If you were thinking, “I loved Justin Bieber when I was 13, maybe I should buy his new album,” think again because it’s awful.
The album with 23 tracks starts with the song “Mark My Words.” In it, he tells us that he had lost his purpose and that he was going to change and that we should mark his words. He then goes on to focus on the same theme in “I’ll Show You.”
After that, the bulk of the songs focus are about his previous relationship with actress and singer, Selena Gomez. Songs like “What Do You Mean?” and “Love Yourself” airs the dirty laundry per se. He talks about the issues in the relationship. The lyrics are pretty simple and sappy. Take these lyrics from the song “Sorry” for instance, “Is it too late now to say sorry? Cause I’m missing more than just your body.” Justin Bieber throughout the album deals with not only his lost love, but also with what love really is. In the song “The Feeling” featuring Halsey, he sings on whether he loves someone for who they are or for the feeling of love. Towards the end of album, he focuses on his fight with depression as he searched for his purpose, which is hard to find when you’re rich apparently.
It’s very clear that Justin Bieber thinks he’s the pop version of Bob Dylan on this album. He tried to write about lost love like Bob Dylan did. The only problem is Bieber couldn’t write a decent song in a million years.
Justin Bieber is trying to shed his old appearance and sound, by showing that he’s broken. In terms of music this album is pretty solid. It features legendary rappers Nas and Big Sean (who’s been on quite a bit of Bieber tracks). It also features up and coming artist Halsey.
Most of the album are produced by Skrillex. Skrillex did a really good job of trying to make Bieber’s album sound decent, all in vain. The production is amazingly nice. Songs like “Love Yourself” and “Purpose” have a nice sound and feature some really nice instrumentals. The biggest problem Bieber faced in this album was his voice. It faltered a lot. His pitch seemed off on a lot of songs. In the song “The Feeling” the key is in F Major, but his voice often goes up into the G major key and even down lower into the Bb Major key.
Skrillex did a really good job of hiding Bieber’s failing voice by including really good beats and nice sounds. Skrillex, although known for his work with electronic dance music, does a great job of combining both electronic sounds with orchestral arrangements. He uses a lot of piano and violin, and he makes them work in unison amazingly well. The production on “We Are” is really amazing, and it’s really a testament to how good of a producer Skrillex is.
In short, Justin Bieber dropped the ball on this album. He had an amazing producer in Skrillex. He had an all-star cast of other artists featured on the album. Halsey did an amazing job on “The Feeling,” and it really stinks for her because she got handed great music and awful lyrics. Not only that, but the person who wrote the lyrics could hardly get a good note out on the song. If “The Feeling” had even decent lyrics, it would’ve been a good song, and that’s true for a lot of the songs on this album.
Although the album was well received by Rolling Stones Magazine (who for some reason gave the album a 4.5 out of 5), it has not been well received by the rest of the reviewer audience. Anthony Fantano, creator of The Needle Drop and album reviewer, gave it a soft 5 out of 10. Brad Nelson reviewing the album for Pitchfork, a site known for being near impossible to get a good rating on, gave it a 6.2 out of 10. I think that these reviewers gave it a higher rating simply because of the fantastic job that Skrillex and everyone besides Bieber did on this album. Although I applaud the ridiculously good production job, I’m still giving this album a purposeful (get it because the title of the album is purpose ) 4 out of 10. Soren Oberg, STAFF REPORTER
