Purpose is less an album than a deliberate act of repositioning. As much as 2012's Believe was intended as Justin Bieber's micro-adjustment into adulthood, the advance singles for Purpose, "What Do You Mean?" and "Sorry", are his first hits without any traces of teen-pop. They're designed much in the spirit of "Where Are Ü Now", his single with Skrillex and Diplo from earlier this year, where Bieber's voice fluctuated through animated throbs. Produced, respectively, by MdL and Skrillex (who contributes six productions to the record), "What Do You Mean?" and "Sorry" are vivid tropical house tracks that sound like sunlight drifting down through palm fronds. Bieber's voice often resembles a breath contorted inexpressively through notes; here, he lets it weightlessly fall through textures. They are his best performances to date, allowing him to flex a rhythmic playfulness without communicating an iota of legible emotion.
Purpose doesn't particularly follow up on the advances suggested by his previous release, the 2013 R&B experiment Journals. That record was Bieber's first attempt at casting himself as an adult, but its efforts, alternately curious and anonymous, went largely unnoticed. For its part, Purpose mostly suggests that Bieber's idea of "adulthood" is the ability to convey pettiness without emotional intelligence. On new single "Love Yourself", an Ed Sheeran co-write that also functions as a gentle kiss-off, Bieber sings "If you like the way you look that much/ Baby, you should go and love yourself." Lyrically it's needlessly mean, neither funny nor clever, and it doesn't do much to justify the severity of its perspective.
The songs on Purpose have a similarly inanimate feeling; they seem to radiate more than they move. "No Sense" feels oddly hookless and almost willfully ugly, and when Travis Scott surfaces toward the end of the track, he registers as just another cold texture. Nothing here has the captivating, lopsided construction of Journals' "Confident". "No Pressure", featuring Big Sean, comes close with its shimmering, processed acoustic guitars—though the song might have appeared lighter and more nimble in the hands of someone like Usher.
In general, vagueness, indecision, and faint befuddlement suit Bieber best. "The Feeling", produced by Skrillex, describes a liminal, unstable state ("Am I in love or am I in love with the feeling?"), and the track fittingly seems to slip in and out of focus. Halsey, who released one of the worst singles of the year with "New Americana", proves an ideal counterweight to Bieber, and together the two effortlessly convey the gentle intensity of a crush. At these moments, when Bieber is allowed to remain a lithe and fluttery element zippering in and out of a canvas, he sounds most comfortable.
But when Bieber is required to slow down and emote, he sounds adenoidal and aggressively blank. "Life Is Worth Living", a piano ballad in which every chord seems indifferently faxed in, is one of the many songs on which Bieber struggles to justify himself to the public. "My reputation's on the line, so I'm working on a better me," he sings. As much as this record is part of his long campaign of rehabilitation, he struggles to convey a remotely sympathetic perspective. His similes tend to get terrestrial when he's talking about himself: "It's like you're stuck on a treadmill/ Running in the same place." On the title track, he sings, "Look at all the promises I've kept," as if gesturing to a PowerPoint presentation.
The second half of the album is monochromatic and depressing, especially as it runs out to 20 tracks in certain versions. (Two of the bonus tracks, "Been You" and "Get Used to It", are pneumatic, funky disco pop tracks that sound only slightly removed from this year's Jason Derulo album; they're better than nearly anything on the album proper.) Near the end of the album is "Children", an embarrassing and overwrought attempt at social consciousness. It might be an attempt at writing his own "Man in the Mirror", an outward gaze among so many shallow inward ones. "What about the children?" he asks meaninglessly. "Who's got the heart?" The question hangs uneasily.
