The War on Justin Bieber
As long as you can remember, you have been a music lover. Though your tastes have always been somewhat eclectic, you have always had a soft spot in your heart for independent singer-songwriters that combine technical proficiency with thoughtful and original lyrics. You’ve even got your school’s principal to agree to let you and your best friend Andy start an after-school music appreciation club, so that you can find others that share your passion and together spread the message of great music to all of your peers.
The club has been a smashing success, and if you do say so yourself, the quality of CDs purchased by your classmates has improved thanks to your leadership. You arrive at this week’s New Music Appreciation Club excited, having discovered some great new artists you think will really set the school on fire. You are a little irked when the meeting is sidetracked. Half of the members are really excited by a new young singer, backed by the Disney corporation, that is just about to release his first album. At first you think it’s some kind of dirty joke you don’t quite get, but soon you realize this new upstart’s name isn’t Justin Beaver, it’s Justin Bieber. But still you remain dubious. This is a guy who’s backed by Disney?
The girl’s in the club seem to be the most excited. They find him dreamy, which annoys you. What should beautiful eyes and skin have to do with making good music? Worse, this Bieber character is billing himself as a new kind of fresh artist, that will deliver a new sound no one has ever heard before; he also promises to fight against “the Man,” and will be more of an indy guy than a corporate tool. This is clearly a lie – the boy works for Disney for God’s sake! But you know that your message of quality music will win the day in the long run, and that no one will end up buying any of this Bieber joker’s albums. When the album is released, however, you are horrified to see that it shatters sales records, and Justin Bieber becomes a worshiped icon by most of your school’s students. You cannot put into words how much this bugs you – everything you have worked for, wiped clean by this corporate weasel! Andy at least sees through Bieber as clearly as you do, and you each make a pact to make Bieber a historical footnote by the time his next album is released.
You and Andy begin gathering allies. It’s easier than you thought it might be. For one thing, there are a lot of guys that are a little jealous of the girl’s swooning, and you discover they hate Bieber as much as you do. But there are also some girls who are indy lovers, and they hate Bieber as well. Within a few short weeks, the school is divided fairly evenly between those that think Bieber is the Devil, and those that believe Bieber to be the heir to Elvis and the Beatles. After a while, each side begins to call each other names that would surely get them sent to the principal’s office, were they overheard by a teacher. You and Andy decide that Bieber lovers have no place in the New Music Appreciation Club, and you kick them out.
One evening while surfing the internet, you are delighted to discover that there are actually websites and blogs dedicated to trashing Justin Bieber. Each links to yet another, and before too long you are a regular on many of them. As you begin to talk to more of your new internet friends, you begin to discover that the truth about Justin Bieber is far more insidious than you had even imagined. For example, most of the site’s members talk about how Bieber’s vocal range is due to his lacking normal testosterone levels, because Justin Bieber is a hermaphrodite! Worse, some people have found old photos and video tape that show that Bieber has associated with Britney Spears, Lindsey Lohan and Phil Spector. The last is the worst, as many of the blogs you read begin to put the pieces together and deduce that it was Bieber actually murdered that woman, and Disney forced Spector to take the rap. The more you learn about these conspiracies, the more furious you become with the so-called “mainstream media.” Why is Rolling Stone not reporting on the obvious fact that Bieber is a murderer? Why won’t Tiger Beat demand that Bieber’s parents release his birth certificate to prove that he’s not a hermaphrodite? There’s only one reason, and it’s obvious – the mainstream media is in on the conspiracy, and all are obviously hiding things.
On the blogs you read, you discover that there are new recording artists that speak out about how much they hate Bieber. After a while, you become convinced that part of what makes a new artist great is the degree to which he or she hates Justin Bieber. You begin to trash some recording artists that you used to love, because they selfishly focus on their own material and refuse to make albums that speak out against Bieber or the Disney Corporation. You decide that the mission of the New Music Appreciation Club is no longer to find fresh new independent artists, but to promote anti-Bieber artists. Because of this, you find that you begin backing crappy artists that, truth be told, sound exactly like Bieber, but are backed by Disney-rival Dreamworks.
You begin to pass out flyers at school, letting people know that Bieber’s sexual nature is in question, and warning all that your school paper is in the pocket of the likes of Michael Eisner or George Soros, since it insists on only “reporting” on trivial matters such as the football team’s record, or the drama club’s production of You Can’t Take It With You opening this week. While you are buoyed by the fact that your inner circle is behind you 100%, you are bitterly aware that many students are laughing at you and your flyers. But the worst is yet to come.
