For the benefit of millions of screaming young fans, not to mention their ecstatic moms, let’s cut to the chase: What’s Justin Bieber really like?
The Stratford, Ont.-raised teen idol, with his meticulously forward-combed hair, is on the telephone from Atlanta. With the rasp of a typical 15-year-old, he is as polite as in his myriad TV appearances on everything from MuchMusic to The Ellen DeGeneres Show. There’s a constant rustle in the background; others in the room are distracting him. He apologizes and moves closer to the speakerphone.
Bieber is clearly still in the eager-to-please phase of his young career. If he has hit the wall of teen cynicism, it doesn’t show. There seems to be no brewing hubris, despite the fact that his debut album of tween-targeted pop, My World, recorded under the wing of his mentor and business partner, R&B singer Usher, has already gone platinum in the United States (a million copies sold) and Canada (100,000 copies) since its November release.
“Being famous was never in my mind,” he says. “Also, like, Stratford, Ontario … a little town of 30,000 in the middle of nowhere? It was something I didn’t think was possible. I owe everything to my fans and YouTube.”
He seems like merely an older version of the 12-year-old boy who belted out R&B tunes on homemade YouTube videos, which wound up attracting millions of viewers and ultimately got him his record deal. (To access those early videos, search YouTube under “Justin singing.” Searching with the words “Justin Bieber” will get you his more recent professional videos and TV spots.)
His single mom, Pattie Mallette, has said that she prayed for her son’s success. One YouTube clip shows Bieber and his mother in an early appearance on Full Circle, a weekly segment of the Christian TV program 100 Huntley Street.
Atlanta-based manager Scooter Braun had scouted Bieber after seeing his YouTube clips, and flew him down to meet Usher in 2008. Bieber auditioned for Usher, but also, as the teenager puts it, he simply hung out with the superstar to see how they gelled. “When I first met him, I had to sing for him, so that he knew what I was about,” Bieber says. “But we just talked. He got to know me a little bit. I got to know him. We watched a little bit of basketball. It was really low-key. It was fun.”
Justin Timberlake was also interested in Bieber and also met with him, but the young singer decided to sign with the man Billboard named last decade’s No. 1 Hot 100s Artist.
Bieber recalls this quickly, as if he has gone over it many times already. Our conversation falls in the middle of two hours of back-to-back phone interviews, which are in turn sandwiched between a doctor’s appointment and a rehearsal with Beiber’s full band and dancers. The next day he will fly off to Los Angeles to prepare for tomorrow’s Grammy Awards, where he’ll be a presenter.
That’s Bieber’s life now. When we talk, he has just returned from a publicity trip to Britain, where he was accompanied by his dad and a team of handlers. His parents are divorced, but Bieber is still close to his father, who lives in Winnipeg.
Since returning to Atlanta, the fledgling star has been sequestered in the studio, under orders (as one publicist put it) to work on My World Part II. That follow-up disc is due in late March, a mere five months after his debut album, following a time-honoured tactic from the dawn of pop music and teen acts: Get the merchandise out quickly.
