“No-one’s ever been this young and this famous before.”
Strong and frankly terrifying words there from Justin Bieber’s manager and right-hand man Scooter Braun, interviewed for the June cover story of Forbes magazine. Detailing the jaw-dropping level of the pop prodigy’s success across album sales (15 million and counting), tour gross figures ($150 million) and movie box office stats (another $100 million), the piece dubbed him the third most powerful celebrity on the planet. Remember now, the boy just turned 18.
If anyone was still in doubt about Bieber’s entirely revolutionary brand of fame, they’ll have been silenced this week by an irate fan known only as Amanda Bieber, who has, in a matter of days, become more famous than half of the faces in the Daily Mail showbiz section. The 13-year-old provocateur became an overnight not-quite-sensation, thanks to outrageous Twitter comments like, ‘Jesus wishes he was Bieber’, ‘Michael Jackson died because he couldn’t handle Justin’s swag’, and my own personal favourite, ‘Justin Bieber is much bigger than Kurt Cobain, so shut up. Did Kurt Cobain ever have the biggest fanbase on Twitter? No’.
In a way, the crazed Bieber junkie has a point. While angry tweeters were quick to defend the deceased targets of Amanda’s diatribe (Freddie Mercury, Jackson and Cobain), there was one thing they couldn’t deny; the little pipsqueak has done something that no other artist has. Strapping young men have been forging pop careers out of sparkly teeth, shiny hair and boyish dimples for decades, but Bieber’s the only one to build an empire almost entirely through social media.
What I’m trying to say here, is that Believe, Bieber’s second album (if you don’t count his unfortunate holiday effort Under The Mistletoe, which I don’t) is rather a big deal. As of March 1, the Ontario boy can officially smoke, drink and take his pop star girlfriend Selena Gomez to a sordid sex club if he so chooses (on this side of the pond at least). The teeth-and-dimples approach worked wonderfully on debut My World, but it’s time for something a little more grown-up, and with the fan equivalent of the population of Spain hanging on his every note, he can take that sound anywhere he damn well pleases.
For a great deal of Believe, including lead single ‘Boyfriend’, that place appears to be Justin Timberlake’s penthouse. The low-riding R&B from JT’s first record crops up on several tracks, including skyscraping floor filler ‘Thought Of You’, while the N*Sync man’s clubbier years are reflected in the cosmic bleeps of ‘Take You Away’ and the throbbing vocal distortion on ‘As Long As You Love Me’.
Not that Bieber draws exclusively from noughties idols. The pint-sized Casanova trades hip thrusts for fist clenches on the ‘Earth Song’-esque title track, which he’s already called out as having an “old MJ throwback feel”. Bonus track ‘Maria’, a news report-sampling jibe at the woman who claimed he fathered her child, is a fairly passable attempt at ‘Billie Jean 2.0’, and a tragic omission from the original tracklisting.
Bizzarely enough, Bieber comes off all Donny Osmond on ‘Die In Your Arms’, although females in their 50s will be somewhat conflicted to hear him raise an almost-audible eyebrow as he seductively pines, “Ooh, baby/ I know loving you ain’t easy/ It sure is worth a try”. With all this unquenchable confidence darting around, one wonders why the need for guest spots from hip hop heavies Ludacris, Drake and Nicki Minaj, except perhaps to prove that Bieber sometimes hangs out with people over the age of 21.
While Believe is undoubtedly a more mature step for the baby-faced Don Juan, all the teen idol boxes are still carefully ticked: the he’s-just-like-us box (“All around the world, people want to be loved, they’re no different from us”); the I-could-have-a-chance-with-him box (“You’re beautiful, beautiful/ You should know it”); and the crucial he’s-into-foreigners box (“Hey baby, I love your accent-cent-cent/ I think I like you more because you’re different-ferent-ferent-ferent”). There are clever moments musically, too, like disco fairytale ‘Beauty & The Beat’, but not quite enough to make a 24-year-old like myself feel secure about putting the whole album on my iPod.
But back to Amanda Bieber, who obnoxiously declared that, “If you think any album by Michael Jackson is better than Believe, you’re delusional.” I’m sorry to have to tell you this, young lady, but you’re spectacularly wrong. Although, in all fairness, there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that your future husband could one day reach that level.