Andy comes to your house one evening, and suggests that maybe you’ve all gotten a little carried away with Justin Bieber. He says that while he doesn’t like Bieber any more than you do, he’s not really sure that Bieber is a hermaphrodite, or that he is the anti-Christ. It might be better, he says, if the New Music Appreciation Club goes back to focusing on great new artists that everyone can enjoy. A lot of people are starting to think the New Music Appreciation Club is a joke, he claims, and what’s worse people are starting to defend Bieber. Not because his music is great or original, but because you’re making them want to by acting kind of crazy. Can’t we, he asks, just start over and listen to some good bands?
You realize now, for the first time, that Andy is a traitor, and has been working for Disney and the Bieber team all along. You toss him unceremoniously out of the New Music Appreciation Club and tell all your remaining allies to never speak to him again. Andy goes off on his own, and tries to start a new club that focuses less on hating Bieber and more on finding new independent artists that kids might like. Both camps, the pro-Bieber and the anti-Bieber, conclude that Andy is not only a spineless toady, but the worst human being ever.
After that, you step up your efforts. You begin to closely read Tiger Beat articles about Bieber, noting his likes and dislikes so that you can tell kids to have diametrically opposed viewpoints. Justin says in one article that he watches How I Met Your Mother; the New Music Appreciation Club puts up flyers declaring How I Met Your Mother is not only drivel, but a threat to the school itself. At one point Justin confesses he hates oranges, and so you go on a huge pro-orange campaign, buying oranges and handing them out to kids for free. Later it turns out that was a misquote – Justin loves oranges. You push hard for the school to adopt a no-citrus in the cafeteria policy.
You realize that Bieber is something so new and so hideous that the only hope for the school’s very survival is to make sure that no one buys his next album. Sure, some people point out that Bieber actually kind of sounds exactly like all the pop starts that came before him, and that the new Dreamwork’s guys you’re pushing sound exactly like Bieber. But that’s just because they’re sheep. They can’t see the big picture.
And so you wait, wracked with anger and true fear, praying to God that when the next Justin Bieber album comes out in late 2012, no one will buy it. You pray hard.
The very fate of your school is at stake.
________________________________________
To me, this is what the past three and a half years have felt like.
And while I confess that the anti-Justin Bieber crowd has been amusing to watch, it’s been frustrating. Because at the end of the day, there’s nothing really original about Justin’s music. It’s basically the exact same as the big Pop Idol that we made #1 before him. Maybe that’s just the nature of Pop Music. But things had gotten so bad with the genre the previous decade that it would have been nice to at least try to make Justin attempt something edgier, with more substance than he was making. We’ll never know, but I have the feeling if complaints about Bieber hadn’t been of the “he’s a hermaphrodite” sort that we might have gotten all the kids at school to demand something better of him. He’s a recording artist that cares about record sales, after all, so he might have been willing to make a better record. Now we’ll never know.
And worst of all, now we’re stuck with this version of Justin Bieber, and most likely will be for another four years.
I know this is really a post about Obama, but I’m too tired to be serious right now. I just want to say – how can people hate Justin Bieber?! He’s so cute, and harmless.Report
Beats me. He seems like a nice kid. (I think a couple of year ago my 12 year old son hated him just because girls he had crushes on had crushes on Justin.)Report
Tod, my son hates him for precisely the same reason.Report
I think sonmi is right — this isn’t really about Justin Bieber. It’s got to be about Obama.Report
Obama is the creature of his handlers, too. I can’t think of one candidate for higher office who isn’t. Boy howdy, America projected all sorts of Boy Band nonsense onto Obama’s blank slate.Report
No, I’m pretty sure it’s about Bieber.
It’s also worth noting that about 25% of the schoolkids will always hate Bieber and are always ready to hate anyone like Bieber.Report
Obviously not, since Tod talked about four more years of this. Pftttt. Everyone knows Justin will have a much loooonger career than that! Forty years at least.Report
Hah! Now we whose side you’re really on.Report
See, it is about Obama!Report
Bieber is pro-life. He can’t be a metaphor for Obama.Report
Obama? Who’s Obama?Report
Ah Bieber, yet another Canadian plot to destroy America. *tents fingers, pets Jaybirds cats*Report
AB was a boy who lived on our station in Nigeria. A tall boy of extraordinary beauty, a shock of blonde hair and angular features, gentle and kindly, there wasn’t a girl alive who didn’t clap her hand to her mouth upon sight of him. He played basketball, ran track, no wimp he, nor yet effeminate, just the nicest kid you’d ever want to meet and my parents would unfairly compare me to him. We have been good friends since we were about nine years old and I’ve always been slightly in awe of him. I was the musician and he was the jock and we competed on grades and in track.
