![]() ![]() But on Justice, Harv and Aldae say they wanted to emphasize live instrumentation, whether that meant beginning songs on piano or messing around on guitars with writer-producer Skrillex. ![]() In his note to the Recording Academy, Bieber specifically noted the “hip-hop drums” on Changes, a lot of which were produced on drum machines. The sound is rooted in live instruments and draws from rock music “I think he crushes the R&B, but I personally love this style of music more with him.” “People know Justin as a pop star,” he says of the shift. “We wanted Justice to have its own sound, its own identity, so we put those old songs back on the shelf.” To better establish that divide between projects, Bieber brought a number of new writers on for Justice, including Aldae. “We literally started from scratch,” he adds. “The original plan was to do two albums back-to-back,” Harv says, but to keep the processes separate. With Justice released so close to Changes - Bieber debuted first single “Holy” just seven months after putting Changes out - it may have looked like the album was cut from the same sessions, like Taylor Swift’s folklore sequel evermore. Justice was a separate process from Changes “Every producer and writer, we all had that same idea.” “It’s about making sure that this album is going to be the best album of the year,” Harv says. Harv co-wrote and co-produced “Somebody” and “Peaches,” while Aldae co-wrote “2 Much,” “As I Am,” “Unstable,” and “Somebody.” Both collaborators described the fast-paced, detail-oriented process behind Bieber’s sonic pivot. So to look behind the scenes of Justice, Vulture spoke to two of Bieber’s key collaborators on the album: Bieber’s band member since 2010 and current music director, Bernard “Harv” Harvey, and songwriter Gregory “Aldae” Hein. ![]() It’s a lot to process from Bieber, who’s given few interviews on the new music. speeches to introduce opener “2 Much” and as a mid-album interlude (ahead of a song called “Die for You,” about his love for wife Hailey). Then upon the album’s delivery, he caught heat for using clips of two Martin Luther King Jr. He announced the album and title by tweeting a string of vague platitudes about “justice” and “healing.” “I know that I cannot simply solve injustice by making music, but I do know that if we all do our part by using our gifts to serve this planet and each other that we are that much closer to being united,” he wrote. ![]() Even more than Changes, Justice is a clear product of Bieber’s faith, spreading a gospel of positivity, love, and hope. The biggest choruses soar in the same way good worship music does, like what you could hear at Bieber’s former church, Hillsong. Instead, Justice picks up after Purpose, which Vulture music critic Craig Jenkins recently hailed as “one of the previous decade’s finest pop projects.” But while much of Purpose diluted EDM trends into pop hits, Justice prefers the polished, synth-fueled pop-rock of the 1980s as a jumping-off point. Released just 13 months after Changes, the new album positions Bieber’s R&B phase as more of a detour. Now, with Justice out, the turn looks even sharper. “To be clear, I absolutely love pop music,” he wrote in a note on social media, “it just wasn’t what I set out to make this time around.”īieber backed up his claim a month later when he released “Anyone,” his most undeniable pop song in years. But as he criticized the Recording Academy, Bieber also set the stage for what was next. (It wasn’t the first time he’d dabbled in R&B on 2013’s Journals, too, but called it a “compilation” rather than a proper release.) Maybe Bieber went a bit too far when he called out the Grammys for placing Changes in the pop category after it was submitted in R&B (not without precedent: Grande’s sweetener and thank u, next were still nominated in Pop Vocal Album, as was Kelly Clarkson’s 2017 soul pivot Meaning of Life). It also found Bieber diving headfirst into R&B, after the genre began driving the charts and other peers like Ariana Grande had dipped their toes as well. When the pop star’s first album in nearly five years arrived in February 2020, it found him as a newly married, born-again Christian. Photo: Kevin Mazur/AMA2020/Getty Images for dcpĬhanges introduced the world to a new Justin Bieber. ![]()
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