Justin Bieber walked away from the recent announcement of Grammy nominations with four more nods than the average musician. However, the one-time teen idol was upset with the three pop-related nominations he recieved for tracks off of his album Changes. His reasoning? He intended his latest release to be appreciated as R&B.
In a post to Instagram, Justin Bieber thanked the Recording Academy for the recognition, but railed against his nominations in pop categories and claimed that his music had been misconstrued.
"I set out to make an R&B album," Bieber said. "Changes was and is an R&B album. It is not being acknowledged as an R&B album which is very strange to me."
Bieber went on to say that he grew up admiring R&B music and hoped to celebrate that on this new album. This makes quite a bit of sense, as even early coverage of Bieber noted his love of Stevie Wonder and Usher (the latter of which promoted Bieber early on in his career). He said the structure of the songs and the chords and melodies used were all R&B, bristling at his nominations for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance ("Intentions"), Best Pop Solo Performance ("Yummy") and Best Pop Vocal Album. Outside of those categories, Bieber was also nominated in a Country category for his duet with Dan + Shay "10,000 Hours."
"To be clear I absolutely love pop music it just wasn't what I set out to make this time around," he said. "My gratitude for feeling respected for my work remains and I am honored to be nominated either way."
