#musicanalysis

Justin, Baby, What Are We Doing: On Star Power, Bad Management, and the Hallelujah of It All

Ok so, let me ramble a little bit.

So I'm watching the World Cup halftime show, buzzing because Justin Bieber is finally, finally performing on a stage that size again, and the set is doing exactly what a halftime set is supposed to do. Hype songs. Big lights. The kind of energy that makes strangers in a stadium jump in unison without being told to. And then, right in the middle of all that momentum, the show grinds to a stop for "Everything Hallelujah."

Not the Bieber song "Everything Hallelujah" as a peak. As a pause button.

I get the instinct. It's a song he owns outright, full stop, no label fine print attached, which for an artist who's spent his entire adult life fighting for ownership over his own name and catalogue is genuinely a big deal. I understand why he'd want the world watching him perform the one thing that's fully, unambiguously his. But here's the thing about instincts: they still have to survive contact with an audience, and a World Cup halftime crowd is not a room full of Beliebers who know every deep cut off Swag. It's casual viewers. It's people who came for a show, not a moment of quiet reflection sandwiched between bangers. Most of them didn't know the song. A lot of them still don't. So instead of landing as a statement, it landed as a mood killer, a record scratch in the middle of a set that had built real momentum, and then everyone had to claw their way back to the energy he'd already lost.

It went viral, sure. But going viral and going well are not the same thing, and I think somewhere in Justin's camp, someone mistook one for the other.

That's the whole problem in miniature, honestly. Not the song choice by itself. The instinct behind it. The idea that meaning something to Justin is the same as it working for an audience. That's not artistry, that's a scheduling error dressed up as a statement, and it's been happening over and over again since Swag dropped, if you've been paying attention.

Let's back up.

Swag was supposed to be the reset. It ended up being the wake-up call.

I've been a fan since I was nine years old. I am now in my twenties. I have sat through the entire arc, the "Baby" era, the "Sorry" era, the beard, the church small group phase, the Hailey era, the Justice tour, all of it, and I say this as someone who loves him, not someone circling for blood: Swag being his first album in about sixteen years to not hit number one is not a fluke. It's not "the algorithm" or "the industry being unfair to legacy artists." It's a data point. And when it's the first data point in a career that has otherwise been an unbroken commercial streak since he was a literal child, you don't get to wave it off. You have to actually look at it.

Because here's what's wild. The album itself wasn't the problem. Swag, sonically, is one of the more interesting things he's put out in years. It's loose, it's clearly personal, you can hear him actually enjoying making music again instead of performing a version of himself built for radio. That's a good thing. That's growth. The problem was never what he made. The problem is what happened to it after he made it, which is where his team comes in, and where I have to ask: does he even have a functioning team right now?

Swag II dropped significantly later than it was originally supposed to, and when your rollout timeline is that loose for an artist operating at his level, that's not an artistic choice, that's a logistics failure. Delays happen. Every artist deals with them. But delays compound. A late rollout on a comeback album doesn't just push a date on a calendar, it drains the exact momentum you need to actually launch a new era. You cannot build hype, let it go cold, and expect it to reignite itself on command. Hype has a shelf life. His team let it expire.

Will Bracey managed Fifth Harmony. Let that sit for a second.

If Will Bracey is genuinely running point on Justin Bieber's career right now, someone needs to explain the logic to me, because on paper it does not track. Fifth Harmony, as a commercial entity, did not come anywhere close to Bieber's tier. Not in chart performance, not in longevity, not in global reach, not in cultural footprint. I'm not dragging Fifth Harmony as artists, that's not the point. The point is management scale. You do not hand the wheel of a Ferrari to someone whose entire prior experience is parking sedans, and then act surprised when the car stalls out in traffic.

Scooter Braun, whatever else people want to say about him, and there is plenty to say, understood scale. He understood how to build Justin from a kid with a haircut and a YouTube channel into one of the most bankable pop stars alive. That doesn't mean the Scooter era was flawless, it very much was not, but there was a machine behind it that knew how to move at Bieber's level. What's happening now doesn't look like that. It looks like a team that's still operating with a mid-size playbook trying to steer an artist who needs a completely different one. And when the strategy doesn't match the scale of the star, you get exactly what we've watched happen over the last year: a late album, a broken streak, and a halftime show that couldn't read its own room.

