In July, following a break-up with his longtime manager Scooter Braun, selling his catalog for over $200 million and spitting back at ogling paparazzi who couldn't seem to understand that he was "standing on business," Justin Bieber accomplished something other than consistently landing in the tabloids: he released a surprise album, Swag, which really only fits the mold of a quintessential Bieber album in its minimalist, swaggy title.
Swag is not the commercial, cookie-cutter pop-R&B that defined Bieber's last few releases and produced songs like the Grammy-nominated hit "Peaches." Instead, Bieber enlisted a group of surprisingly leftfield writers and producers including the singer-songwriter Tobias Jesso Jr. and talented, uber-cool collaborators Dijon and Mk.gee to create a slippery and even experimental pop album. Focusing on fragmented snapshots from Bieber's very publicly and personally litigated life as a relatively new father and embattled wife guy, it plays with the hazy, ambient touchstones of '80s R&B and rock while highlighting the Biebs' still-impressive depth as a vocalist. Swag is imperfect — it's insular and repetitive, and definitely inaccessible to anyone itching for the captivating high of a song like "Sorry." Yet it was a clear, even risky statement and much needed revamp for an artist who has appeared to stumble through the last few years of his career.
But Bieber had more business to stand on. Last week he released a 23-track sequel to the album in Swag II, which mirrors the same musical and emotional tenor of the first album without adding much more to the project other than sheer volume. Swag, with its 21 songs and uncharacteristically arty production, was strong enough of a statement to stand on its own, not a project that needed immediate, lengthy extension. And while it's being marketed as its own album, not necessarily an extension to the original project, on streaming services it appears bundled right before Swag, seamlessly feeding listeners the first album to boost the OG project's streams right after. Now, fans of Bieber's Swag era have 44 songs in total to enjoy, because more music is better, right?
That seems to be the reigning approach for so many artists over the last five years, as musicians seek to extend the life of their albums (or increasingly rarefied moment in the industry's monocultural spotlight) as far as they possibly can. These days it's not unusual for an artist to release a new album just a year or even less after their last one, as both Tyler, the Creator and Sabrina Carpenter did with DON'T TAP THE GLASS and Man's Best Friend, despite putting out the well-received CHROMAKOPIA and Short n' Sweet in 2024. FKA twigs, who released her excellent club-inspired album EUSEXUA in January, also announced a follow-up titled Eusexua Afterglow, which she clarified is an entirely new album. Taylor Swift, whose incessant, ever-visible productivity makes me think she's privy to cloning technology we peasants don't yet possess, not only put out the massive The Tortured Poets Department in the midst of her Eras Tour last year, but is now putting out a new album, The Life of a Showgirl, in just a few months.
And then there are the standalone albums that just seem to keep growing, through extensions, bonus-track filled deluxe editions or remix versions, the meaning of each format blurring together over time. This year Teddy Swims released I've Tried Everything but Therapy (Part 2), billed as the "second half" of 2023's I've Tried Everything but Therapy (Part 1), though each is essentially its own album. In 2023, Taylor Swift doubled the length of the 16-track The Tortured Poets Department when she casually dropped 15 more tracks just two hours later. The "deluxe album," which typically adds a few additional bonus tracks to an initial release, is now nearly a requirement for any major pop album released in the 2020s. And these deluxe editions can drop a few months to years after the original album drops, as it did with SZA's album SOS, which came out in 2022 and only saw its deluxe edition, SOS Deluxe: LANA, which finally materialized this year after highly publicized delays.