Life goes on and my Dad moved us around from place to place, ending up in Wheaton. AB’s family lived on the next block over and we went to the same private school. Simply couldn’t escape him. And once again, my parents compared me to him. Tried not to let it affect our friendship. His mother took a shine to me, easily the wisest and loveliest woman of her age I’ve ever seen. I took her into my confidence but never told her about the rivalry with AB, one I felt I’d been pushed into since we’d first met.
AB and I ended up at the same college. Missionaries move in large circles but they often move together. After two years, I developed a terror of ending up a clone of my father, just another tweedy type destined to be either a professor or a pastor. I dropped out of college and joined the US Army.
Years later, I was sitting in AB’s living room in Wheaton. I suddenly burst out and told him everything. He stared at me in astonishment, his eyes narrowing, growing ever more tense. He put down his beer, leaned forward and quietly snarled “And for all these years, my parents have been comparing me to you.”
Justin Bieber is just a boy who became a YouTube sensation. I’m pretty sure I could deal with great fortune: I’ve learned how money works and know better than to think I could manage it alone. But fame is a great curse and beauty is a great deceiver. Who is Justin Bieber, really? He’s the creation of his handlers, his A&R guys, his publicist, his lawyers, his producers. They pair him up with Ne-yo and Timberlake and Stevie Wonder, who useta be Little Stevie Wonder back in the day.
Hate him or love him, admire him or despise him, we do not know Justin Bieber, as I did not really understand AB, though I’d known him all my life and struggled to be as good as he was. If boys hate him, there were jealous boys who didn’t like AB either. I know, I was one of them. The only girl I cared for in high school took up with AB and I was friends with both of them. Imprisoned within his glittering cage of fame, thousands of silly girls obsessed with his good looks, it’s not at all clear who this kid really is and I’m not sure he’s all that clear on the subject himself.Report
I must be old. When I saw the image attached I thought it was Bobby Sherman.Report
Then you are in fine company. My sister actually had a Bobby Sherman lunch box.Report
This. I don’t know how many times we need to shout “Obama is a mainstream Democrat!” before people get it. The notion that he’s some sort of radical or socialist – as if! In fact, sometimes, it’s “I wish!”.Report
People do get it; it’s the right-wing crazies and their opportunistic fellow-travelers who don’t/won’t. Heck, Obama even has a reasonable chance to win Arizona (my home state, God bless it) this November.Report
I call bull – clearly you are just another one of Bieber’s sheeple. Bieber is a Manchurian candidate Milli Vanilli Trojan Horse whose sole purpose in life is to force Big Auto-Tune down our throats. He was a complete unknown when he just magically appeared on the scene and was immediately anointed a pop god. He was never vetted; he never appeared on the Mickey Mouse Club like JT and Britney, whatever their many faults. Worse, we don’t even know that he’s an American artist. He received all of his musical training in Canada. CANADA! There’s even rumors he’s been palling around with terrorists Bryan Adams. This man child must be stopped before he imposes sharia Canadian content standards on all of our radio waves across this great land.
[I’m in awe of this post., BTW]
Also, too: I saw the South Park episode on the Jonas Brothers for the first time the other day. The image of Mickey Mouse beating the crap out of the cartoon Jonas Brothers was easily one of the funniest things I’ve seen in awhile.Report
Three things:
1. This comment was better than the OP. I’m still laughing as I’m typing.
2. ” Bieber is a Manchurian candidate Milli Vanilli Trojan Horse whose sole purpose in life is to force Big Auto-Tune down our throats.” I love this line. If it were just a little shorter, I’d be pushing for it to be America’s Newest Catchphrase.
3. Agreed on the South Park episode. I was laughing so hard when I first saw it my wife came in and wanted to know what was so damn funny. I tried to explain in-between gasps for breath that Mickey Mouse had gone all Good Fellahs on the Jonus Brothers, and she just stated at me in the way wives do when they’re trying to remember why the married you.
Report
Oddly enough, my reaction probably did more to remind my wife of why she did marry me.Report
Umm, I believe the correct term is Belieber. (Please, don’t ask how I know this).Report
I don’t care how you know it, I just wish I had. That is somehow even more pathetic than “sheeple.” I love it.Report
Almost everyone’s Autotuned these days. It’s hard to find a producer who doesn’t routinely autotune at least one of the vocal tracks. There’s usually like three or four vox tracks sitting side by side in the mix because most of these chumps lack the pipes of Steven Tyler. Pianos have three strings per key for the same reasons.
