{"id":42719,"date":"2025-08-02T15:02:50","date_gmt":"2025-08-02T15:02:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/2025\/08\/02\/how-justin-bieber-pulled-off-the-weirdest-comeback-of-2025\/"},"modified":"2025-08-02T15:02:50","modified_gmt":"2025-08-02T15:02:50","slug":"how-justin-bieber-pulled-off-the-weirdest-comeback-of-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/2025\/08\/02\/how-justin-bieber-pulled-off-the-weirdest-comeback-of-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"How Justin\u00a0Bieber\u00a0Pulled Off the Weirdest Comeback of 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"


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\n\tFor Justin Bieber<\/a>, it\u2019s the ultimate question: what went right? <\/em>He\u2019s the comeback kid of the year, with a surprise blockbuster on his hands with Swag<\/em>, his first new music in four years. It\u2019s the last thing anyone expected\u2014the most adult, ambitious, relaxed album of his life, not to mention his best ever. Yet he\u2019s also standing on bigger business than ever, right when everyone was betting on this guy to fall on his face. Swag <\/em>debuted at Number Two<\/a>, right behind Travis Scott\u2014the first time he\u2019s released an album that didn\u2019t enter the charts at the top, yet still the biggest-streaming debut of his career.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s a historic resurgence for Bieber, since he\u2019s 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\u2019t falling apart\u2014he was taking the biggest swing of his life. And bouncing back with the pop flex of the year. How did this happen?<\/p>\n

\n\tThe last time a celeb pulled off a rebound like this, it was Britney Spears in 2007, with Blackout<\/em>\u2014another 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\u2019s album, Swag <\/em>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\u2019s Bieber, bitch.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s a shocker, since he\u2019s racked up more \u201cis this guy okay?\u201d headlines in 2025 than most celebs manage in a career. There\u2019s 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. \u201cDon\u2019t you think if I could have fixed myself I would have already?\u201d he posted in June.<\/a> \u201cI know I\u2019m broken. I know I have anger issues.\u201d He talked about struggling to address these issues, but \u201cit just keeps making me more tired and more angry.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\n\tSince his 2021 hit \u201cPeaches,\u201d the Bieb has kept making the news, but for everything except<\/em> his music. He abruptly cancelled a year\u2019s worth of shows for his Justice <\/em>world tour, saying<\/a>, \u201cI need to make my health the priority right now.\u201d He fell out with manager Scooter Braun, who discovered the 13-year-old Canadian kid in 2007 singing on YouTube, <\/strong>severing their longtime bond. In 2023, he sold off the rights to his catalog for $200 million \u2014 the kind of deal<\/a> normally made by an older artist finishing up their life\u2019s 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<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n

