Justin Bieber | Changes | Album Review

Def Jam Recordings

Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

After a sudden disappearance from the limelight in 2017, Justin Bieber is back, and boy oh boy is he married now, as Changes is sure to inform every listener the second they queue up the record. Yet the slow R&B pop backings with lovey dovey phrases don’t make this record one to revel in love and attraction, but rather to create the feeling of one-sided romance.

In 2018, Biebs wed Hailey Baldwin, now Bieber. After an era of drug binges and public urination stints, huzzah, a woman has rescued him! What better way to celebrate rescue into domestic bliss than an album completely about sex? Bieber surely wants everyone to know just how much sex they have, nay, love making.

Take the instrumental backing for each track. Each of the 16 songs on Changes matches in the slow and steady tempo of a stereotypical R&B song. Some like “Confirmation” are even complete with snapping and clicking drumkits in “Available.” On the surface, sure, newly grown-up Bieber, is an adult-y R&B trope.

The lyrics break the record’s façade. Every praise of his marriage glorifies his wife as a savior. She is only discussed in what benefits she brings to team Bieber, not Justin’s. He tells her to “stay in the kitchen” in “Intentions,” ogles her physically in “Habitual,” and describes her sexual prowess in “Come Around Me,” with the masterfully written line, “And the way you motion, motion in my lap.”

Listen—people are happy that Biebs is both newly wed and newly sober. Yet for such monumental life milestones, there should be some sort of celebration. There needs to be appreciation of the work he himself put in, not the glorifying savior complex of his wife. The only thing that Changes accomplishes is creating an empty, lackluster, and completely un-sexy R&B record.