The album as a format has arguably never been more acceptably mutable and malleable than it is right now. It's funny to think that nearly a decade ago, music critics (myself included) and fans were wringing their hands over Kanye West tinkering with The Life of Pablo after it was sent to streaming services and what it meant for the album as a contained, immovable artistic statement. The ease and flexibility of streaming, where artists don't have to worry about fossilizing a release in any set form or length to fit the physical limits of a vinyl record or CD, free to drop new music instantaneously, has allowed the album to drift into playlist territory, where songs can be added or even tweaked to befit a different time. American pop artists have also adopted the release strategies of international markets like K-pop, where it's not unusual for groups to release multiple versions of a single project or repackage it in different ways to boost sales and feed spend-happy fanbases. If you want to release a whopping 37-song album, you can do that in 2025, as Morgan Wallen did with I'm the Problem, indisputably the most commercially successful album of the year so far. Or, release multiple CD and digital versions of your album, like Playboi Carti did for this year's MUSIC.
But the extended universe of the average album these days, with its increasing tracklists and deluxe editions and surprise sequels, doesn't feel like artists are pushing the creative limits of their work and more like craven business tactics. There is a commercial incentive to making your album as long as possible, in as many permutations. Longer albums often translate to more streams, and more streams mean more album "sales" given the way album performance is calculated in the streaming era, which in turn aids better placement on the pop charts, a still highly coveted endorsement for artists. As my colleague Stephen Thompson tracks in his weekly review of the Billboard charts, a well-timed deluxe edition can also catapult an album that's fallen off the upper echelon of the chart (or off it entirely) through new streams and sales, momentarily boosting an album that has fallen through the cracks in a music economy where it feels like the same handful of pop artists monopolize attention. Like an influencer who has to post multiple times a day to increase their reach and follower counts, musicians have to churn out music to do the same.
I know why artists stretch out the lifespan of their albums like putty for maximum impact. And I sympathize, within limits, with any artist who must release work in our current, disordered attention economy and abundance of new music. And yet I want them all to just let their albums breathe — to define a single project and let it exist for a minute on its own terms without constant add-ons or additional albums rolling down the pipeline in a month or two. I'm not so much interested in artists committing to an old school, 12 to 13 track, give-or-take 45-minute album, though when it happens, as it did with Lorde's svelte Virgin this year, which has yet to produce any bonus tracks, I'm pleasantly surprised. I am seeking a broader push for artists to self-edit more deliberately, and to turn away from release strategies that lend their work an aura of anxiety about capturing sufficient attention.
Part of the charm of Bieber's Swag was that you could hear the artist leaning out, though not as much as he could have, from his past instincts as a pop artist in just the right measure, for the whole album. But on Swag II I hear a muddying of that instinct and at times a backtracking of that initial experimentation on the overly schmaltzy, upbeat songs like "I Think You're Special" and "Eye Candy." Mostly the songs circle the same Dijon and Mk.gee-executed instrumentation and Bieber's ideas (he will always be there for his wife, who he loves very much, though marriage isn't always easy) so similarly to the first album that all 44 tracks begin to bleed together in a blur that ultimately cheapens each song. The added songs are worse material than what Bieber gave us on Swag, so why give them to us?
Swag II made me question if Bieber was underwhelmed by the album's initial commercial performance (the album debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard chart, but has fallen steadily since) and thought more music might push the project back into the spotlight. If that was the case, he got what he wanted — this week Swag surged back in the Billboard 200's top 5, jumping from spot 17 to 4, in part because of how Swag II's streams were combined with Swag's for chart purposes. An excess of new music by your favorite artist might be exciting, but it makes me skeptical of their vision for the album in the first place, especially when extensive releases and surprise double albums seem tuned to commercial interests. The number of times I've heard an album in the last five years and thought that there was a better version of it hiding in its 20-something or more tracklist is high.
The word "era" gets thrown around a lot these days in regards to musicians, meaning the general transformation of sound and style that accompanies a new release for artists committed to constant reinvention. But in order for an era to exist, you need to move on. When Taylor Swift announced her forthcoming album The Life of a Showgirl, she made it clear it would just be 13 tracks — no deluxe songs or secret tracks coming. She's an artist with the privilege of having a constant spotlight on her every move who can afford to pull this off, and I'm believing her with caution. But I also suspect she's (maybe) finally realized what so many of us know, and have been begging her to embrace: sometimes less is better.
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