With a little help from his friends
Bieber’s musical renaissance
It wasn’t so long ago that we talked about Justin Bieber as a future Dr. Drew patient.
The pop sensation from Stratford, Ont., was making headline after headline, not for his music but for a knack for getting in trouble.
From run-ins with the paparazzi, to causing mayhem in expensive cars, to very public flings disintegrating, to what was inside his Calvin Kleins, Bieber was on a seemingly never-ending spiral into oblivion.
Yet the focus on Bieber in 2016 — aside from all the chatter about his junk earlier this year — has been almost solely about his album Purpose, released last November, and his current tour.
With Purpose, Bieber is making amends — with himself, with his friends, with the public, and with his fans.
Boasting three consecutive No. 1 singles (a first for Bieber), Purpose has rejuvenated the 22-year-old. Manager Scooter Braun’s prodigy has reversed the trend and reinvented himself, and he has done so in style.
Far from taking anything away from the Biebs, it’s impossible to examine the journey that led to Purpose without looking at some of the key players that made the album and Bieber’s reinvention a reality.
JASON (POO BEAR) BOYD
A native of Connecticut, producer Jason Boyd is no stranger to starting from scratch. At the age of nine, Boyd and his family lost everything in a tornado, forcing them to move to Atlanta.
Boyd was introduced to Bieber via de facto sensei Usher, with whom Boyd had collaborated on 2004’s diamond-certified album Confessions.
Boyd ended up working with Bieber for 2013’s Journals at a time when Bieber was seen as a declining star. Boyd also co-wrote Bieber’s comeback single Where Are U Now with Skrillex and Diplo’s Jack U, and was a key collaborator on Purpose.
“(Journals) was a trying time but we made it through, and he definitely matured, which leads us to this new album,” Boyd told Rolling Stone last September. “It’s incredible. And if I had to compare it to something, not the sound of it but the impact and amount of songs that are undeniable, I would have to compare it to (Michael Jackson’s) Thriller.”
SKRILLEX AND DIPLO
Without electronic powerhouse duo Skrillex and Diplo’s input in reshaping one of Bieber’s songs, the Biebs would be in a much different position than he is now. Originally entitled The Most, Where Are U Now (released on the duo’s Jack U album) was originally a piano ballad.
Where Are U Now was a surprise hit even to Bieber’s detractors and harshest critics, who couldn’t deny the impact of the dance-driven song. Even notoriously caustic website Pitchfork fell in love with the track.
“The track is unexpected in all the best ways,” wrote Pitchfork critic Ryan Dombal. “It tones down everything you know about Skrillex while retaining his knack for dynamics. Diplo puts his own 10-ton-glowstick tendencies aside as the song combines sharp dance hall stabs and a gloriously sad Eastern melody in a way that recalls golden-age Timbaland. And Justin Bieber sings with something akin to actual human emotion.”
The original version of The Most is available as a bonus track on some editions of Purpose.
KANYE WEST
In March 2015, Bieber told USA Today he was working with notorious rapper and producer Kanye West (long before West would irk and awe the world with his forever-unfinished opus The Life of Pablo).
“Out of anyone in the industry who is creative, he really gets me,” Bieber told U.K. magazine NME in November. “His advice is always just, ‘Make music that’s so good people can’t hate on it.’ ” While the collaboration with West — which would have also involved producer Rick Rubin — never yielded any material, the collaboration between the two artists was a positive for Bieber.
“I didn’t wanna bore him or waste his time. So I was like, ‘Can I play you these songs?’ and he was like, ‘I wanna hear everything.’ To hear him say that, it just showed that he cared.”
SELENA GOMEZ
Bieber’s tumultuous and highly publicized relationship with pop star Selena Gomez played a big part in both Bieber’s trials and tribulations in 2013 and 2014, and his rebirth in late 2015.
Gomez penned her own Bieber-inspired song The Heart Wants What It Wants. Many of the songs on Purpose reflect what happened between them, none more clearly than hit single Sorry, where Bieber sings, “Yeah I know that I let you down/Is it too late to say I’m sorry now?” “A lot of my inspiration comes from her,” Bieber told radio host Ryan Seacrest. “It was a long relationship, and a relationship that created heartbreak and created happiness, and a lot of different emotions that I wanted to write about. So there’s a lot of that on this album.
“I want people to know that I’m not playing around,” he added. “I’m not doing a record that is cookie cutter or doing something that I think people want to hear. I’ve been pretty silent about what I’ve been going through and just growing up in this life is hard, so I want to translate that.”