Troubled Bieber makes it up to fans in short and sweet one-off gig
Justin Bieber
02 Indigo, London SE10
★★★★★
Justin Bieber’s life has always been something of a dark fairy tale – the story of a cherubic Canadian plucked from the wilderness to sing and dance, who grew up, got arrested and posed moodily in his underwear. Along the way, he kept pet monkeys, walked the streets barefoot and urinated in janitor’s buckets, only to find God, marry a supermodel and transcend culture-wide mockery to become one of the least shameful guilty pleasures. It’s a wonder that he’s survived it all, let alone that he’s still only 25.
It also means that merely seeing him alert and enthusiastic, just a few years after everything seemed to be going awry, is enough to carry even the least essential live events. His one-off gig at the O2 was a case in point. Announced less than a week before it happened, with tickets costing just £20, the “intimate London fan show” clocked in at under 35 minutes – leaving at least a few Beliebers loudly grumbling in the aftermath that they expected more. Considering that many said they had flown in from Europe especially for the night, such disappointment can be forgiven.
But, compared with the state of all things Bieber when he last touched down in Britain, this show was also something of a victory. Back in 2017, the star was in the throes of what appeared to be extreme exhaustion. A Manchester gig saw him storm off the stage after begging his audience to stop screaming at him, while he earlier ceased all fan meet-and-greets, writing on Instagram that they left him “drained and unhappy”. His final two months of shows in support of his last album were pulled altogether.
The Bieber who appeared on Tuesday night was different. There was still a shakiness to him, along with a quiet, mischievous energy that felt more like a wounded deer than a pop star. But he also seemed upbeat and grateful. Of the new tracks performed during the all-acoustic set, with Bieber backed up by two of his regular guitarists, the singles Yummy and Intentions were nicely raspy if lyrically inconsequential pleasures. Changes, the title track from his new album, felt more autobiographical. It was met with cries and awed gasps.
“Some days I move like water, some days I burn like fire,” Bieber sang, in one of the song’s ambiguous nods towards a series of recent declarations made in interviews and on his Instagram page – that he’s in recovery from drug addiction, and that he suffers from depression.
As abrupt as it was, this event was also largely endearing, a half-hour perfectly pitched between the genuinely warm and the sublimely ridiculous – the latter never better embodied than in the Channel 4 reality show contestant who clambered over a number of wailing fans to ask Bieber a question, only to be chastised by a security guard shortly after for putting lives at risk. Bieber may have changed, but everything else in his orbit has stayed very much the same.