Justin Bieber’s new “Swag II” album is a bizarre combination of things.
The album boasts a seven minute, forty six second spoken word track written his sketchy religious leader Judah Smith.
It also has a stick on the cover Warning of Explicit Lyrics.
“Swag II” is the surprise follow up album to “Swag,” which has been a huge sales disappointment all summer. No one asked for a sequel but here it is.
The album is sort of anti-music. Very little on it is remarkable even with dozens of writers and producers credited throughout. It’s amazing how many people is can take to come up with basically, nothing.
The one song that stood out for me was “Mother in You,” in which Bieber — who doesn’t seem to have an inner life — sings to his baby son, Jack, about seeing his wife, Jack’s mother Hailey, in him. It’s very affecting and heartfelt, so different than almost everything else Bieber offers.
Will “Swag II” fare any better than “Swag I”? The two albums are actually being packaged together as “Swag II,” which makes about as much sense as anything else.”Swag I” has sold 430,000 copies, almost all from streaming. The album has yielded just 8,970 paid downloads. No physical copies were manufactured.
PS All of this is pretty minor after seeing the “Hamilton” Movie this week. You wanna hear songs? These can’t even be compared.
