On the cover, he poses shirtless (naked emotions?) on a backdrop of red. It’s no surprise that he chose to release it on the romantic holiday that he did. (Bieber has apparently been listening to Khalid and taking notes.) It’s also the emergence of a brand new Bieber, a happily married 25-year-old with everything to lose. This is not just a formidable soul man’s coming of age. “Yummy,” a track with a maddeningly and irresistibly repetitive hook that extols the pleasures of making love stoned (“Light a match, get litty, babe”), comes next, cementing Bieber’s new calling: a Canadian D’Angelo for white-girl Beliebers who are now old enough to understand that grown-up love doesn’t actually feel anything like “Baby,” Bieber’s early, equally repetitious hit. Bieber is more concerned with setting a mood than pumping out hooks (although “Come Around Me,” an early highlight, still manages to be gooey and ear-wormy), and then “Intentions,” all jaunty, roof-down swinging, comes along and offers the closest thing to a conventional pop melody on the album. The spare, acoustic opening track “All Around Me” floats into the gently percussive “Habitual,” which floats into the springtime step of “Come Around Me,” like an extended love suite. In an age when most pop albums are created by committee, “Changes” is one of the most cohesive ones since Ariana Grande sprung “Thank U, Next” (also, interestingly, her fifth studio album) on us almost exactly one year ago.
For a Valentine’s Day album about love in bloom, it sounds surprisingly serious and dark, with a one-track-mind.
#CHANGES BIEBER CRACK#
He’s never felt better, either, from all indications. “Changes” is the sound of a reformed romantic closing the blinds to shut out the world, then spending a long weekend in bed with the object of his affection, coming up with different ways to say “You complete me.” And therein lie its limitations: For as many ways as there are to say “You complete me,” Bieber keeps skimming their surface. His voice and the production are flawless, and his soul is in the right place - but there’s something airless about the album, too, like he could have left the window open a crack to let some sunshine in. And he’s never sounded better than he does on “Changes,” his fifth studio album. His R&B tendencies are natural and unforced and, most importantly, never gratuitously flashy.
He’s a blue-eyed soul stirrer who somehow always has avoided sounding like a white guy trying to pass for black. The string of celebrity relationships, the bad-boy behavior, the tattoos and ever-evolving hair styles and hues - all these things have had a tendency to distract from the obvious, which is: That boy can sing. Justin Bieber still doesn’t really get the credit he’s earned.
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