As executive producers, mentor Usher and manager Scooter Braun enlisted collaborators including Darkchild, Hit-Boy, Diplo and Max Martin with the intention of creating a mature-sounding project.
Upon its release, Believe received generally favorable reviews from music critics, who appreciated its progression from Bieber's earlier works.
According to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), Believe was the sixth best-selling album of 2012 worldwide, with sales of three million copies.
Follow-ups "As Long as You Love Me" and "Beauty and a Beat" performed moderately worldwide, and positioned within the top-ten of the aforementioned singles charts in the United States and Canada.
"Right Here" received little promotion, consequentially peaking in the lower end of the Billboard Hot 100, while the final single, "All Around the World", performed moderately in most markets.
On March 2, 2012, Bieber appeared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show to announce that the first single from his upcoming album would be called "Boyfriend".
Club, Believe is loaded up with "EDM accouterments, seeking a comfortable middle ground where Bieber's impressively refined Pop-Rnb croon can rub up on Techno blasts and garish Dubstep drops.
"[19] "Thought of You", a Diplo produced song, has a "falsetto-driven ode to living in the moment; [...] its bass thickening around a series of futuristic movements until ending, somehow appropriately, with a piano and a siren.
[24] Sarah Deen of Metro described it as a "frantic dance track",[23] while Rolling Stone's Jon Dolan called the song a "disco inferno".
[25] "One Love" has "space-age synths, watered down DnB beat and defiant lack of fluff make it a total mega-hit".
[26] The twelfth track, "Be Alright", according to Billboard is "a guitar ballad as a soothing lullaby, in which Bieber doesn't try to over-sing his basic love lyrics.
The first promotional single from the album, the Rodney Jerkins, Dennis Aganee Jenkins, Travis Sayles-produced "Die in Your Arms", was released to iTunes on May 29, 2012.
It was revealed during Bieber's interview with Fuse, that he collaborated with Lil Wayne on a song called "Backpack" that would be included on a "repackaged" version of the album.
[39] While BBC Music noted Bieber's ongoing "tween appeal,"[42] it also examined his gradual stylist evolution from his previous album.
[50] However, Slant Magazine criticized the production's need to "slice, dice, and Auto-Tune [Bieber's] notes into shape"[49] Entertainment Weekly praised the pop star's evolution, calling the album both a "reinvention and a reintroduction.
"[43] Rolling Stone noted the deeper voice and more intense beats found on the album, although it lampooned one of his euphemisms for newfound sexual maturity.
[48] The New York Times noted the difficulty Bieber faced in creating the album—a tension between his love of R&B and the profitability of pop music—while suggesting that his "savvy compromises" made the conflict manageable.
The New York Times review complained of certain songs where Bieber "sounded bored" and unlike himself, although other tracks were said to show him when he "leans on his instincts."
"[42] A large number of reviews compared Bieber to Justin Timberlake,[42][48][50][51] a once-teenage pop star who achieved great success during his evolution from teenage boy band member to young adult.
Billboard noted the singer's potential with future releases, pointing out "multiple songs that hint at what Bieber could become someday.
[56] In the following week, the album fell to number two selling 18,000 copies, behind Linkin Park's Living Things.
[60] In Brazil, the album was certified platinum by Associação Brasileira dos Produtores de Discos (ABPD) within three days of release.
[61] In November 2013, Universal Music México awarded Bieber with a triple platinum certification for sales of over 180,000 copies as well as over 300,000 digital tracks.