Earlier this year, Justin Bieber shocked fans with the sudden release of a brand new album titled “SWAG,” which immediately became one of the most popular albums of the year. Now, he’s releasing an album titled “SWAG II,” and it sounds like there’s a chance it will sound a lot different than the previous album.
Between some vague reports at the time of the release of “SWAG” coupled with a telling message from Bieber on social media, it sounds like there’s a chance that “Swag II” will be quite a bit more of an upbeat pop album compared to “SWAG.”
“Swag” Was Chill, Soulful, and Stripped Back
When Bieber initially released “SWAG,” many fans and reviewers were somewhat surprised at how chill and stripped back many of the songs were, with some of them even feeling like unfinished demo tracks.
Rachel Leong of Atwood Magazine wrote that the album “feels almost thrown together like a journal – or scrapbook – of Bieber’s inner workings,” while Brady Brickner-Wood of the New Yorker wrote that many of the songs sounded “scrappily recorded and unprocessed.”
It’s worth noting that this isn’t necessarily a criticism of the album, just an observation of the artistic direction Bieber chose to take “SWAG.” In fact, Brickner-Wood went as far as to call the album a “masterpiece” and Bieber’s “magnum opus” because of the unique approach he took to its creation.
“This wildness does not mean that ‘SWAG’ is unfocused or scatterbrained. Even at twenty-one songs, the album cannot be cast off as a data dump or as streaming bait, because it coheres into something whole, a magnetic statement of purpose. By stepping outside the hard right angles of conventional pop music, Bieber has landed on a sensual, slow-burning sound that seems to have always been waiting for him, an off-balance indie R. & B. that eschews perfection and sugar-rush ease in exchange for primacy and patience, traits mostly alien to the Bieber œuvre,” Brickner-Wood wrote for The New Yorker. “Carter Lang and Dylan Wiggins serve as the record’s lead producers, and they populate songs with roomy percussion redolent of nineties neo-soul, warm synth keys, and limber guitar licks that crest into subtly layered choruses. Bieber’s voice is frequently wielded as an instrument; some of ‘SWAG’ ’s finest moments arrive in the form of sneaky drops and climaxes, with Bieber’s voice pitched and fragmented in surprising ways, such as on the drum-and-bass-indebted ‘405,’ or on the post-chorus breakdown of the Gunna-assisted ‘Way It Is.'”
As artful as the album was, it was not the poppy, hooky, and catchy music that fans have come to expect from Bieber, but it sounds like there’s a chance “SWAG II” will be.
“SWAG II” Could Be a More Pop-Focused Album
At the time that “SWAG” was initially released back in July, HITSDD reported that Bieber was actually planning to release another album later in 2025 or in early 2026. The upcoming album, the outlet reported, would be a “proper pop album.”
“Swag is meant to set the stage for a proper pop album coming later in the year or early 2026,” HITSDD reported back in July.
It’s worth noting that for reasons unknown, HITSDD has since removed that line from their report on the album, but based on a telling social media post from Bieber on Thursday morning, it sounds like the report may have been correct, after all.
Unlike the “SWAG” album cover, which was black with gray text, the “SWAG II” album cover is bubblegum pink with white and magenta text – a stark difference in color, perhaps suggesting a stark difference in the style of music.
Further, Bieber made a post on Instagram on Thursday morning, sharing a meme of a dark gray and black house next door to a bright pink and purple house. The meme initially went viral back in 2024 during the simultaneous release of Barbie and Oppenheimer.
In Bieber’s take on the popular meme, the dark house was labeled as “SWAG,” while the bright house was labeled as “SWAG II.”
We obviously won’t know for sure until the album is officially released at midnight, but it sounds like Bieber’s new album could be much more pop-focused than “SWAG.”
