Album Review: Swag by Justin Bieber
Swag marks Justin Bieber’s return after a four-year hiatus since becoming a Dad. From the title alone, it nods to his early “swag” era while incorporating more mature, introspective elements.
Justin Bieber’s been the pop game’s shape-shifter since day one, from that mop-top kid blowing up YouTube to a dude who's weathered scandals, health hits, and the whole marriage glow-up. Now, with Swag, his seventh studio album, no warning shots, just billboards blasting the news in Times Square and spots like Reykjavík—it’s got folks wondering if this is the comeback that sticks or just another chapter in his rollercoaster. But to clock what we really know, you gotta trace it through Changes and Justice, those joints that marked his shift from party anthems to something more introspective, all while fatherhood flips the script on his whole vibe.
Back in 2020, Changes hit like Bieber's declaration of independence—fresh off the knot with Hailey, it leaned into R&B (or the R&Bieber phase that we wish people stop latching on) smoothness, tracks like “Intentions” and “Yummy” catching flak for being too sweet, but really unpacking his battles with Lyme, mental dips, and that post-Purpose burnout where fame nearly took him out. It wasn’t his flashiest bag commercially, but it peaked at No. 1 and felt real, like him saying, “I’m building roots now,” amid the tabloid noise. Then Justice dropped in ‘21, cranking the pop with “Peaches” owning summers and “Lonely” gutting you on fame’s isolation, even stirring mess with those MLK nods that screamed performative to some. Ramsay Hunt cut the tour short, shoving him into a four-year hiatus—both albums mapped the chaos of his twenties, blending joy, faith, and resilience, setting up whatever came next as a test of growth.
Enter dad mode, the real game-changer. Bieber and Hailey brought Jack Blues into the mix last August, and since then, it’s been low-key family posts amid troll clapbacks—Hailey straight-up reposting the Swag teases like, “Haters stay mad.” Now laced with that paternal lens—sessions started in ‘22, wrapped in Iceland this April with producers like Carter Lang (who did most of the heavy lifting), hinting at acoustic chills mixed with R&B edges and maybe some weirdness for flavor. For fans of R&Bieber and some of the essence from Journals, this is your dream come true. He opens “Go Baby” with a deceptively breezy portrait of modern romance, one foot in glossy pop culture and the other over a breezy production. By layering colloquial asides over sincere invitations to unburden, he constructs an intimate world where comfort is conveyed with both candid texture and melodic grace.
“All I Can Say” nods to Bieber’s Ramsay Hunt recovery and mental health battles post-Justice, where he explored isolation—here, it’s about hitting limits as a new dad, balancing fame's weight with family joy as he slides through ‘90s-R&B inspired production: “These symptoms of my sensitivity/Feels worser knowin’ no one’s listening.” With “First Place,” he bridges personal introspection with a New Jack Swing-inspired feel, illustrating Bieber’s comfort in making emotional candor sound effortlessly catchy. Moving to “Daisies,” this track dives headfirst into the fragility of relationships and the uncertainty of love, using floral imagery to question commitment in a world full of doubts. With the help og Mk.gee, it’s about that push-pull of “do you love me or not,” as one annotated line puts it: “Throwin’ petals like, do you love me or not?/Head is spinnin’ and it don’t know when to stop.”
Speaking of features and contributions, besides two of them that deservedly give Swag to break out the monotony, the majority of these features serve no purpose for Bieber’s return. Getting Druski for “Soulful,” “Standing On Business,” and “Therapy Session” skits does what? Huh? Adding nonsense to an already unnecessary, bloated twenty-one-track album? For example, “Sweet Spot” finds harmony in relationships (“Sweet spot where our souls entwine, in the quiet, you're forever mine”), focusing on finding that perfect balance that carries contentment’s ease, but then you have Sexyy Red completely ruining the flow and does New Edition’s “Can You Stand the Rain” absolutely no favors. Lil B (unironically is one of the masterminds behind the ‘swag rap’ era) does some additional ad-libs on “Dadz Love” that joyfully celebrate paternal bond, the forgettable title track features Cash Cobain, and while “Way It Is” offers a contemplative take on acceptance, tackling the idea that some aspects of life are unchangeable and must be embraced rather than fought, you have Gunna featured where he sounds like he’s sleep-walking through the beat.
The positives come with the slow-burning “Devotion,” and no, he’s reworking an Earth, Wind & Fire classic, so don’t worry. However, Bieber and Dijon pair unadorned harmonic movement with gently syncopated percussion to foreground a sense of emotional vulnerability. Through concise lyrical turns, conversational phrasing, and shifts in dynamic intensity, this work captures the tension inherent in surrendering oneself to another person without losing one’s boundaries. And Lord behold, Bieber managed to get Marvin Winans (from the legendary Gospel group, The Winans) to finish the album with “Forgiveness,” by singing Rick Founds’ “Lord, I Lift Your Name on High” that functions dually as affirmation and invitation, reminding worshippers of the continuum from Christ’s birth to resurrection and beckoning them to embody that message in their daily experience.
Look, Swag has its moments—those introspective and R&B moments hit with a genuine tenderness that shows he's grown beyond the teen-pop facade, and the production occasionally sparkles with that Iceland-chilled polish, blending some soulful edges and acoustic warmth in ways that nod to his Journals evolution without fully embarrassing itself. But let’s be real: the album’s a sloppy mess overall, with half-baked ideas stumbling over each other in a twenty-one-track sprawl that feels more like a therapy dump than a cohesive statement—voice memos interrupting the flow, features like Gunna and Sexyy Red feeling tacked-on for clout rather than chemistry, and Bieber’s songwriting often defaulting to vague platitudes about love and swag that evaporate the second the beat fades, making the whole thing ultimately forgettable in a pop landscape already clogged with comeback attempts.
Granted, “405” strikes a balance between cinematic imagery and candid confession, setting up tension between control (speed, direction) and abandon (emotion, recklessness), and makes it one of the better songs. Still, we’ve gotta stop grading him on a curve just because he’s survived the machine—Bieber’s 31 now, not the kid we discovered on YouTube, and excusing mediocrity under the guise of “personal growth” does a disservice to artists who grind without his built-in fan army or resources. And while we’re at it, can we finally quit the “R&Bieber” label? This isn’t real R&B; it's pop cosplay with soulful window dressing, diluting a genre rich with Black artists who pour their lives into the craft without the safety net of Bieber’s privilege—support them instead, because Swag proves once again that borrowing the aesthetic doesn’t make you part of the lineage.
Slightly Below Average (★★½☆☆)
Favorite Track(s): “Go Baby,” “Devotion,” “405”