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Confession: Despite the hype over its surprise drop, the praise for tapping exciting artists of the moment like Mk.Gee to shepherd its musical direction, and the proliferation of “Daisies” on Instagram Reels, Swag—Justin Bieber’s grand return to music after four years away—did not do much for me. I appreciated the vision: One of contemporary pop’s biggest stars stepping out of the algorithm factory and into his singer-songwriter bag with a healthy dose of Journals Biebervelli vibes, the kind of fluid approach that can lead to a formless song like the Cash Cobain-assisted title track. All of that is cool, but none of it stuck to my ribs. Outside of a stray “Yukon” spin here and there, I can’t say I’ve revisited or thought much about Swag (the album, not my own personal style, which I obsess over to the minute) in the two months since it’s been out.
So imagine my surprise Friday morning when I threw on Swag II, which Bieber had even more unceremoniously surprise-announced just a day prior—and immediately loved it. Right off the rip, “Speed Demon” made me hit the lean-forward meme and actually lock in to what I figured would be a background listen I might not even complete. And for a majority of the album’s (admittedly overlong) runtime, it really doesn’t let up. Obviously Purpose is the gold-standard Bieber album that he’ll probably never match or outdo, but with a dark-red asterisk for recency bias, I’m declaring this my second favorite Bieber project as far as top-to-bottom listens go.
It’s hard to pinpoint what it is about Swag II that’s connecting with me more than its predecessor—it’s the same production and co-writing team, which includes Carter Lang, Dijon, Sir Dylan, Mk.Gee, and Eddie Benjamin. But simply put, they’re all just executing the vision more strongly and thoroughly on the sequel. This album is funkier, groovier, livelier—it’s almost as if Swag was Biebs getting his form right and now he can really start ballin’.
If there’s one thing that seems more dialed in here, it’s the influences. Across tracks like “Speed Demon” and “Don’t Wanna,” Bieber accesses an R&B-ballad Michael Jackson zone that wouldn’t have felt out of place on Bad or Dangerous; elsewhere on “Eye Candy” there are traces of SWV (who famously sampled Mike’s “Human Nature” on “Right Here.”) The tender soft-spoken whispers of Swag 1.0 fan favorites like “Devotion” are evened out by more rousing power ballads like “I Do” and “All the Way.” Throw a little ‘90s bedroom R&B in the blender along with the rest of these interpolations and influences, whether subconscious or intentional, and you get stirring hybrids like “Love Song,” or “When It’s Over.”