Justin Bieber

This kid is really famous!

Hm. Haven't noticed this Google/Twitter thing before.

He's also kind of terrible.

He's better than Drake

Herpes is better than Drake! Way to set the bar!

i originally read 'famous' as 'fabulous'.
so did the wiki/allmusic thing, a few exclamation marks appeared over my head, after which i re-read the post and realised my mistake.
think i will wait for my kids to tell me what his records are like.

He's really famous/popular? I saw him in guest spots on two Nickelodeon shows -- iCarly and True Jackson VP (my 8-year old daughter watches both shows) -- and figured he was just an actor playing a country singer.

He was terrible, BTW. His voice seemed auto-tuned, and his songs seemed flat and hackneyed.

yeah but he looks like a cuet lesbian!

He's really famous/popular?

http://gawker.com/5409943/the-long-island-tween-justin-bieber-riot-of-09-pandemonium-arrests-terror+tweeting

No kidding? F---g A.

I assume that sometimes labels just keep pressing until a act is popular. I'm open to be convinced otherwise with respect to this kid's talent, but wow, those few Justin Bieber songs I heard were, at best . . . servicable? Adequate? Unmemorable? Nondescript? Maybe worse.

are you a ten year old girl with cheesy parents?

lol. Hardly. Actually, the reverse: I am a (hopefully not cheesy) parent watching the same shows as my 8-year old daughter.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/03/fashion/03bieber.html?ref=fashion

He's got a "swagger coach"....

he makes me so uncomfortable

Did the Jonas Brothers do the same?

no

So when an Atlanta-based hip-hop manager named Scooter Braun called nearly two years ago, Ms. Mallette was confused. “I prayed, ‘God, you don’t want this Jewish kid to be Justin’s man, do you?’ ” she recalled.

‘God, you don’t want this black guy to be Justin’s swagger coach, do you?’

man, this kid is getting CALLED OUT on the internet.

the number of high school/middle school facebook groups about Bieber being 'totally a fag, like' is overwhelming.

So when an Atlanta-based hip-hop manager named Scooter Braun called nearly two years ago, Ms. Mallette was confused. “I prayed, ‘God, you don’t want this Jewish kid to be Justin’s man, do you?’ ” she recalled.

scooter braun is responsible for asher roth as well

the first bieber single is actually pretty good bcuz it was written by terius, but maybe it's just my age but his whole 'popularity' wrt screaming girls & what not just feels very fake & through-the-motions to me. his singles aren't even massively popular in the US. dude's just a trending topic, idk

He was on one of the network's New Years Eve shows and my Disney Channel watching nieces (age 10 and 13) know of him/kinda like him.

"one time" is pretty huge, jordan, idk. not saying he's worth a damn or will have another good song, but he's got a legit hit

“I have a swagger coach that helps me and teaches me different swaggerific things to do,” Bieber told the Toronto Star last month. “He has helped me with my style and just putting different pieces together and being able to layer and stuff like that.”

Or, as swagger coach Ryan Good, 24, told the Toronto paper: “Usher called me and said he thought Justin would benefit from being around a cool white boy.”

from: http://www.kansascity.com/entertainment/music/story/1619297.html

http://twitter.com/thatrygood/status/6884726870

http://a1.twimg.com/profile_background_images/37825840/n5129210_43666357_5501558.jpg

"one time" is pretty huge, jordan, idk. not saying he's worth a damn or will have another good song, but he's got a legit hit

― the bait vs. radrake david (k3vin k.), Monday, January 4, 2010 2:16 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

he just said it's not "massively popular," and he's right, it didn't even break into the top 10.

We're giving this kid a thread? Makes me ashamed of my country for the first time since Nickelback, tbh.

He Flo Rida'd The Cardigans' 'Lovefool' = point of no return.

need i remind y'all i was hating ahead of the curve: Rolling Worst Songs of 2009 (formerly 'I AM SO FUCKING APPALLED')

"youtubers with record deals" is a despicable trend no doubt and beiber's voice is bad but the tune is just fine imo

ha j0rdan actually likes the song now, contrary to his initial rxn

RIP

Death and Legacy

Bieber died following a gunshot wound sustained during a late night altercation in west Manhattan. According to local detectives, Bieber and his alleged girlfriend Selena Gomez attempted to enter a New York City nightclub with fake IDs but were recognized by several patrons. Witnesses claim Bieber was belligerent and threatened to shoot one of the bouncers. Justin subsequently reached into his coat pocket and withdrew what the NYPD has claimed to be a small .25 caliber pistol. James Rodriguez, an on duty police officer at the scene, responded by shooting Bieber once in the head. It was later determined that Beiber's handgun was errantly loaded with .22 caliber ammunition.

