Bieber's highly-anticipated return to R&B is too safe for enjoyment.
Happily married, sober, and living a relatively quiet life over the last two years, Justin Bieber makes his return to music to let everyone know how much he has changed.
And, boy is his music boring now.
Bieber goes in-depth on a lot of his personal growth in a sitdown with Zane Lowe, detailing how he truly found Jesus, how he deals with his mental health and how he found the love of his life in Hailey Baldwin. It's a touching 43 minutes of someone we've watched grow up confess their feelings to millions, and it leaves the listener feeling closer to Justin Bieber the person.
The same cannot be said for Changes.
Changes is 51 minutes of some of the safest R&B a person could ever hear outside of church summer camps and Kidz Bop remixes. An album inspired by love and filled with sex references somehow manages to feel passionless.
Maybe Bieber is too early into his marriage to dive deep into his feelings or maybe he's too in love and wants to keep fans at a distance, but either way, it's nearly impossible to connect with no substance.
Bieber's comments to Zane Lowe suggests the first theory may hold weight, as he told Lowe "this is an album I wrote in the first year of our marriage. There's so much more to learn."
"Habitual", the second track on the album, illustrates just how much Bieber has to learn about his new partner. A song dedicated to pointing out how much their love is meant to be by comparing their feelings to well-known constants of life ends up going on a tangent on life's constants rather than their love.
Bieber singing, "Always rains the most in April, Every scale needs to be stable, Earth keeps spinning around," attracts more attention than whatever feelings of love the song attempts to portray.
This trend is followed throughout the project; almost the entire album sounds like Bieber doesn't even know what he loves about his wife. Changes is the classic " 'what do you like about me?' , 'I don't know you just different " exchange captured over a full album.
Or, as previously mentioned, he's too in love to respectfully sing about certain details. It's hard to believe the same guy who gave us "Hold Tight" gave us "Yummy". No one falls off that badly on the vagina euphemisms.
With all that being said, Changes still has a few potential hits scattered across 16 songs.
"Come Around Me" would definitely go harder if Bieber substituted "treat me like you miss me" with "fuck me like you miss me", but religious beliefs and target audiences likely led to the safer lyrics. Even with the more PG word choice, Bieber's delivery and the production make the song a clear standout.
The next standout track comes with no notes. No constructive criticism. No minor tinks.
"Take It Out On Me" is everything the rest of Changes is lacking; it goes past surface-level love descriptions, there's passion in both Bieber's voice and words and there's real sex appeal. Other tracks like "Get Me" and "E.T.A." have some of those elements, but they don't check all the boxes like "Take It Out On Me".
Overall, Changes wasn't the unleashed, protected by marriage Justin Bieber I expected. Rather than getting raw descriptions into his love and the feelings his love provokes, the album came off as safe while weirdly still trying to be sexy like a Steph and Ayesha Curry beach post.
Final Score: Steph and Ayesha Curry beach post/10
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