I need Justin to actually look at who's around him right now and ask if they're built for where he's trying to go, or if they're just the people who happened to be available.

Here's the part that actually makes me want to shake him a little.

Justin doesn't want to do the theatrics anymore. He doesn't want the elaborate choreography, the tour spectacle, the performance of Justin Bieber the product. Fine. I get it. He grew up on a stage from the time he was thirteen, and I understand not wanting to keep giving pieces of yourself to a machine that already took most of your childhood. That's a completely reasonable thing to want to walk away from.

But here's what he's missing, and what his team should absolutely be telling him if they were doing their jobs: not wanting to perform like a teenager anymore doesn't mean the answer is to stop performing. It means the performance has to grow up with you. Michael Jackson didn't stop dancing as he aged, he refined it. Every tour got more precise, more controlled, more him. Beyoncé, who is a grown woman with kids and a business empire and every reason in the world to phone it in if she wanted to, still gives full, exhausting, career-defining performances, because she understands that the show is part of the art, not separate from it. Growth isn't subtraction. It's not "I used to give everything, now I give less." It's "I used to give a version built for a teenager, now I give a version built for a man." Those are different things, and right now Justin is treating them like the same thing.

And I won't pretend the double standard isn't sitting right there in plain sight either. Female artists who are Justin's age or older, at his level of fame, do not get to coast into a lower-effort era and call it authenticity. Beyoncé doesn't get that grace. Rihanna didn't get that grace during her own hiatus, and she got dragged for years for stepping back from music entirely, never mind a scaled-down version of it. If Justin Bieber quietly decides he's just going to perform less and expect the same career results, the industry and the fans will largely let him have that, because he's a man, and the assumption is that his talent alone should be enough to carry it. It shouldn't have to be that way for anyone, honestly, male or female. But since it clearly still is, he's benefiting from a leniency that a woman doing the exact same thing right now would never be given, and coasting on that leniency instead of pushing past it is its own kind of waste.

None of this is about him owing anyone a show.

I want to be really clear about something, because I don't want this read as me demanding he go back to being a product. He doesn't owe the industry a spectacle. He doesn't owe Instagram a comeback narrative. What I'm saying is different. I'm saying the raw material for a genuinely great next chapter of his career, one people will actually still be talking about in five years, is sitting right there, and it's being managed like an afterthought. That's the tragedy of it. It's not that Justin lost his talent or his relevance. It's that the machine around him doesn't know how to package a star who no longer wants to be handled like a product but still needs the packaging of one professional enough to match his level.

He has the voice. He has the songwriting instincts, Swag proved that. He has decades of built-in cultural equity that most artists would kill for. What he doesn't have right now is a team that knows how to take all of that and build a coherent, adult, still-electric version of Justin Bieber for the public to actually meet. Instead we get a song that means something to him personally, performed to a crowd that had never heard it, at exactly the wrong moment, on the biggest stage of the year. We get an album that slipped its own release date. We get a management structure that, from the outside, looks like it was built for a career a third the size of his.

Okay, let me put my degree to use for a second.

I have an honours degree in PR and marketing communications sitting in a drawer somewhere, mostly unused, but every so often a situation comes along that makes me feel like I owe the universe some actual application of it, and this is one of those situations. So indulge me.

If I were in the room, here's what I'd be telling that team. First, you do not build a comeback narrative around a delayed rollout. If Swag II wasn't ready, it wasn't ready, but you communicate that shift proactively, you control the story before the story controls you. Silence and slippage read as disorganization, and disorganization is the one thing an artist trying to prove he's matured cannot afford to project. Second, know your stage. A World Cup halftime show is not a listening party. It is not the venue for your most personal, ownership-driven deep cut. Save "Hallelujah" for a stripped-down performance, an awards show acoustic moment, something built for intimacy, and use the biggest stage of the year for the songs that will actually make the room detonate. Reading the room isn't a betrayal of the art. It's the job.