Paramedics arrived on scene shortly after the shooting but were unable to resuscitate Bieber, who was pronounced dead shortly before 11pm EST. The area surrounding Larry Flynt's Hustler Club on Manhattan's West 51st street has been closed off and witnesses are being questioned as the investigation into this tragic event continues. No statement has been released by Bieber's family or publicist, and no one else was injured during the altercation. Although toxicology reports have not yet been issued, several tablets of the prescription drug Dilauded were found on Gomez' person and it is speculated that both her and Bieber were intoxicated.

found that JUST before it was deleted

OMG SWAGGER COACH

everyone needs a swagger coach imo

wrong, if everyone needs a swagger coach, then who coaches those without swagger?

swagger leprechauns!

i swag when i coach
i swag when i coach
i swag when i coach
now watch me coach and swag

he really makes me feel like a paedo

http://www.damnimcute.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/carter.jpg
"damnimcute.com"

i think aaron carter was different because a. i was also 12 b. he was singing about playing basketball with shaquille o neal and having a "party" when his parents were out at dinner or whatever. beiber is like, "seducing" women in his videos. idk, blech.

Yeah, 'one time' really only grosses me out because:
a) his 'invisible' braces are incredibly, ickily visible
b) he's 'seducing' girls
c) he looks like he's 12 rather than 15
d) he embodies everything that i find so compelling but also so disgusting about teenagers of today.

http://6.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kt18y5hOUX1qzftyjo1_400.jpg

how old was britney when her first single came out?

16

he really makes me feel like a paedo

― total eclipse of the shart (J0rdan S.), Thursday, January 7, 2010 3:05 AM (12 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

For what? He's not remotely in the vicinity of attractive. I mean, he's unsettling in that way you're disturbed when your 14/15 yr old sister gets her first boyfriend or something but...sort of harmless and ignorable until you're confronted with the music head-on.

[broken img killed]

He's like...two parts kicked puppy, one part Disney channel.

i like a lot of individual songs on this album but it’s a bit hard to listen to all the way through. kind of stagnant or something

Album debut at number 2 in America, "Daises," my favorite song from the record, also debut at number 2.

i like a lot of individual songs on this album but it’s a bit hard to listen to all the way through. kind of stagnant or something

― flopson, Friday, July 18, 2025

This is where I'm at too. I do prefer mumblecore Biebs, guess it took obsessing over Two Star & the Dream Police to get there.

Was in one of my neighborhood coffee shops yesterday, and instead of their usual playlist mixes they were just playing this album continuously. Khruangbin better watch out!

justin hiepster

i like this more than the mk.gee album lol

Plausible!

On my Spotify account this album segues into Nilüfer Yanya -- lol perfect.

between “405” and “dadz love” this album actually finds a place of emotional resonance for me when he’s sorta just muttering phrases over dance beats. those songs actually work in the way a lot of great dance records do

― slob wizard (J0rdan S.), Friday, 18 July 2025 18:37 (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

I think the key to this album is that if you just have it on in the background it all kinda blends into the above feel somehow, in a way that a lot of it does not if you turn to stare at it directly - just this lowkey chill beats vibesiness with Justin never really rising above the level of a backing vocal choir of snotty man-children muttering and mewing in the middle distance

a backing vocal choir of snotty man-children muttering and mewing in the middle distance

New board description, plz.

ngl I quite like the lyrics to “Daisies”

“You leave me on read, babe, but I still get the message”

snotty man-children

here lies the crux of the issue for me but also this sound doesn't do anything for me right now.

This, caroline 2 and Chris Weisman's Lightly are currently vying for personal AOTY fwiw, but since I care least about/have nothing in common with Biebs' social stat, I esp wish he'd've made its aesthetic similarities (albeit in a pop vein) to another R&B landmark somewhat clearer and just called it Booboo

(in which mk.Dijon are the Dilla stand-in, etc)

can you imagine the possibilities should Dijon and Mustard work together

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXivMSJm_kA

This Calvin Klein-ass video kinda wrecks it for me--am glad there was lag time and that it didn't drop right when SWAG came out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGKfSUDAiFg

I can't stop thinking about asking Justin Bieber for a ride to the airport and then him getting really upset about it

SWAG II

wonder if this one will have more hip-hop influences

was SWAG I a commercial let-down? seems a bit early to release a follow-up

I think it was always planned, as I recall them mentioning it on the Popcast episode on SWAG a while back. SWAG continues to be in regular rotation for me. Very good record, but I agree with Jordan upthread that I'm more into its sound and the mood it creates than the songs themselves.

was SWAG I a commercial let-down? seems a bit early to release a follow-up

― flopson, Thursday, September 4, 2025 11:36 AM (two hours ago)

these sorta b2b releases are planned out ahead of time

now, when he stated releasing Justice singles barely 6 months after Changes came out, that was a (successful) attempt to quickly pivot from an underperforming record. don't think you can make a sequel album a pivot, though. i definitely do prefer back-to-back albums over offloading an entire extra disc of songs for the 'deluxe' edition.

