Today, the four-year drought of new Justin Bieber music finally came to an end, and I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m a happy bitch. I’ve openly lamented the lack of new music from both Justin and Selena Gomez in the last few years, and in 2020, we’re finally eating good. After a couple of shady AF singles, Selena’s album comes out next Friday, but today, we need to discuss Justin Bieber’s new song, “Yummy.” It’s a little weird and more than a little cringey, but for now, I will take what I can get.
While we were all busy avoiding our families over the holidays, Justin dropped the major announcement that in 2020, he’ll be putting out both an album and a YouTube documentary series, and going on tour. After spending a couple years barely in the spotlight, it’s going to be a huge year for Justin, and it all starts today, with the release of “Yummy.” Justin obviously knows this is an important moment, and he’s been hyping it up on Instagram like a club promoter who’s going to lose his job if ladies night isn’t packed this week. Seriously, what the f*ck is this feed?
If this Instagram behavior continues, Justin is going to be muted so hard. But I guess the tactic worked, because here we are talking about “Yummy.” First, I just have to say how much I hate the word yummy. It’s right up there with “moist” and “panties” on the list of words that make my skin crawl. I’ve already typed it four times in this article, and I’m ready to jump in the shower. But I’m out here doing the lord’s work for the people.
The song wasn’t technically announced until last week, but it turns out Justin was actually dropping hints about it back in October. He posted this doodle of the Y-word, with a caption that turned out to be a lyric from the song (we’ll get to the lyrics in a minute, because yikes). This was also around the time that Justin posted that if one of his photos got 20 million likes, he would release an album before Christmas. Despite many of his famous friends sharing the post, it stalled out around 11 million, which is just so beautifully embarrassing. The post was ultimately deleted to destroy the evidence, and obviously there was no album before Christmas. I love mess.
So yeah, let’s talk about the song. It’s predictably catchy, with velvety synths and a smooth-trap vibe that’s essentially what I expected. It might not be a forever-banger like “Sorry,” but that’s clearly not what Justin was going for here. That was Party Justin, but this is Baby-making Justin. Basically, the whole song is just him being horny for Hailey, and truly nobody asked for this.
Look, I believe that Justin and Hailey love each other, but I’m not confident that their sex life is actually very exciting. The whole “yummy-yummy yummy yum” chorus bit sounds like someone who wants to try dirty talk for the first time, but has absolutely no clue what to say. In my personal life, this is usually when I would just tell a man to be quiet, but unfortunately for all of us, the song does not end there.
Here’s the first verse, which is somehow only three lines long, but will haunt me for a lifetime: “Bonafide stallion, It ain’t no stable, no, you stay on the run. Ain’t on the side, you’re number one.” Let me be the first to say that I never, ever needed to hear Justin Bieber refer to himself as a “bonafide stallion.” Like, f*cking ew, Justin. But wait, is he referring to himself? It’s super unclear, because the other two lines are clearly talking about Hailey. I should point out that technically a stallion can only be a male horse, but I don’t feel confident that Justin knows that. So Justin might be the stallion, but the structure of the lyrics kinda makes it seem like she is, which also doesn’t really work. Clearly, I’m putting way more thought into this than Justin did, so let’s move on. The other two lines are a reference to how he’s monogamous with Hailey, and he doesn’t have any other women in his ~stable~, and can we just stop with the horse metaphors? Hailey already has powerful horse girl energy, and this isn’t helping.
Moving on from the horse stuff, we get to the pre-chorus, which contains easily the most upsetting line of the song. After talking about spending a ton of money and saying the words “get litty” because he’s a 16-year-old boy, he subjects us to this: “Rollin’ eyes back in my head, make my toes curl, yeah, yeah.” F*CKING EW, JUSTIN. I take back everything I said about the horse metaphors, please, can we do more of those instead?
I’m no prude, but there is truly nothing in this world that I want to picture less than the dumb face that Justin makes while he’s having vanilla-ass sex with his wife. And don’t @ me, because you KNOW the sex is vanilla. No judgment, but they are not getting into anything kinky when the Lord is watching. Glad missionary position can make your toes curl, Justin! From there, the lyrics are pretty boring. Justin name drops his Lambo and his clothing line, Drew, and says “elated that you are my lady,” which feels deeply unromantic, but whatever works for them, I guess.
Overall, “Yummy” feels like kind of a weak comeback effort. Sure, it’s catchy, but how catchy is it really when I can’t even sing the chorus out loud without wanting to peel off my skin? What makes it worse is that we know Justin can do so much better. I will say, this is the perfect song to put on a Spotify playlist to have on in the background, because it really falls apart the second you try to listen to the lyrics. I’m still excited to see what else Justin comes out with this year, but I can’t deny that I was hoping for more from the first song. Oh well, at least we know Justin and Hailey are getting it in.
Images: justinbieber / Instagram (2); Giphy
