Justin Bieber changed the shape of teen celebrity. He needs to change it back, before it’s too late
(Photo illustration by Gluekit; photograph from Pichichi/Splash News)
T here are times when it’s best to render unto tweenagers the things that belong to tweenagers. When you were 11, your parents probably didn’t get the deal with Peter Frampton or the Fresh Prince Will Smith. And, as the Backstreet Boys put it, you wanted it that way. That rule doesn’t apply to Justin Bieber, the 16-year-old warbler from Stratford, of all places, whose records set records on YouTube and iTunes. This particular crush magnet warrants grown-up attention. For he is a harbinger of the changing shape of celebrity to come.
When Bieber was 13, his devout Christian mother encouraged him to post his amateur act on YouTube. She prayed he would become a Prophet Samuel, a voice of salvation to his generation. He’s more like the canary in the gold mine.
The issue lies not in his music, which is better than average (not surprising, since it’s custom-designed by R&B star Usher and hot producer The-Dream). Beneath their cyborg sheen, Bieber’s songs smartly conform to the puppy-pop template set back when Paul Anka was on his knees begging “please” to Diana. By trade, teen musical idols offer up ant-trap-sticky melodies and hooks that hammer home the singer’s longing for the understanding ear of that one ordinary-yet-special girl. Bieber is no exception: with its doo-wopping chorus, his ginormous hit single “Baby”—the video has been viewed on YouTube 219 million times—could have emerged from Phil Spector’s studio in 1963.
But Bieber Fever—that strain of hysteria that induces screaming girls to hurl themselves at limos and inspires boys to mimic Bieber’s moppy-floppy coif—isn’t really about the singing. It’s about Bieber’s role as crown prince of the digital realm, YouTubeing and tweeting and Facebooking himself into such ubiquity that you need to install Shaved Bieber software to avoid him. He’s a viral folk hero, the most lucrative Internet meme ever, like a Keyboard Playing Cat gone ultra-pro. Thousands were already subscribing to his YouTube feed months before music-biz bigwigs in Atlanta happened upon it and signed him. And his trademark version of public precocity is replicating like spam among the first generation to claim texting as its mother tongue.
His sole significant forerunner was the Mississippi rapper Soulja Boy Tell ’Em, who at 17 used his 2007 “Crank That” YouTube dance craze to top the pop and ring tone charts. Bieber recently threw the fading star a lifeline by doing a duet with him (arranged via iChat, naturally). A less obvious peer is Tavi Gevinson, the 14-year-old from suburban Chicago who’s leveraged her fashion blog into a couture career that has her jetting to runway shows, snagging front-row seats with Anna Wintour and hoarding swag like a seasoned maven. In her world, as in Bieber’s, lines between the professional, the promotional and the personal never existed. On their heels is the 12-year-old Oklahoman Greyson Chance, who posted his grade-school piano performance of Lady Gaga’s “Paparazzi” on YouTube in April and a month later secured a record deal via Ellen DeGeneres. His rise was so fast that reporters speculated Big Media had a hand in it all along. I doubt it. The music industry isn’t savvy enough to do more than capitalize on pre-made innovation. They’re taking their cues from the tech tots, which is why you can expect many more Justins, Tavis and Greysons to come.
As an ex-Torontonian now based in Vancouver, Toronto Life (not surprisingly) is not available on the newsstands. You still have some very fine journalism (such as this column, the only piece of editorial available online from the current issue), but not enough to make me want to pay for a paper subscription. Why no digital edition? Every other magazine of your size and scope has one, even Vancouver magazine.
That I would subscribe to.
July 18, 2010 at 10:50 pm | by Thad McIlroy, The Future of Publishing