Music Reviews

Alright, let’s make one thing clear first – this is definetly an improvement from last year’s „changes“, not a major one, but an improvement nonetheneless. Now that being said this thing is still bloated as hell – the songs that are legitemately good can be counted on the fingers of one hand and the rest is either filler non-songs or unexcusable utter garbage. Also we really live in a universe where a song „MLK interlude“ by JUSTIN FRICKING BIEBER is a real thing, so that’s fun.

So, taking this track by track would be a suicide mission considering I only remember like three or four songs MAX, so I’ll just name the songs that stood out to me in some way, wether good or bad. The first third of this album is just an absolute snooze fest and the only songs that I truly can recall are „Deserve You“ which is legitamtely a great pop anthem and obviously „Holy“ with Chance, the Rapper, whose appearance is somehow even less underwhelming then Justin’s – the song overall is just so hollow and devoid of any emotion, it’s insane. The rest of the songs are just sort of there, they exist for the sake of album filler. The production is in fact so just boring and plain, it’s borderline not even there. After the completely unnecessary MLK interlude I have already mentioned, the tracklisting starts to gain a little bit more life, but it’s barely noticable. „Die For You“ is your typical Justin Bieber love anthem as is basically the rest of this album, but this one at least has some kind of redeemable production? I don’t really know, by this point in the album, I’m really just starting to lose focus, it’s so bland it’s actually physically hurting. The bass on „Hold On“ is actually pretty cool, but has just no balls whatsoever as does the rest of the instrumentation. The album’s lyrics also suffer from something I call „The Big Day“ effect, meaning the majority of them being literally just about how much Justin loves his wife, which gets kind of tiring after the tenth song you hear about the EXACT SAME THING. They just all start to blend together into one giant radio-friendly hollow mixbag of nothingness, it’s like it was designed to be background music. „Peaches“ is a nice change of pace, the guitar work is really gorgeous and gentle and the drums add so much life to the mix, it’s just really nice to the ears. By this point I’m really strugling not just to find anything to critique, but just anything to talk about in general, beacuse this album is just so devoid of anything substantive – the most I can give it is that it’s just decent background music, with the occasional pop banger here and there. The instrumentation throughout most of the album is also very nice and lively, but again, nothing never done before or sophysticated. Also I have a soft spot for the songs „Loved By You“ and the single „Anyone“, both towards the end of the album – but it just doesn’t excuse the lack of anything in the middle of the album. This album just lacks any punch whatsoever.

There is literally just nothing else I can tell you about this project, there is just no meat on these songs. But unlike changes, it’s at least listenable this time around.

Light 4/10