{"id":2157090,"date":"2025-11-14T19:13:32","date_gmt":"2025-11-14T19:13:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2157090"},"modified":"2025-11-14T19:13:32","modified_gmt":"2025-11-14T19:13:32","slug":"on-purpose-justin-bieber-confronted-a-strange-new-era","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/on-purpose-justin-bieber-confronted-a-strange-new-era\/","title":{"rendered":"On ‘Purpose,’ Justin Bieber Confronted a Strange New Era"},"content":{"rendered":"

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2015 was the most awkward year in pop\u2019s late-Obama-era moral reckoning, when male artists\u2019 attempts to function in a new world of moral accountability and altruistic misandry had turned into a sort of circus. I wonder if future critics will understand how deeply this post-\u201dBlurred Lines\u201d impulse went, brewing into the climate that produced pop\u2019s most auspicious album-as-apology, Justin Bieber\u2019s Purpose<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The story of Bieber\u2019s fall from grace was even more exhausting to live through than it was to tell: the egging of neighbors\u2019 houses, the wrapping cars around trees, the creepy entourage of enablers and celebrity Christians he was hanging with. The world expected a child-star flameout, and his struggle to balance his public life with PR scrutiny has never really gone away even through multiple comebacks and unexpected late-game wins; getting famous at that early an age frankly fucks with your brain. But by lassoing himself to the EDM-pop sound that producers like Diplo and Skrillex were brewing up, he was able to give his pop career a new lease on life while shedding the teenybopper image of his past.<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s strange in retrospect that Purpose<\/em> is now essentially early<\/em> Bieber. Still to come were the failed pivot to straight-up bathtub-&-roses R&B that produced the monstrosity \u201cYummy,\u201d not to mention his subsequent reinvention as a reliable Christian husband and nuclear-family proponent who will run to the altar like a track star, or his recent linkage with Dijon<\/a> and his already Bieber-like sideman Mk.gee.<\/p>\n

At the time Purpose<\/em> came out I was impressed by Bieber\u2019s poise\u2014the icy arch-diva manner that betrayed the androgyny he showed in his early years, back when he was the target of residual Bush-era clenched-assholism, even in spite of his attempt to present himself as a model of frat-boy perfection. \u201cI\u2019m not made out of steel,\u201d he sings on \u201cI\u2019ll Show You\u201d; the line works because it sounds like he is<\/em>. Ten years later, I hear Bieber trying to find a way to break through in a world where the public response to transgression was fierce and immediate, and to be a white Canadian R&B singer with a record of shitty and entitled behavior (not least that chainsaw joke) was a bad position in which to find yourself. Confronted with this strange new era, he\u2019s like a swallow knocking his head against the walls of an attic in terror.<\/p>\n

The nice thing about pop artists with a mean streak and something to prove is they tend to turn the knob up on their own music. You can hear this impulse on Michael Jackson\u2019s Dangerous<\/em>, released back when the worst of his scandals was buying the Elephant Man\u2019s bones; to counter his haters, he climbed into Teddy Riley\u2019s beats and wielded them like a mech to clobber anyone who dared to throw vitriol towards such a sensitive soul. (I\u2019d like to imagine Bieber\u2019s popcorn movie of choice around this time was Pacific Rim<\/em>, the emo Guillermo Del Toro epic where the feelings of the pilots came into violent conflict with their assigned monster-bashing duties.)<\/p>\n