Justin Bieber acknowledges his recent viral encounters with the paparazzi and discusses his mental health on his new album, Swag.
The 31-year-old singer dropped his seventh studio album at midnight on Friday, July 11, with little forewarning. The album’s existence only came to light Thursday, July 10, when billboards emerged in Iceland, New York City, Atlanta and Los Angeles promoting his return.
The 21-track Swag features a mixture of lo-fi, R&B-infused pop tracks and voice notes that ruminate on fame, mental health and love. Bieber also acknowledges his cryptic social media activity in recent months and even uses audio clips from encounters with photographers to comment on the public discourse about him.
Elsewhere on the record, Bieber alludes to rumors of marital issues with his wife, Hailey Bieber, on the track “Walking Away.” Despite the tough times, Justin makes clear that he’s in it for the long haul.
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He croons, “Baby, I ain’t walking away / You were my diamond / Gave you a ring / I made you a promise. I told you I’d change / It’s just human nature / These growing pains / And baby, I ain’t walking away.”
Scroll down for more on Justin’s latest album:
Justin Is ‘Standing on Business’
Just one month after his heated June 13 encounter with paparazzi went viral on social media, Justin uses his now-infamous words for his own gain.
The album contains a 50-second voice note, titled “Standing on Business,” which opens with a clip of him declaring, “You’re not getting it. It’s not clocking to you. It’s not clocking to you that I’m standing on business, is it?”
The clip then segues into a conversation between the singer and comedian Druski, who jests with his pal over his pronunciation of the word “business” during the exchange.
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“I like that you pronounce business,” Druski tells Justin. “I say, ‘Standing on bid-ness.’ I don’t say, ‘Standing on business, bro.’ … You were pronounciating [sic] every word. You can’t pronunciate [sic] every word when you doing that!”
Justin can be heard agreeing, “Yeah, you’re right, you’re right.”
Justin Addresses the Paparazzi
The singer appears to sing about the trappings of fame, namely his every movement being tracked by paparazzi, on the song “Butterflies.”
The tune opens with another recent viral encounter with photographers, this time outside a coffee shop in Palm Springs, California, in April. “[You] want money, money, money, money … get out of here,” the star can be heard saying. “All you want is money. Go. Get out of here. All you guys want is money. You don’t care about people. Only money.”
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The audio clip leads into a melodic song on which Justin addresses how he’s commodified by the paparazzi, resulting in his enjoyment of his career as an entertainer dissipating. He sings, “Butterflies, they seem to go away.” He adds that he, as a person, feels he is “moving and moving and moving. I’m just slipping away.”
Justin’s ‘Therapy Session’
In another short conversation with Druski, this one titled “Therapy Session,” Justin addresses his cryptic social media activity, with Druski reasoning that the singer is simply trolling his followers.
“Even sometimes when I know you’re trolling, and they don’t even understand it. They’re like, ‘Oh, my God, he’s f***ing losing his mind!’ It’s like, nah, I think he’s just being a human being,” Druski tells Justin. “He’s just enjoying social media like the f***ing rest of us. He’s just doing it his own way.”
Justin responds by talking about his mental health struggles, which he’s been open about in the past.
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“That’s been a tough thing for me recently, is feeling like I’ve had to go through a lot of my struggles as a human — as all of us do — really publicly,” he tells his pal.
“And so people are always asking if I’m OK, and that starts to really weigh on me. It starts to make me feel like I’m the one with issues and every else is perfect,” he adds, suggesting that he, like everyone else, is imperfect.
Here, Justin asks for the same level of grace society affords to other people documenting their difficulties on social media.
