I'm Brian Hyatt. This is Rolling Stone Music Now. There is a surprise Justin Bieber album out.

His first album in a long time is called Swag. Of course, that part did not surprise me somehow. That is called Swag.

Back in the day he had a swagger coach. I don't think he needs the coach anymore.

To discuss this album we have with

us, Jeffrey Haza and Brittany Spanos. Welcome. Hello, thank you. So no one quite knew what to expect.

Brittany, you were saying that based on the title swag, you somehow had a different idea of what this

album was going to be. Justin loves the

word swag. He said his fans are swag. Like that's the definition of swag to him. I was expecting,

I mean, I guess it's not far off, but I guess it is kind of in the vein of journals a little bit,

but like a very 2014 to 2016 core type of Justin sound. And I am very pleased with what the sound is now.

But yeah, it's like really fun. There's some really interesting collaborations on this album.

I especially love the use of the great guitarist McGee, who is a really interesting artist in his own right and really steps up here

and does some of the best tracks like Daisies.

Jeff, you predicted this.

You wrote a great piece saying that even though everyone thought that Justin Bieber was kind of like melting down or something in recent times, you think he's tapped in and really knows what's going on. And I think the album kind of bore it out. Tell me what you saw and how that relates to the album we got.

Yeah, totally.

I mean, I think towards the beginning of this year, when Bieber started posting on Instagram

in a lot more of a, I guess you could call it, like, unfiltered way.

So we were getting kind of really unkempt photos and, like, captions that were just

seemed like they were coming off the top of his head.

It all looked like whoever was in charge of handling or maintaining his public image was no longer there, and it was

just him raw with the phone. And in a lot of ways, that is probably the more common mode of celebrity

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