Even with a four-year musical hiatus, Justin Bieber is never saying never to music again. The Baby vocalist surprise-dropped his seventh studio album, Swag, on July 11 — meaning there were no promotions, teasers, or announcements whatsoever.
Swag saw slow but steady success. But the biggest disappointment for the prince of pop was when Swag debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 albums chart, finishing only behind Travis Scott’s JackBoys 2, ending his six-album streak of No. 1 debuts.
However, Bieber still had the best-streaming week of his career with Swag, grabbing 198.77 million streams per Luminate.
But Swag’s race for the top spot was far from over. Just recently, the album opened at No. 1 on the Top Streaming Albums chart this frame, per Forbes. This makes Swag Bieber’s first to reach the No. 1 spot on Billboard’s ranking of the most successful projects.
With Swag still climbing the charts, it seems that while the album was a surprise release, it came with indirect promotion.
The rumors of a new album started circulating when the Peaches singer posted a photo of himself in a musical setting earlier this year. Ever since, Bieber has dropped multiple hints suggesting a new album. Take, for example, earlier this year, he shared a cryptic Instagram story featuring a video snippet filmed from the back seat of a car.
The clip showed Justin driving alongside his wife, Hailey, as he subtly bopped his head to the beat. The post also featured emojis—a movie reel and a writing hand—and lyrics like “shaking off the hate” and “feeling sun on my skin”. It left fans connecting the dots.
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His pictures from the music studio started becoming visibly frequent, so much so that a fan commented, “king of constantly being in the studio and never releasing anything ever.”
However, this was not the only instance. His IG posts created the hype, too. The monochrome images of animals, random close-ups of birds, and objects made fans believe that new music was on the way.
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In one of his posts from earlier this year, a fan wrote, “Looking forward to hearing THIS collab!”
Another commented, “Cant Wait For a NEW MUSIIIC”, while a third said, “I can see it now. *JUSTIN BIEBER ERAS TOUR 2025*.”
“We are so ready for this album,” a fan wrote on a separate IG post featuring him in the studio.
Most of his posts had comments from fans who speculated that new music is not too far away.
In short, the two-time Grammy winner left fans puzzled with his ‘weird’ IG posts, which also featured an awkwardly close-up shot of his nipp*e.
To top it all, his posting frequency, too, significantly increased, especially in June. This makes more sense now, as Swag was released in July.
“I love refreshing my feed and he’s the first thing that pops up,” a user commented. Another user pointed out, “So many posts lately, i love it”.
Then, out of nowhere, Bieber changed his IG name to lilbieber from justinbieber.
This further intrigued the fans, who started piecing the clues together, as it came without a warning.
Hence, it won’t be wrong to say that with all this increased IG activity all this while, Bieber might have been setting the stage for Swag.
While his posts definitely left his fans scratching their heads, people also started worrying about Bieber’s well-being.
One user asked, “Are you ok?”, while another commented, “Whats wrong with u?”
A third wrote, “You look like you need help bro”.
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Amidst all this, the news of a big relationship drama continued to make headlines. Reports suggested that Bieber and Hailey were having an allegedly troubled marriage and might be thinking of separation. And suddenly, in between all this, Bieber, who was extremely active on IG, stopped posting Hailey on his page.
The Rhode founder, time and again, dismissed the rumors by calling Bieber an ‘extraordinary’ father, ‘a natural’, and ‘seeing her as a goddess, a superhero’.
But a source close to US Weekly revealed “things aren’t great right now” and that Justin’s erratic behavior is causing “a lot of stress” for Hailey.
Another source said, “Things have been very tense in the last month. Hailey’s worried about Justin, especially with a [baby at home]. He hasn’t been down like this in quite some time, so there’s concern.”
Their relationship did seem to be a roller coaster ride, but sources insist that neither of them is willing to give up. “They’ll do anything to make it work,” the second source said.
“They don’t talk about divorce,” the first source said. The second source added that the chances of them splitting “are very slim, especially because of their faith.”
But Hailey made at least two appearances on Bieber’s IG in June, again at a time which was close to his album release. With one photo taken at a family lakeside getaway.
Then on July 7, Bieber posted a photo in which he was seen hugging a woman, whose face was not visible to the camera. Speculations went wild, and people questioned who the lady was in the photo.
A fan commented, “Is it me or the girl doesn’t look like Hailey?”. Another one wrote, “That doesn’t looks (sic) like Hailey??? Wth is that?.”
A third said, “That most definitely is not Hailey yall,” followed by another one who commented, “Who is that? Not Hailey that’s for sure.”
Some even noticed the fact that Bieber didn’t tag Hailey in the picture but mentioned his brand SKYLRK.
Another user wrote, “Why did he tag his own brand instead of Hailey’s IG? lol.”
In July, Hailey made quite a few appearances on the Sorry hitmaker’s IG page, but it was only after the release of Swag, Bieber went all out in posting Hailey.
The singer was seen locking lips with his wife at a star-studded listening party for the album. In fact, the couple couldn’t keep their hands away from each other as Bieber was also seen hugging Hailey in other photos.
Now, while all this could be a mere coincidence, one thing is certain: Bieber was never quite away from the limelight. As one knows, “out of sight is out of mind”.
So, while the One Time singer kept making news for more than one reason, his album was in the works all this time. But Bieber didn’t even, for once, clear the rumors, nor did he let them die.
This makes it clear that while there were no direct promotions for Swag, Bieber did do some indirect promotions, whether intentionally or unintentionally, by keeping himself in the news and then surprise-dropping Swag for all of it to make sense.