Third, and this is the big one: stop treating "mature era" and "low effort era" like they're interchangeable. A smart team builds him a performance identity that still delivers spectacle but on his terms, stripped of the theatrics he's outgrown but not stripped of ambition. Think what Bruno Mars does, full band energy, all charisma, zero teenage choreography leftover. Think what The Weeknd built, an entire visual mythology around restraint and mood that still reads as a massive show. There is a version of "grown Justin" that is still a can't-look-away performer. Nobody on his team seems to be building toward it. They seem to be building toward less, full stop, and calling it evolution.

That's the gap. Not talent. Strategy.

So here's the gut check.

Over sixteen years of number ones is not nothing, and losing that streak isn't a moral failing, but it is a signal, and signals exist to be read, not explained away. If the pattern continues, if the rollouts stay sloppy and the big stage moments keep missing the room and the team stays mismatched to the artist, this isn't going to correct itself. Career momentum doesn't just come back because you deserve it to. It comes back because someone builds the conditions for it to. Right now nobody around him seems to be doing that work, and eventually the audience stops waiting around for an era to click into place. That's not a threat, it's just how this industry has always worked, for every artist, no exceptions.

But. And this is the part I actually believe, not just the part I'm saying to be nice.

I've watched this man get written off before, during the Purpose era backlash, during the hiatus, during every single moment the internet decided he was done, and every time, the talent was still there underneath it, just waiting for someone smart enough to point it somewhere. Swag is proof it's still there. Messy rollout and all, that album is the sound of him actually enjoying himself again, and you cannot fake that.

So no, I don't think he's lost. I think he's surrounded by people who haven't caught up to who he's trying to become. Fix that, and this fixes itself fast.

Wake up, Justin. Look at your team. And somebody, please, save "Everything Hallelujah" for a smaller room or your own tour next time.

Thatorchia, a word that is yet to exist in the English dictionary, can be described as many things to each individual. What I connect the word to may differ vastly from what my mother, best friend or the random girl I met in the club bathroom feels.

Thatorchia is the 8th track on Ethel Cain's dark ambience album Perverts and is often undermined by its more palatable sister songs such as Punish & Amber Waves. Hayden(Ethel Cain) has described the meaning of the word to be:

"The bitter acceptance of the knowledge that god will let you near but he won’t let you stay"

To the individual, this may seem like a straightforward and somewhat understandable description however, as an avid fan of her work, I know that this reference to God is much more complicated and in-depth than one could guess. Hayden's work often looks into the darker sides of modern-day religion and the various traumas many suffer at the hands of religious figures. Acknowledging that an all-mighty and powerful deity that encapsulates a vast majority of Religion in the contemporary world would not typically be the saviour some people expect is what I see most from this definition. Why would a presence with a higher power and control over entire populations not have disdain towards a lesser being getting too close? The acceptance of this difference is when an interconnected relationship between god and humans is possible. Knowing that one will always be inferior and, in many ways, lesser. I do not and have never had a close relationship with any sort of deity described to me throughout adolescence and my young adult years, so I can not fully comprehend the misery some experience to truly come to terms with their "divine creator" and find complete faith.

Looking away from the metaphorical aspects of the song and rather into the production and soundscapes instead, there is much more to dive into. As mentioned before, the project Perverts is typically described as a dark ambient album with aspects such as drone sounds, haunting backing vocals, and constantly evolving soundscapes. Thatorchia, an instrumental track, was mentioned as the track Hayden was most excited for her fans to hear. This piece has not gained the traction it deserves, and that's all I can say with confidence. From the first listen, I was immediately hooked and understood the placement of this song on the EP. Previously, in Etienne, listeners were guided down a path of soft piano chords with an eerie yet comforting presence throughout. However, the second Thatorchia commences, you know that you are being pulled far from comfort and instead thrown into what only I can describe as an everlasting void lacking any sort of hope. The production reminds me a lot of a broken sort of sound that would arise from faulty air conditioning or a factory machine that hasn't been tended to for many years. This continued sound slowly adds layers that can be heard clearly as the song progresses. It almost feels as if adlibs were used but not of the vocal type and instead of the instrumental. This deep layering makes for a dark and sensual sound that, in addition to possibly scaring the listener, can act as an emotionally resonant sound. Finally, a soft vocal that slowly progresses into the main focus of the song builds. These vocals are not that of a lyrical nature and instead, to me, feel like a constant gasp for air with the prospect of demise quickly approaching. The despair heard in her voice continues to establish itself until a sudden drop in the already encapsulating instrumental occurs. This drop is what allowed this piece to quickly become one of my favourites due to its sudden switch. This switch can be recognised as the moment one finds oneself too far gone and could almost relate back to the idea of getting close to a God yet not being able to reach that same level of power.

