Bieber is more concerned with setting a mood than pumping out hooks (although “Come Around Me,” an early highlight, still manages to be gooey and ear-wormy), and then “Intentions,” all jaunty, roof-down swinging, comes along and offers the closest thing to a conventional pop melody on the album. The spare, acoustic opening track “All Around Me” floats into the gently percussive “Habitual,” which floats into the springtime step of “Come Around Me,” like an extended love suite. In an age when most pop albums are created by committee, “Changes” is one of the most cohesive ones since Ariana Grande sprung “Thank U, Next” (also, interestingly, her fifth studio album) on us almost exactly one year ago. For a Valentine’s Day album about love in bloom, it sounds surprisingly serious and dark, with a one-track-mind. He’s never felt better, either, from all indications. “Changes” is the sound of a reformed romantic closing the blinds to shut out the world, then spending a long weekend in bed with the object of his affection, coming up with different ways to say “You complete me.” And therein lie its limitations: For as many ways as there are to say “You complete me,” Bieber keeps skimming their surface. His voice and the production are flawless, and his soul is in the right place - but there’s something airless about the album, too, like he could have left the window open a crack to let some sunshine in. And he’s never sounded better than he does on “Changes,” his fifth studio album. His R&B tendencies are natural and unforced and, most importantly, never gratuitously flashy. He’s a blue-eyed soul stirrer who somehow always has avoided sounding like a white guy trying to pass for black. The string of celebrity relationships, the bad-boy behavior, the tattoos and ever-evolving hair styles and hues - all these things have had a tendency to distract from the obvious, which is: That boy can sing. That’s when I think you get healing.Justin Bieber still doesn’t really get the credit he’s earned. But when something's hard, it’s almost like we need to run towards the pain and run towards the hurt rather than run away from it. I don't need to run away from it.’ I was running away. It gave me a boost of confidence and reminded me, ‘Oh, this is what I do. “I saw how people reacted when I went onstage. “What am I going to talk about again? is it going to be received?” A turning point came when he performed with Ariana Grande at the 2019 Coachella music festival as her surprise guest. "I was dealing with a lot of fear,” he says. It wasn’t easy for the singer to regain his confidence and clarity. On the piano ballad “Confirmation,” he praises the importance of slowing down and being present: “So quick to move forward, no pressure/And we got the rest, got the rest, got the rest of our lives.” Although there are occasional nods to his slick R&B past (the bedroom cut “Yummy,” the flirtatious “Intentions” featuring Quavo), the majority of the album is acoustic, romantic, and spiritual. “Never thought I could ever be loyal to someone other than myself,” he sings on opener “All Around Me,” a clear-eyed pledge of commitment and luxury comforts, backed by delicate strings (most of the album was produced by his longtime collaborator Jason "Poo Bear” Boyd). The album is more than the end of an era-to Justin as rebellious playboy and pop maximalist-it also marks the beginning of a more focused, settled life. His confessional fifth album Changes is an arms-wide-open tribute to her, as well as to his faith, and describes the healing he found from each. In early 2019, he hit a breaking point and announced a hiatus from music, citing a need to work on “deep-rooted issues” and saying he wanted to focus on being a better husband to his new wife Hailey Baldwin. “I definitely have grown up in front of the world,” he tells Apple Music, which feels like an understatement when you consider how he’s also helped to shape it-crossing genres, borders, and language barriers long before that became standard practice for modern pop. When Justin Bieber released his debut album My World 2.0 in 2010, he was a bashful 16-year-old YouTuber with sideswept bangs and teen-idol magnetism.
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