For Justin Bieber, it’s the ultimate question: what went right? He’s the comeback kid of the year, with a surprise blockbuster on his hands with Swag, his first new music in four years. It’s the last thing anyone expected—the most adult, ambitious, relaxed album of his life, not to mention his best ever. Yet he’s also standing on bigger business than ever, right when everyone was betting on this guy to fall on his face. Swag debuted at Number Two, right behind Travis Scott—the first time he’s released an album that didn’t enter the charts at the top, yet still the biggest-streaming debut of his career.
It’s a historic resurgence for Bieber, since he’s had quite the year full of bizarre celebrity antics, papparazzi run-ins, social-media meltdowns. Most people were ready to write him off as washed up at 31, a former It Boy with a bright future behind him. But it turned out Justin Bieber wasn’t falling apart—he was taking the biggest swing of his life. And bouncing back with the pop flex of the year. How did this happen?
The last time a celeb pulled off a rebound like this, it was Britney Spears in 2007, with Blackout—another album by a troubled former child star in the midst of full-blown career chaos, acting out in public, dismissed by the industry as a guaranteed flop. Yet like Britney’s album, Swag turned out to be a brilliant gimme-more career peak that hit a nerve with the audience, both culturally and creatively. As Brit would say: it’s Bieber, bitch.
It’s a shocker, since he’s racked up more “is this guy okay?” headlines in 2025 than most celebs manage in a career. There’s been relentless gossip about his marriage to Hailey Bieber, especially since they became parents last year, as he kept posting social-media rants with a cry-for-help vibe. “Don’t you think if I could have fixed myself I would have already?” he posted in June. “I know I’m broken. I know I have anger issues.” He talked about struggling to address these issues, but “it just keeps making me more tired and more angry.”
Since his 2021 hit “Peaches,” the Bieb has kept making the news, but for everything except his music. He abruptly cancelled a year’s worth of shows for his Justice world tour, saying, “I need to make my health the priority right now.” He fell out with manager Scooter Braun, who discovered the 13-year-old Canadian kid in 2007 singing on YouTube, severing their longtime bond. In 2023, he sold off the rights to his catalog for $200 million — the kind of deal normally made by an older artist finishing up their life’s work, not a 20-something stud with more hits to make. It made the industry wonder if Bieber had lost confidence in his future. In the four years after Justice dropped in March 2021, all he managed was a couple of guest appearances with SZA and Don Toliver. He looked like just the latest sad celebrity-burnout casualty.
Like Britney, he’s been mega-famous well over half his life, yet coping skills seemed to get tougher for him, not easier. Everybody assumed the closest he’d come to a hit this summer was the viral clip in June where he yells at the papparazzi, “It’s not clocking to you that I’m standing on business!” (He added, “I’m at my wit’s fucking end is what I am at!”) He’s been leaving posts where he appeared to smoke blunts, as well as an Instagram story with the joke, “This fool never sees my FaceTimessss.” The “fool” was Stevie Wonder.
No wonder people worried about him. But he took the darkness and turned it into something weird and cool. He gets more experimental on Swag, with collaborators like Dijon, Mk.gee, Gunna, Sexyy Red, Cash Cobain, and Lil B. It’s a DGAF declaration of independence from a grown-up artist who’s stepping off the treadmill. He also adds spoken-word “Therapy Session” skits with the comedian Druski, confessing his problems. “That’s been a tough thing for me recently, is feeling like I have had to go through a lot of my struggles as a human, as all of us do, really publicly,” he admits. “And so people are always asking if I’m okay, and that starts to really weigh on mе.”
But he’s been airing these issues in public all year, to the point where rumors ran rampant about his mental and physical stability. “I personally have always felt unworthy,” he posted in March. “Like I was a fraud.” Days later, he vented about his pent-up hatred from his past. “I was always told when I was a kid not to hate,” he wrote. “But it made me feel like I wasn’t allowed to hate it and so I didn’t tell anyone I’ve had it. Which made me feel like I have been drowning feeling unsafe to acknowledge it.”
He’s made up for lost time. “If you don’t like my anger you don’t like me,” he declared in a June spiel, posting screenshots of his texts raging at an unnamed target. “My anger is a response to pain I have been thru. Asking a traumatized person not to be traumatized is simply mean.” He added quite a clever kiss-off: “I enjoyed our short lived relationship.” He didn’t specify who he had in mind, but in April, he launched his Skylrk brand with a CGI video where he rides a scooter (subtlety! it’s awesome!), but ditches it when it runs out of juice. Then he walks into a house full of his old Drew House merch — and burns the place down.
These aren’t customarily the moves of a big-name pop smoothie who totally has his act together, but in retrospect, they look like a guy who really is desperate to set his past on fire, rejecting the slick polish of his earlier career. His last couple of albums were pleasant but bland, so it looked like he’d made his final fully impressive album ten years ago with Purpose. But Swag blows Purpose out of the water. He pulls off left-field experiments with Dijon (“Devotion”) and Mk.gee (“Daisies”). Yet some of the kickiest moments are dashed-off low-fi demos like the 83-second Neil Young-style acoustic sketch “Zuma House,” the bluesy “Glory Voice Memo,” or the Prince-like “Yukon.” They sound like they could have been recorded on an old iPhone—maybe even the same one Andre 3000 used to record his piano-solo album. (You do remember Andre’s piano-solo album, don’t you?)
He’s always had great taste in underground rap, a fan of young Soundcloud MCs like PlaqueBoyMax and Babytron — he and Hailey were just spotted in the front row at Yeat’s Coachella set. Yet the highlight here — one of his finest pure pop shots ever — is “Butterflies,” with a trembly guitar hook from (of all people) the Smashing Pumpkins. Now that’s range. He tries to shut down the rumors about his marriage by serenading his wife in sweet tributes like “Walking Away” (“Girl, we better stop before we say some shit”) and “Go Baby,” where he praises her for making so much loot by designing a phone case with a built-in lipgloss holder. “Dadz Love” celebrates fatherhood with the Based God himself, Lil B. Result: a sudden stab of artistic respectability, the last thing anyone had on their Bieber bingo card this year.
Bieber started out as a child star, the kind of kid who’d show up on the VMAs red carpet with his pet snake named Johnson. (And a very bewildered-looking date—poor Selena.) But even in his youth, he was obsessed with the idea of change and evolution. “I was a player when I was little!” the Bieb sang in a 2009 hit on his first EP, a lifetime ago. “But I’m bigger!” That’s right—he was only 15, yet already hooked on the roller-coaster ride of the sin > confession > redemption cycle. (He even asked, “Remember when my heart was still young?” — such a prophetic question for him.) He ends his album with “Forgiveness,” just as he ended previous ones with virtuous meatballs like “Believe,” “Pray,” and “Purpose.”
That’s why he fills Swag with his Druski Dialogues, coming clean about his failures and insecurities, while his therapist just tells him, “You start smoking these Black & Milds with me, you’ll feel way better.” (Thanks, Druski! Are you taking new clients?) He’s got a sharp sense of humor about himself, as well he should. Few stars have ever had a year full of public drama like Bieber. But few have ever risen above the drama with such an about-face success. He answers all the “is Justin okay?” controversy by leaving no doubt about where he’s standing — on business, with both feet.
