Weepy Bieber seeks sympathy
Pop star’s mea culpa at VMAs latest part of comeback strategy
On Sunday night, Justin Bieber cried on live TV.
After performing a mash-up of two new songs — Where Are U Now and What Do You Mean — at the MTV Video Music Awards, the stage went dark. The singer, in what sounded like a pre-recorded voice-over, said something about making mistakes and life being a journey.
Then, he was hoisted over the crowd in a harness, arms spread wide in a gesture that could only signify resurrection. And after he descended, he cried. Bieber brought his hands up to his reddened face, crouched over, and let the tears stream out.
But were they real tears? And even if they were, were they sincere tears? The answers are, almost certainly, yes and no.
The 21-year-old Bieber is now eyeballs-deep in his own reinvention; the only thing left to do is actually release an album (due out in either September or November, depending on who you believe) and his theoretical, metamorphosis from teen pop star to Real Grown-Up Artist will be complete. And the constant throughout has been a consistent, almost grating, appeal for forgiveness. Crying onstage at the VMAs was perhaps the final step in Bieber’s magnificently orchestrated public humbling.
The pop star overhaul is a tradition as old as pop music, but never before — or at least not in recent memory — has a musician been so transparent about his desire for public redemption.
Since January, Justin Bieber hasn’t stopped saying he’s sorry. The Canadian singer is repeatedly asking us to forgive him his transgressions which, presumably, comprise the parts of 2014 he spent being charged for infractions ranging from impaired driving to vandalism.
Where once Bieber was a non-threatening moppet with a silly haircut making musical Pablum for tweenage girls, he was at that point in time a spoiled brat.
But there’s an album on the horizon, and so Bieber and his publicity cabal have gone into full-on assault mode, with their message being that the pint-sized pop star is sorry for being such a dink.
However, Bieber’s public self-flagellation — remember the Comedy Central roast apparently mounted at Bieber’s request — is insincere at best, and public relations at its most obvious.
The more thoughtful may glean the notion of a 21-yearold half-man who still hasn’t formed a full understanding of what it means to conduct oneself with grace and dignity, and as a result won’t stop complaining that people don’t like him enough.
The more cynical may simply see a ham-handed effort at damage control.
Still, crying at the VMAs, organizing his own roast, sitting in as a guest on Ellen for a week and performing on The Today Show every morning for five days straight (as he will do this month), doesn’t make Bieber a better person, it doesn’t gain him forgiveness for two years of acting like a complete moron and, most significantly, it doesn’t make anyone forget the saccharine, halfbaked music that marked his ascendancy.
But it does make for a compelling narrative to put him back in the spotlight. And who doesn’t love a comeback with a good backstory?
It helps that the music is good. Collaborating with Skrillex on Where Have U Been was a good start, and What Do You Mean is an excellent track on its own.
In 2007, Justin Timberlake completely overhauled his image as an artist with FutureSex/LoveSounds, which cemented the former ‘N Sync member as a pop force to be reckoned with — and introduced him as an artist whose appeal crossed genres as well as generations. It was with that album that Timberlake successfully pulled off what Bieber is trying to do.
It is possible that Justin Bieber’s critics will never take him seriously but it is possible that he could be taken seriously as a musician. Either way, the apology tour is a brilliantly hatched series of headlines. As obviously contrived as it may be, it shapes the narrative exactly the way Bieber’s team wants it to be shaped. Myth-making and all.
Even if no one is really buying it.