NOT SO YUMMY
Why does Justin Bieber’s ‘comeback’ feel so forced and desperate?
Justin Bieber’s transformation over the last several years into an irreverent bozo has been so thoroughgoing that it’s easy to forget he’s still an ordinary pop star. As such, he of course remains obliged to do ordinary pop star things, such as recording new albums, releasing new singles and participating in the usual headline-baiting rituals of a self-flattering promotional cycle.
But the gawky former child star who is now routinely found sporting dirtbag moustaches and the rumpled streetwear of a thirtysomething DJ from Williamsburg seems somewhat ill- suited to the conventional practices of publicity among mainstream major- label artists, even if they’ve faintly cleaned him up and framed the return as an extravagant comeback. It’s hard to imagine Bieber in a studio. He looks like he ought to be getting stoned in a Brooklyn loft.
It isn’t that Bieber is no longer capable of making interesting or successful music. He did so as recently as last spring: “I Don’t Care,” his buoyant, charming collaboration with Ed Sheeran, topped sales charts and broke streaming records when it was put out in March, and it remained one of the most enduring earworms of the year. But as lead standalone singles go, “Yummy” is not encouraging.
Limp and diaphanous, it’s the kind of bland, anonymous- sounding pop R& B we abandoned as a culture sometime in the early 2000s, vanishing from memory the moment it leaves the ear canal. The music video is even more nondescript, as Bieber improvises vaguely mischievous behaviour in a juvenile pantomime of fun that looks as if it were shot on a sound stage in Etobicoke over the course of a single afternoon.
This is hardly going to cut it for a comeback.
In the absence of a compelling lead single or intriguingly refurbished image, Bieber seems intent instead to stimulate interest in his return by way of social media. On Instagram, he’s been self- consciously teasing tabloid writers by blithely implying that his wife, Hailey Baldwin, may be pregnant. At the same time, and with whiplash- inducing speed, he’s been trying to fashion an image of himself falling from a self- designed unicycle into a Photoshoppable meme — as if to suggest he’s comfortable being ridiculed if it means people are talking about him. Most flagrantly, and therefore most desperately, he is endeavouring to popularize the “Yummy challenge,” a forced hashtag dance craze geared toward Tiktok — a promotional strategy of which he is not the first to see the potential, but one he so far hasn’t managed to pull off.
All of this is marked by the strained enthusiasm of a has- been, which is unusual given how recently Bieber had his name on a number- one hit. It was amusing, if alarming, to witness the once- speckless matinee idol devolve into the stream- roaming, insouciant adult hipster of the last few years. At least in this form the guy seemed happy and comfortable, living as a blasé multi- millionaire with nothing to prove.
Watching him attempt, meagrely, to pivot back to hackneyed pop superstardom feels so awkward in large part because it was nice to think he’d left the demands of that world behind. It’s not impossible to imagine someone who’s drifted this far from the mainstream being suddenly struck by creative inspiration — and if the artistic urge should overwhelm him, rush at once to the recording booth. But it doesn’t seem like he wanted to give music another go in earnest. It simply seems like he wanted a bit more fame.