Thatorchia, interpretive to many and highly haunting to most has established itself as one of the greatest instrumental tracks to come about in recent years and as an ambient music fan, this is no easy feat with artists such as Aphex Twin holding the top position for a long time.

i finished my first analysis practice exam! (and i didn’t do that well but there’s still time to improve) 

📝 muji b5 lined paper, pentel fude touch brush pen, pentel energel lrn 0.5, bic brite liner (orange) 

Let me ramble a little bit.

Okay, so walk with me. It was the asscrack of dawn, and I was out for a run listening to a rap song when I caught myself laughing out loud.

It wasn't a chuckle either but a real, head-turning laugh that made me rewind the line just to hear it land again. I think it was a bar from 2 Chainz. But anyway, the bar itself was not structured like a traditional joke. There was no deliberate setup followed by a tidy punchline. Yet something about the rhythm, the exaggeration and hilariously enough, the self-assured delivery made it hit with the precision of a stand-up routine. It did not announce itself as comedy, but it kind of behaved like it.

That moment lingered with me. A lot of us, in some way or form, are used to sorting art into categories that feel tidy and manageable. Music over here. Stand-up over there. Film, poetry, drama all in their own separate lanes. But hip-hop has always resisted that kind of neat shelving. Some of the sharpest lyricists in rap are working with instincts that would make seasoned comedians nod in quiet respect. Timing matters. Misdirection matters. Voice matters. The ability to observe the world and condense it into a line that makes people react on cue matters. Those are not exclusively musical skills. They are comedic ones too.

For Black History Month, that overlap feels especially worth sitting with. Black humor has never operated in isolation from storytelling. It has moved alongside critique, alongside cultural commentary, alongside resistance. Laughter has often arrived in spaces where conditions were anything but light. Rap inherits that tradition. It carries within it the same impulse to expose, to exaggerate, to reflect society back at itself with just enough twist to make people lean in closer.

You can see the connection most clearly in timing. Delivery is everything in both rap and stand-up. A simple sentence can fall flat or explode depending on how it is handled. A pause half a beat longer than expected can create anticipation. A sudden drop in tone can sharpen a line. A raised eyebrow on a stage or a shift in vocal cadence in a verse can transform language into something electric.

Think about how certain rappers stretch a syllable until it becomes playful, turning a boast into something knowingly theatrical. Or how a voice might shift mid-verse into a different character to underline absurdity. There are artists who lean into awkward self-awareness, who build entire moments around irony, who use their facial expressions in live performances to amplify a joke embedded in the lyric. The words alone might look straightforward on paper. The performance reshapes them.

That reshaping is where comedy has lived for decades and decades.

Exaggeration is another shared language. Comedy thrives on pushing reality just far enough that it becomes ridiculous while still recognizable. Rap has long relied on exaggeration as part of its DNA. Grand claims of success, power, desirability and dominance are staples of the genre. When done well, those claims become theatrical. Larger than life. Occasionally so audacious that the audience understands the wink built into them.

Braggadocio in hip-hop has often carried a playful edge. It is competitive, yes, but also clever. Wit can dismantle an opponent as effectively as aggression. A sharp bar can deflate someone in a way that feels both ruthless and funny. The audience responds to that dual impact. They admire the craft while reacting to the humor.

In today’s digital landscape, that dynamic accelerates. A funny line can move through the internet faster than a serious diss. No seriously, look at the Kendrick-Drake battle of '24 for references of both being true. It becomes a meme. It becomes a caption. It travels beyond the song itself. People replay it to catch the turn of phrase, to appreciate how the line folded in on itself. Humor builds replay value. It encourages participation. The listener becomes part of the joke by recognizing how it works.

This does not reduce rap to a series of gags. It highlights the intelligence embedded within its wit. The most memorable punchlines are rarely random. They are calculated, structured and delivered with intention.

