Justin Bieber Is Here to Save a Summer of Strangeness

The Atlantic

a day ago

Can this really be the song of the summer? For seven weeks now, the most popular tune in the country has been Alex Warren's 'Ordinary'—a solemn ballad that has all of the warm-weather appropriateness of a fur coat. Ideally, the song of the summer is a buoyant one, giving you a beat to bob a flamingo floatie to. 'Ordinary,' instead, is made for stomping, moping, and forgetting.
The top reaches of the Billboard Hot 100 have otherwise mostly been stale and flukey, filled with songs that were popular last summer (Teddy Swims's 'Lose Control'), replacement-level efforts by the streaming behemoths Drake and Morgan Wallen, and tie-ins from the Netflix cartoon show KPop Demon Hunters. Then, just last week, a welcome bit of warmth and novelty emerged at No. 2—'Daisies' by Justin Bieber, the unlikely emblem of our obviously fragile national mood.
Perhaps you aren't inclined to check out new music by a formerly chirpy child star who lately has been best known for his surreal interactions with paparazzi. But earlier this month, the 31-year-old Bieber suddenly released a new album, Swag, that made headlines for being rather good. Not 'good for Bieber'; good for a modern pop release. Swag filled a void in the summer-listening landscape by meeting listeners where they so clearly seem to be—less in need of a party-fueling energy drink than a soothing slather of aloe.
The album is Bieber's first since parting ways with manager Scooter Braun, the record-business kingpin who recently seemed to suffer a catastrophic collapse in support from the celebrity class. The music departs from the pert poppiness of Bieber's past to indulge the singer's well-documented fascination with hip-hop and R&B. In one interlude, the comedian Druski tells Bieber 'your soul is Black'; the assertion is cringey, but the album's music is significantly more subtle than that. Bieber never really raps. Rather, he uses his ever-yearning, creamy-soft voice to do what great rappers and R&B singers often do: find a pocket within a beat, and then let emotions be his guide.
What's really fascinating about the album, though, is that it sounds like it's wrapped in gauze. The production is aqueous and rippling, rather than shiny and laminated as one might expect from Bieber. Swag is heavily influenced by the indie producer-artists Dijon (who collaborated on a few of the album's songs) and Mk.gee (a producer on 'Daisies'). They have risen to prominence by swirling bygone rock and pop signifiers into a comforting yet complex stew of sound. Swag 's songs similarly hit the listener with a sense of gentle intrigue, like a minor recovered memory.
The instant hit 'Daisies' exemplifies the approach. Its twanging guitars and pounding drums scan as countrified classic rock, but every element seems muffled, as if emanating from an iPhone lost in a couch. The verses steadily build energy and excitement—but then disperse in a gentle puff of feeling. In a lullaby whisper, Bieber sings of pining for his girl and sticking with her through good times and bad. 'Hold on, hold on,' goes one refrain: a statement of desire for safety and stability, not passion and heat.
But my personal song-of-the-summer nomination would be Swag 's opening track, 'All I Can Take.' It opens in a tenor of pure cheese, with keyboard tones that were last fashionable when Steve Winwood and Boyz II Men were soundtracking school dances. A lightly pumping beat comes to the fore, setting the stage for a parade of different-sounding Biebers to perform. In one moment, he's a panting Michael Jackson impersonator. In another, he's an electronically distorted hyperpop sprite. The song is serene, and pretty, and ever so sad—yet it's also wiggling with details that suggest there's more to the story than initially meets the ear. The lyrics thread together sex talk with hints of stresses that must be escaped; 'It's all I can take in this moment,' Bieber sings, hinting at a burnout whose cause the listener is left to imagine.
Swag 's approach—downtempo yet bustling, melancholic yet awake—is on trend emotionally as much as it is musically. Though the year has brought no shortage of bright, upbeat pop albums from the likes of Lady Gaga and Kesha, the music that's sticking around has a reserved, simmering quality. The biggest Wallen song of the moment is 'What I Want,' a collaboration with the whisper-singing diva Tate McRae; it builds suspense for a full minute before any percussion enters. One rising hit, Ravyn Lenae's 'Love Me Not,' has a neo-soul arrangement that fidgets enough to keep the ear occupied without demanding active attention.
A dreary technological reason probably explains why this kind of music is popular: Streaming rewards background fare more than it rewards jolting dynamism. But even looking at my own recent playlists, downtempo seems in. The best song by Addison Rae, the TikTok phenom turned pop mastermind, is 'Headphones On,' a chill-out track laden with tolling bells and jazz keyboards. I have kept returning to the album Choke Enough by Oklou, a French singer who makes electronic pop that's so skeletal and frail-seeming, you worry you're despoiling the songs merely by listening to them. Other recent highlights: the mumbled and dreamy indie rock of Alex G's Headlights, the depressive easy listening of Haim's I quit, and 'Shapeshifter,' the wintry-sounding standout from Lorde's Virgin.
It's hard to avoid psychoanalyzing this season's musical offerings and concluding that the culture is suffering from malaise, or at least a hangover. After all, just a year ago we had ' Brat summer,' named for the hedonistic Charli XCX album. The songs of that summer were irrepressible: Sabrina Carpenter's sarcastic 'Espresso,' Kendrick Lamar's taunting 'Not Like Us,' and Shaboozey's thumping 'A Bar Song (Tipsy).' But this year, Charli XCX's biggest song is 'Party 4 U'—a pandemic-doldrums ballad released in 2020 that recently blew up thanks to a TikTok trend of people sharing emo stories about their lives. The track captures a bleary feeling of trying to have fun but getting pulled into melancholy.
That's a feeling lots of Americans surely can relate to. Every era brings its own reasons to fret about the state of the world, but the headline-news topics of late—wars, deportations, layoffs—are upending lives in profound ways at mass scale. Swag isn't about any of that, but great pop always works to make small and personal emotions echo broad, communal ones.
Bieber's highly publicized experiences navigating mental health, drug use, and physical maladies have long served up a cautionary tale about life in the internet era. In the months leading up to Swag 's release, he posted angry, inscrutable messages online and confronted reporters on the streets. Pundits have taken to asking Is he okay? The cooling, noncommittal, lightly distressed sound of Swag is an answer of sorts. Like many of us, he's doing as well as can be, given the circumstances.