Listen: Justin Bieber makes a very refusable offer in 'Change Me'

By Mikael Wood

Dec. 2, 2013 12:02 PM PT

Last month, Justin Bieber recruited R. Kelly to help him sex up his sound with “PYD,” a steamy slow jam in which the teen-pop superstar provides a thorough accounting of the appliances and furniture pieces on which he plans to, er, romance a lady friend. (Kelly, meanwhile, reports that he’s “been doing forensics on your body in this club.”)

No such guest is billed on the latest installment in Bieber’s so-called Music Mondays series of online singles.

But with its stripped-down keyboard arrangement, tender falsetto vocals and words about redemption, “Change Me” sounds like it could be a collaboration with another R&B great: Brian McKnight.

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“If you’re ready then I’m waiting now to accept a little responsibility,” Bieber sings, referring perhaps to his recent string of tabloid troubles. “I’ll go out of my way to live by the words that you say.” Later in the song he insists, “I don’t wanna be the same,” before wondering if “you could be the light that opens up my eyes, make all my wrongs right.”

Handsome melody aside, Pop & Hiss wouldn’t necessarily advise anyone to take the singer up on this deal: After all, should he end up visiting another brothel or spray-painting another wall -- as we most assuredly want our pop stars to do -- the proposal here leaves Bieber the option of blaming a woman (rather than himself) for failing to correct his course.

Then again, who among us is to say what a course correction for Bieber might look like anyway?

Listen to “Change Me” below.