Justin Bieber is a YouTube baby. Usher went nuts over him, just had to sign him.Report
Sadly, I’ve come to know this all too well.Report
My favorite two attacks on Obama, usually used together: He’s incredibly ineffective as a leader, and his radical agenda is ruining this country.Report
Hey. This thread is about Justin Bieber.Report
My favorite attacks on Justin Bieber, usually used together: He sounds like he has no talent whatsoever, and it’s obvious the record company is digitally manipulating his voice so it sounds good.Report
+1 to both Mark and Tod.Report
Yeah, I’m a belieber, I couldn’t leiber if I tried.Report
+1Report
danke schoenReport
Justin Bieber is the new Wayne Newton? Dark forces are afoot.Report
Belieber? I hardly know her . . . (Apologies)Report
I swear, as a practicing Hindu, that Justin Bieber is the anti-christ. (At first I thought it was Steve Jobs, but then he died and failed to rise again as the Beast after 3 days)Report
Nah. He’s a wannabe Krishna and all the gopis are sighing over him.Report
Emphasise the wannabeReport
Well, if you look at that picture Tod’s got up there, his skin is sorta blue….Report
Bite your tongue!Report
Besides his eyes just scream soulless-ness.Report
Everyone who goes to India comes away with a favorite god or goddess. Hinduism is vast, kinda gotta concentrate, I chose Vaishnava and the related gods and goddesses. Here’s a poem I wrote, many years ago about it.
A Dream of You
That thing in which all things are contained:
The mind of the Dreaming God, that summons forth
In his dreaming, the universe. The silent suns that burn
And die among the maelstroms of the sky.
The shrimp in the desert, that spring to life in sudden water.
Vishnu dreams. He dreams of you.
There, where you sit, a woman illuminated in starlight
An impermanent fluid shape, a ghost among the rocks of the karesansui,
You, who I have come to know, I do not know at all in life.
There, musing among the symbols I have sent to you, these letters,
Each follows each, among them lies a self I do not know, that only you
Can see, these things are also in my dream.
Pygmalion among the chips of marble, prays
For stone to turn to flesh, he has become creator, lover,
Amor sui generis, can this be love? I cannot say
For in their crooked wisdom, that only Gods can have
They gave the man his wish, his woman.
They gave him the dream he had summoned forth.
A dream like this they understood,
A creator’s dream, the Dreamer’s dream,
A dream of blood and fire and all that dies.
Day, and night, night and day,
The song returns to the note from which it began
Rocking, slowly, the child is lulled to sleep
With the sound of her mother’s voice, singing, singing.Report
That’s really good.Report
“I have the feeling if complaints about Bieber hadn’t been of the “he’s a hermaphrodite” sort that we might have gotten all the kids at school to demand something better of him.”
I’m not sure why you would think this.Report
I’m not sure I understand, Tod.
Obama kill Phil Spector’s wife?Report
Testify! This is the best analysis of the situation I’ve seen.Report
I tried to come up with a funny comment, but then I read Mark’s and realized that the thread had already been won.
Oh, and this post? This post is golden.Report
The upside of the Justin Bieber situation is that when you get tired of his moralizing arrogance and his high-functioning sociopathy and the fact that he’s a war criminal and, you know, a mass murderer, you can just turn off the radio.Report
… and then when Bieber releases his remake of “Surfin’ USA” a big scandal erupts. Just who does this Bieber think he is? People go on and on about Brian Wilson, but never mention the
You try to tell people that Wilson lifted the tune from Chuck Berry, and even gave Berry writing credit for it. You try to talk about Chuck Berry, about the duck walk and important stuff like that, but they just go on and on about Bieber’s hair.
At length, you want to rip the hair from Bieber’s head, just so you can stuff it down someone’s throat, and growl, “There! He doesn’t have any hair any more! SO whaddaya say we talk about the fishing duck walk for a bit?”
But it doesn’t work.
Through the mangled mat of Beiber hair caught in one large sodden clump, the person still mumbles something about the stupid Bieber hair.Report
… and then when Bieber releases his remake of “Surfin’ USA” a big scandal erupts. Just who does this Bieber think he is? People go on and on about Brian Wilson, but never mention the Smile project.
You try to tell people that Wilson lifted the tune from Chuck Berry, and even gave Berry writing credit for it. You try to talk about Chuck Berry, about the duck walk and important stuff like that, but they just go on and on about Bieber’s hair.
At length, you want to rip the hair from Bieber’s head, just so you can stuff it down someone’s throat, and growl, “There! He doesn’t have any hair any more! SO whaddaya say we talk about the fishing duck walk for a bit?”
But it doesn’t work.
Through the mangled mat of Beiber hair caught in one large sodden clump, the person still mumbles something about the stupid Bieber hair.Report
This stupid wireless is so not cool.Report
I was most distracted by the fact that Justin Bieber isn’t even associated with Disney; it’s a big part of his origin myth that he ~did it alone~ without Nick or Disney’s corporate machines.Report