With Swag, Bieber squashes all concerns about the health of his marriage. He previewed the album with a new photoshoot that heavily featured Hailey and their son. The album itself is similar to Changes in its intimate examination of Bieber’s married life, but much more musically complex and interesting. On “Walking Away,” he offers a glimpse into the types of natural ups and downs of being in a relationship with someone. “And girl we better stop before we say some shit/We’ve been testing our patience,” he sings on the pre-chorus. “I think we better off if we just take a break/And remember what grace is.” As the song goes on, he confirms that in spite of these “growing pains,” he wouldn’t be giving up on this relationship any time soon.
On “Go Baby,” he celebrates his wife’s accomplishments, specifically the successful lip gloss phone case for her beauty brand Rhode: “That’s my baby/She’s iconic/iPhone case/lip gloss on it,” he says in the opening lines. He proceeds to offer to be a shoulder for her to cry on when things get tough.
In between some more lusty lyrics for his wife, Swag includes some choice samples from a recent viral video of him confronting a swath of paparazzi who were stalking him. The video turned into a meme, specifically the line “It’s not clocking to you that I’m standing on business.” He already had a great sense of humor about the moment, reposting edits of it on his Instagram, but also sampled the video on the song “Butterflies” as well as the Druski-featuring skit “Standing on Business.”
On a different skit with Druski titled “Therapy Session,” Bieber addresses concerns about his mental health, revealing how much it has started to bug him when people ask him how he’s doing. “I have had to go through a lot of my struggles as a human, as all of us do, really publicly, and so people are always asking if I’m okay and that starts to really weigh on me,” he says. “It starts to make me feel like I’m the one with issues and everyone else is perfect.”
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Besides Druski, Bieber’s latest features guest appearances from Mk.gee, Dijon, Gunna, Lil B, Sexyy Red, Cash Cobain, Eddie Benjamin, and Marvin Winans.
From Rolling Stone US