First regular studio album to not top the chart in the US... no songs in the Spotify top 25 less than 2 months from release... not sure how to frame this as NOT a commercial letdown (relatively speaking of course!). Feels like it's missing the mark commercially like Changes (which at least had two top 5 hits), though people do seem to like this album a bit more, I think?

Seriously the only really good thing about 2025 is that Justin Bieber was completely irrelevant; let’s not ruin this too

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7h9a_0opSIQ

gah there are so many songs now - what are the highlights on swag ii, i get so lost when i'm listening

First regular studio album to not top the chart in the US... no songs in the Spotify top 25 less than 2 months from release... not sure how to frame this as NOT a commercial letdown

It's his Zooropa!

Not sure if it’s an optical illusion, but this feels even more like Mk.Gee / Dijon. The songwriting also feels more haphazard/diffuse. These things are probably related.

I have no opinion on these albums musically because I have not listened to them, but if nothing else at least the kerning of SWAG II atones for SWAG's lack of such.

I was talking this morning with one of the women I play tennis with in Stratford. She's a retired teacher...When she was a counsellor at the Stratford high school a number of years ago and taking care of registrations for the fall, there was one student--yes--she just couldn't get hold of after repeated attempts. When she finally tracked down the mom, she was told that her son was headed to Nashville for a music career, which--I'd react the same--made her laugh and roll her eyes.

i’ve warmed up a lot to SWAG. not the deluxe version just the original. you guys were more right than wrong. i’m not sure i’d say that it’s “better” than the dijon album exactly but i do listen to it more

finally getting around to swag ii, it's pretty good! i'm sure i'll think it's too long by the time i'm done with it but not having swag's terrible interludes is very welcome at least

this feels even more like Mk.Gee / Dijon

i agree, though i think that's just because dijon has credits on more tracks - he's on a third of it

dijon album is clearly much better than both but it's also more focused + further out there

if you compiled the best tracks across both swags then i don't think it'd be thaaat far off baby though

he needs to just make a whole album of "safe space" and "dadz love"... transcendent dance pop with overlapping vocals while lil b mutters inspirational nonsense in the background

Swag is not getting much love on EOY lists. "Daisies" will rank very high for me and Swag will also make my list.

Haven't heard II.

SWAG is still one of my fave ATOY--II hasn't stuck with me, though, except for "Speed Demon"

Listened yesterday and immediately texted Thom Gill to ask if it made him sad or mad or glad— the Dijon connect isn’t unprecedented in dude’s catalog, “Speed Demon” sounds a lot like “Bigger” (the Frank Ocean co-write from My World); and weirdly this sounds more Dijon than actual Dijon (whereas Dijon itself sounds like Dijon times d’Angelo’s mix scheme plus an Octatrack)

All this is to say that on first listen I like this in the car

Yeah there’s a certain purity to Bieber’s current sound I guess. It sounds pasteurised (to look past yr eyes & into yr soul).

what's the thom gill connection?

Second half of SWAG falls off for me but I think if you took the best tracks from both albums you'd have a top 5 AOTY, even if they might not feel as cohesive.

thom gill connection?

None, he a friend of mine and Craig D.'s, is a personal/professional adjacent to mk.gee/Dijon and is also a Belieber

Not to totally derail the thread, but Thom's Bandcamp fan account is well worth snooping on IMO: https://bandcamp.com/isthisthomas

To bring things back to the mk.gee/Dijonuum, though, is anybody on here into Toronto/L.A. solo artist Jonah Yano?
His June 2025 loosie single release was co-prod/co-written with mk.gee, and I really like it: https://jonahyano.bandcamp.com/track/homerun-2021

Whoops, wrong thread, ha! Got the Biebs and mk.Dijon threads confused obv, ah well--still, any ILM Beliebers should dig the Yano track too

i love thom’s music, hope he gets to collab with biebs soon

I think if you took the best tracks from both albums you'd have a top 5 AOTY, even if they might not feel as cohesive

im trying to put a playlist like this together but need to spend a bit more time with swag ii. what would you put on it?