Music is a life source for me. If an artist releases a new album, I will set aside an hour to listen through the entirety of the work. The track order is a vital tool for the integrity of the album’s content. The notion that an artist or band carved out days to perfect the linear or sonic story developed throughout the songs makes the listening experience even more enthralling.
I religiously listened to Bieber’s album “Justice” because of my undying love for Justin Bieber. I still remember in 2011 watching his documentary film, “Never Say Never,” with my cousins and immediately breaking into tears because I thought he was “singing to me.”
Flash forward nine years, and there I was on an early and cold March morning listening through the album before my 8 a.m. class and crying again, but this time more mature and experienced tears.
I tend to pick apart lyrics more than any human should, and after having months of digesting“Justice’s” lyrics, I have realized there is much more behind the words than simple-minded, secular song qualities. It discusses a divine love in life’s back and forth struggle through a materialistic, secular medium.
From getting his light “right from the source” to being held in a “holy” way, the pop star draws several biblical parallels in his newest mainstream album.
For a little Bieber background, the music industry icon recommitted to his childhood faith, Christianity, back in 2014 and now actively practices evangelical Charismatic Christianity. After rejecting faith and giving the secular worldview a fair shot, it resulted in him sitting in front of a GQ interviewer in 2021 and explaining, “You have all this success in the world, but you’re just like: Well, what is this worth if I’m still feeling empty inside?”
“Justice” had been released at this time. A modern-day mix of 80’s synth-pop mashed with a pop-rock blend, all while juxtaposed with folk acoustic guitar ballads and ominous heart-wrenching bass inclusions. The album immediately kicked off its “grateful-passionate-applicative-nostalgic” album-journeying theme.
The first four tracks (“2 Much,” “Deserve You,” “As I am,” and “Off my Face”) start the “gratefulness” theme with a prominent thankful attitude towards blessings. “2 Much” and “Off my Face” are beautiful ballads discussing an overflowing amount of love.
I am a firm believer that no one can truly experience the depth and all-encompassing dimensions of love apart from God’s love, and Bieber, taking his faith more seriously now, has discovered that type of love. These songs sandwich thematic contrasts to his prior music.
“Deserve You” has the lyrical qualities of the redemptive spiritual process and the notion of feeling undeserving of unconditional love and acceptance. Bieber “prays” that he doesn’t “go back to he was,” and although “Deserve You” as well as “As I am” blatantly allude to a romantic relationship, it focuses on a mature epiphany regarding merciful community through that process.
The album theme next evolves into “passion through sacrifice” through “Holy,” “Unstable,” “MLK Interlude,” and “Die for You.”
Through Bieber’s single “Holy” with Chance the Rapper, the two artists utilized the song as personal testimony from their faith claim.
With an old-school gospel piano tint, the song bleeds with theological comparison. It discusses “going down to the river” sang by Bieber and coming “out of the water” changed by Chance the Rapper. This clear allusion to baptism and spiritual renewal makes the track a timeless and upbeat encouragement for believers and nonbelievers.
In “Unstable,” Bieber discusses a third party that has stayed throughout his journey of self-betterment. Although intended to parallel significant other roles, the attributes are coherent to those of divine compassion while in a relationship with the one who truly and avidly delivers the lost.
With the inclusion of Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK), a prominent historical figure that heavily incorporated biblical principles into his practices, Bieber rhetorically, through the inclusion, asks the audience, “What, to you, is worth dying for in this life?”
“Die for You” was the song that segued me into this embarkment of theological comparison. Since March, the song has consistently stayed at the top of my “Most Played,” so I had ample time to draw parallels.
Bieber perfectly describes the love that humankind feels and the ultimate sacrificial love demonstrated by the Triune God. Lyrics such as “even if your kiss could kill me” and “you’re the right now and what will be” lead directly to scriptural correspondents of Judas’s pre-betrayal kiss. It also relates to the Trinity’s immanence and transcendence, which is stated in Revelation 1:8. “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” said the Lord God, “who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty.”
If the audience isn’t completely knocked off its feet by “Die for You,” they will move onto the application aspect.
“Hold on,” “Somebody,” and “Ghost” extend a hand to the audience for personal betterment and learn life lessons throughout the various aspects of their lives.
Nostalgia can describe most of the remaining songs.
“Peaches” becomes a fun, pop radio hit laced in secularity yet still contains optimism. “Love you different” again expresses a more divine and sacrificial love and directly relates a significant other figure to be “the fruit of his life”- a prominent biblical aspect. “Loved by You” and “Anyone” are two opposite forces that battle a deep-seated desire for fulfillment in someone, with the nostalgia of his past realization of the purest form of love he has shown to his wife, Hailey Bieber.
The most profound aspect of this album is the closing track “Lonely,” an extremely heavy and hopeless ballad that I believe is one of the most impactful ways of ending a track set.
It is a sonically blunt and lyrically hard-hitting reminder of the prominence of the lonely and relation-lacking human state that the audience is left to dwell on as the album concludes.
Hopelessness is constant, but with the touch of a button, the audience can choose to experience life and rejuvenation again through tracks that have religious aspects woven through them.