Observation is another bridge between rap and comedy. Stand-up at its strongest pulls from the mundane details of everyday life. Social habits. Cultural contradictions. That awkward moment at a family gathering. The strange etiquette of public spaces. Comedians build entire careers on noticing what others overlook.

Many rappers are engaged in that same observational practice. They write about family group chats and side-eye at events. They dissect dating culture. They comment on performative activism and industry hypocrisy. They sketch vivid scenes from neighborhoods, parties, boardrooms and backseats. The beat may be heavy, but the impulse is similar. Notice something specific. Frame it just slightly off-center. Let the audience recognize themselves in it.

Often, the humor in these moments makes the commentary easier to digest. A listener might laugh at a line before realizing that it contains something sharper underneath. Black artists have long used this strategy. Humor creates an opening. It softens the doorframe just enough to let a critique slide through without immediate defensiveness. In periods where direct confrontation carried risk, wit provided another path forward. Hip-hop absorbed that instinct naturally.

Persona also ties these worlds together. Stand-up comics frequently perform heightened versions of themselves. The exaggerated skeptic. The loud storyteller. The hyper-observant critic. The absurdist who leans fully into chaos. The performance depends on the audience recognizing that what they are seeing is stylized.

Rappers do this constantly. The overconfident mogul. The calculated villain. The chaotic narrator. The blunt truth-teller. The humor often hinges on how convincingly that persona is embodied. A dry one-liner lands differently when delivered from within a character that the audience understands. A deliberately outrageous metaphor works because listeners know it is part of a crafted identity.

When the audience is in on that performance, the humor deepens. There is a shared awareness between artist and listener. The exaggeration is understood. The irony is felt. The line becomes a collaborative moment rather than a one-sided declaration.

Beyond performance technique, there is a cultural throughline worth acknowledging. Black creative traditions have long held space for laughter alongside hardship. Blues musicians laced sorrow with wit. Church culture balances solemnity with humor. Contemporary meme culture continues that pattern in digital form. Laughter has served as release, as resistance, as quiet defiance.

Hip-hop emerged from communities facing structural neglect and hostility. Comedy was already embedded in those spaces. I assume that that is also why comedians like Dave Chappelle love hip-hop and why hip-hop loves him right back. It surfaces naturally in the music. Sometimes the funniest bar on an album sits directly next to the bleakest. The contrast is intentional. Humor does not erase struggle. It provides oxygen within it.

Live shows make this especially visible. When a witty lyric hits, the crowd reacts instantly. Heads turn. People grin at strangers. There is a shared recognition in the room. That collective laugh builds connection. It transforms the performance into something communal.

In a culture where Black expression has frequently been surveilled and misinterpreted, humor can become a way to control tone and narrative. An artist decides how serious or playful a moment will be. The audience either understands the nuance or does not. That choice carries power.

The internet has only intensified these overlaps. Rappers now drop funny freestyles that circulate as widely as official singles. Comedians reference rap lyrics in sketches. Memes remix bars into punchlines that detach from their original context and take on new life. A sharp caption can resemble a one-liner as tightly structured as any stand-up joke.

Humor functions as currency in digital spaces. A funny bar moves fast. It gets clipped, quoted and reshaped. Sometimes it outlives the track itself. That does not mean rap is morphing into stand-up. It reflects an understanding that humor builds immediate connection in crowded spaces.

During Black History Month, it feels important to recognize this dimension of Black artistry. Conversations often center on struggle, achievement, statistics and milestones. Those narratives matter deeply. Yet Black creative legacy also includes joy, satire and playful brilliance. Rap and comedy have shaped language, fashion, politics and global culture in ways that extend far beyond entertainment.

Acknowledging the humor in rap means acknowledging its fullness. The genre holds protest and celebration at once. It holds tension and absurdity in the same breath. It can critique power structures while joking about everyday inconveniences. That range is part of its strength.

Sometimes a punchline inside a verse does more than entertain. It signals that the artist sees the absurdity of a situation and refuses to let it pass without commentary. It invites the listener into that recognition. The laugh becomes more than reaction at that point (at least for me it was). Then by some beautiful and small way, it also becomes participation one art while inviting the thought of another.

You hear the line. You smile. You replay it to understand how it was built. Or hell, even just to laugh again.

And then maybe you realize that what made you laugh was not random at all.