Less than two months on from the release of his surprise seventh album ‘Swag’, Canadian pop star Justin Bieber is back standing on business once again, and announced his imaginatively titled follow-up ‘Swag II’ with less than a day’s notice. Though it was initially promised at midnight, the pastel-pink release ultimately arrived three hours late – with a frustrated Bieber telling fans that he was also “clicking refresh” and waiting for it to hit streaming services.
While ‘Swag’ featured its fair share of lyrical honkers (‘Go Baby’’s breathless name-check for Hailey Bieber’s line of phone-mounted lip gloss holders is surely the low point), its successor largely keeps things simple and is stronger for it. Thankfully, ‘Swag’s second instalment is also slightly less horny than its predecessor, which saw Bieber threatening to “make your sheets hot” with all the sultry allure of an electric blanket’s safety leaflet.
Instead, the focus is lighter and often more tender. “It’s half past seven, I had somewhere to be,” he sings on ‘Mother In You’, an acoustic-led song about fatherhood, opening with the first time Bieber met his son. “I guess I’m late, but I got a reason; you’re a beautiful world that’s countin’ on me”. Though the infamous paparazzi confrontation Bieber sampled directly on ‘Standing On Business’ returns for ‘Speed Demon’, it is deployed far more playfully this time around. “Is it clocking to you?” he asks, atop a breezy guitar groove and hip-hop-influenced beat.
On ‘Love Song’ – Mk.Gee’s lone credit here, and also one of the record’s strongest songs – plenty of room is left for jazzy licks of piano to ring out. Tems is a smart choice of guest star on ‘I Think You’re Special’, while ‘Bad Honey’ is another standout. The latter sees Bieber having plenty of fun with strutting, funk-influenced vocal delivery, and chucking in plenty of falsetto for good measure.
There are also some sizable missteps: Justin Bieber reciting the Biblical story of Adam and Eve for almost eight minutes on closer ‘Story Of God’ in particular feels like an unnecessary indulgence, and thematically ‘Swag II’ sticks to two repetitive topics: loving God, and loving his wife.
Aside from the welcome absence of Druski’s rambling interludes this time around, there is also little to differentiate ‘Swag II’’s sound from that of its predecessor, with collaborators such as Dijon, Mk.Gee, Carter Lang and Eddie Benjamin all returning for a second helping of the luscious, R&B-influenced sound Bieber cultivated on ‘Swag’. There are no obvious big singles on an album, which was apparently being tweaked and changed up until the final hour.
‘Swag II’ also taps into the same air of an experimental, diaristic side-project or mixtape, but treads little new ground as a result. Trying out new things is all well and good, but both instalments of ‘Swag’ could’ve benefitted from a much harsher edit, and taken as an entirety, the two-plus hours are a monotonous slog.
In a similar fashion to Taylor Swift’s surprise addition to ‘The Tortured Poet’s Department’, the mammoth deluxe edition of SZA’s ‘SOS’, or Drake’s extended ‘Scary Hours’ edition of ‘For All The Dogs’, you can’t help but feel cynical about a bloated tracklist’s ability to boost streaming numbers while adding very little cohesion. It’s frustrating because there’s plenty of great material scattered across these two parts, which would be far stronger as a single, shorter release. Put bluntly, you have to wonder: did this really need to be a double album?
Details
- Record label: Def Jam Recordings
- Release date: September 5, 2025