\n\tLike Britney, he\u2019s been mega-famous well over half his life, yet coping skills seemed to get tougher for him, not easier. Everybody assumed the closest he\u2019d come to a hit this summer was the viral clip in June where he yells at the papparazzi<\/a>, \u201cIt\u2019s not clocking to you that I\u2019m standing on business!\u201d (He added, \u201cI\u2019m at my wit\u2019s fucking end is what I am at!\u201d) He\u2019s been leaving posts where he appeared to smoke blunts, as well as an Instagram story with the joke, \u201cThis fool never sees my FaceTimessss.\u201d The \u201cfool\u201d was Stevie Wonder. <\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tNo wonder people worried about him. But he took the darkness and turned it into something weird and cool. He gets more experimental on Swag<\/em>, with collaborators like Dijon, Mk.gee, Gunna, Sexyy Red, Cash Cobain, and Lil B. It\u2019s a DGAF declaration of independence from a grown-up artist who\u2019s stepping off the treadmill. He also adds spoken-word \u201cTherapy Session\u201d skits with the comedian Druski, confessing his problems. \u201cThat\u2019s 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,\u201d he admits. \u201cAnd so people are always asking if I\u2019m okay, and that starts to really weigh on m\u0435.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\n\tBut he\u2019s been airing these issues in public all year, to the point where rumors ran rampant about his mental and physical stability. \u201cI personally have always felt unworthy,\u201d he posted<\/a> in March<\/a>. \u201cLike I was a fraud.\u201d Days later, he vented<\/a> about his pent-up hatred from his past. \u201cI was always told when I was a kid not to hate,\u201d he wrote. \u201cBut it made me feel like I wasn\u2019t allowed to hate it and so I didn\u2019t tell anyone I\u2019ve had it. Which made me feel like I have been drowning feeling unsafe to acknowledge it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tHe\u2019s made up for lost time. \u201cIf you don\u2019t like my anger you don\u2019t like me,\u201d he declared in a June spiel, posting screenshots of his texts raging at an unnamed target. \u201cMy anger is a response to pain I have been thru. Asking a traumatized person not to be traumatized is simply mean.\u201d He added quite a clever kiss-off: \u201cI enjoyed our short lived relationship.\u201d He didn\u2019t specify who he had in mind, but in April, he launched his Skylrk brand with a CGI video <\/a>where he rides a scooter (subtlety! it\u2019s awesome!), but ditches it when it runs out of juice. Then he walks into a house full of his old Drew House merch \u2014 and burns the place down.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThese aren\u2019t 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\u2019d made his final fully impressive album ten years ago with Purpose<\/em>. But Swag<\/em> blows Purpose<\/em> out of the water. He pulls off left-field experiments with Dijon (\u201cDevotion\u201d) and Mk.gee (\u201cDaisies\u201d). Yet some of the kickiest moments are dashed-off low-fi demos like the 83-second Neil Young-style acoustic sketch \u201cZuma House,\u201d the bluesy \u201cGlory Voice Memo,\u201d or the Prince-like \u201cYukon.\u201d They sound like they could have been recorded on an old iPhone\u2014maybe even the same one Andre 3000 used to record his piano-solo album. (You do <\/em>remember Andre\u2019s piano-solo album, don\u2019t you?)\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tHe\u2019s always had great taste in underground rap, a fan of young Soundcloud MCs like PlaqueBoyMax and Babytron \u2014 he and Hailey were just spotted in the front row at Yeat\u2019s Coachella set. Yet the highlight here \u2014 one of his finest pure pop shots ever \u2014 is \u201cButterflies,\u201d with a trembly guitar hook from (of all people) the Smashing Pumpkins. Now that\u2019s <\/em>range. He tries to shut down the rumors about his marriage by serenading his wife in sweet tributes like \u201cWalking Away\u201d (\u201cGirl, we better stop before we say some shit\u201d) and \u201cGo Baby,\u201d where he praises her for making so much loot by designing a phone case with a built-in lipgloss holder. \u201cDadz Love\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

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\n\tBieber started out as a child star, the kind of kid who\u2019d show up on the VMAs red carpet<\/a> with his pet snake<\/a> named Johnson. (And a very bewildered-looking date\u2014poor Selena.) But even in his youth, he was obsessed with the idea of change and evolution. \u201cI was a player when I was little!\u201d the Bieb sang in a 2009 hit <\/a>on his first EP, a lifetime ago. \u201cBut I\u2019m bigger!<\/em>\u201d That\u2019s right\u2014he was only 15, yet already hooked on the roller-coaster ride of the sin > confession > redemption cycle. (He even asked, \u201cRemember when my heart was still young?\u201d \u2014 such a prophetic question for him.) He ends his album with \u201cForgiveness,\u201d just as he ended previous ones with virtuous meatballs like \u201cBelieve,\u201d \u201cPray,\u201d and \u201cPurpose.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThat\u2019s why he fills Swag<\/em> with his Druski Dialogues, coming clean about his failures and insecurities, while his therapist just tells him, \u201cYou start smoking these Black & Milds with me, you\u2019ll feel way better.\u201d (Thanks, Druski! Are you taking new clients?) He\u2019s 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 \u201cis Justin okay?\u201d controversy by leaving no doubt about where he\u2019s standing \u2014 on business, with both feet.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n