Justin Bieber has released his new single, “What Do You Mean.” It’s already trending at the top of twitter, and the video has picked up just shy of half a million hits at press time. The star has also let the track loose upon the Spotify and Apple Music universes, ensuring its proliferation. There will be a live performance of the song at the VMAs to boot, as reported by Rolling Stone.
Is any of this interesting or news-worthy? Not particularly—not to me at least. But discounting the stats, there is something rather impactful about the music itself: it picks up where the (currently number one) remix of OMI’s “Cheerleader” left off, continuing to capitalize on our zeitgeist’s curious fascination with the intersection of the mellow and the danceable, the four-on-the-floor with the smooth.
In an article about "Cheerleader," I remarked on its Deep House bona fides—its “rounder baselines, the laidback hit of each downbeat, the climax subtly indicated,” as well as its “minimalistic drop, as opposed to the robotic caterwauling of something like dubstep.”
Those clauses fit in describing Bieber’s song as well; the two tracks share similar instrumentation: we have the soulful piano in the background, the wash of ride cymbals dropping out here and there. Synthetic pan flutes replace the trumpet counterpoint of “Cheerleader,” as does a tastefully auto-tuned, tastefully mixed vocal descant from the second chorus on. Indeed, the countermelodies provided by Bieber in these sections provide, at times, intervallic clashes that go pleasantly against the grain; they are jazzier than what we’re used to hearing—more soulful.
All of this comes as a bit of a departure for the architects behind this track: Bieber has tried on quite a few hats over the years—the teen pop of “Baby,” the middle of the road R’n’B of “Confident,” the jerky, more abrasive jitter of “As Long As You Love Me,” the standard four-on-the-floor noise of “Beauty and a Beat”—but rarely has his work felt as organically earned as it does in this song; in “Where Are U Now” Bieber allowed Diplo and Skrillex to take a piano ballad he had recorded and turn it into something refreshing for everyone involved. Sure, the track had its noisy moments, but compared to Skrillex’s Recess, it was positively muted. In retrospect, “Where Are U Now” feels like the logical antecedent to the single offered today, though more of the noise has been stripped away—more of the brittleness has been washed off, allowing for something rather pleasant to radiate.
Whether or not the track gets a lot of airplay or streaming spins is immaterial at this point; surely, based on the name involved, it will. What’s more interesting—at least to me—is how this song solidifies what OMI’s “Cheerleader” signified: a gradual sonic simmering in today’s pop music. Perhaps, in time, the radio will cease to sound like a jackhammer pushing outwards from inside our crania. With more songs like this, it might just be possible.
Correction: An earlier draft of this post incorrectly cited Skrillex as the producer of this song.
