Look, Let's Accept It: Justin Bieber is Incredible Now

Like Reading Festival or a Middle East territory occupied by neo imperialist forces, the internet is split into several different camps. One has a vehement love for Justin Bieber, threatening to blend their pet kitten into small chunks of tabby-cat tikka unless he follows them back. The other has a vehement hate toward him, polluting YouTube with comments that liken the mere existence of a harmless 19 year-old to the genocide committed by the Third Reich. And then, IDK, I guess there’s everyone else who will mindlessly share whatever video Upworthy have told them Will Really Change Your Life.

If you ask the people who fall into Team Everything-But-Bieber why they hate the Prince of Swagu, they’ll tell you that he’s single-handedly responsible for ruining music while maintaining a single reference point for his long-parodied breakout 2010 single “Baby”. This is sort of like someone claiming that they hate Radiohead because Pablo Honey was a shitty grunge rip-off, or that they never talk to strangers because that’s what their mum told them when they were five.

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But out here in people-can-change land, it’s impossible to ignore that Bieber’s output since “Baby” has been hugely impressive. Each week, for the last ten, Justin Bieber has gifted the world with an inventive, future-facing new song as part of his Music Monday project (it’s sort of like a gift to his fans only his fans have to pay him for the gift).

This week he released an R&B tinged collaboration with chain-smoker Chance The Rapper that sounds like everything Justin Timberlake wishes he was still making.

Everyone that is moaning about a lack of ~real~ pop music in the charts in place of monotonous EDM and Mike WiLL Made It productions should sit up and take note. I guess anything with Chance The Rapper, a guy who has not made a single bad-thing in 2013, could have been a fluke. But “Confident” is not alone. A week or two earlier, Justin premiered the R.Kelly collaboration “PYD” – Put You Down.

Name another pop-star that your Mum has also heard of who has released music this year that is soaked in as much sex-appeal. Justin Timberlake is close, with “Mirrors” being perhaps the most beautiful mainstream pop song released this year.

But people have heard “Mirrors” because no one hates Justin Timberlake, even if he does wear a fedora a little too frequently. Yet, the same audience won’t have heard “PYD”, because everyone hates Justin Bieber, even if he does make really really good music a little too frequently.

“Recovery”, one of the first tracks released from Music Mondays, is another A+ example of the type of music that Justin Bieber is making. Again, it sounds like everything great about Justin Timberlake, with an added sheen that doesn’t reek of nostalgia or pastiche.

The problem is that while Justin Timberlake is likeable, and old enough to legally drench older woman in swagu, Bieber comes across as a dreadful prick that ditches monkeys halfway across the world, spits on fans, and would probably take your Mother out for a semen dinner and never call her again.

But I still think it’s time that Justin Bieber was accepted by internet critics. Kanye West, the internet’s king and benevolent provider of think-pieces, who helped launch the career of Tyler The Creator with a single tweet, long-ago gave his co-sign to Justin Bieber when he remixed “Runaway Love” for his own GOOD FRIDAY series. Raekwon, the God of Rap – who also jumped on the remix – Ludacris, Tyler The Creator, and now Chance The Rapper and R Kelly have accepted Justin Bieber as the pop music monolith that he is. We should, too.

Of course, personal life’s and musical life’s are always going to be intricately intertwined. It’s the reason why everyone now hates Lostprophets even more than they did when they threw out their Punky Fish ensembles to a British Heart Foundation Charity shop. If we cannot separate Justin Bieber’s personal life from his music, then, with his five Billboard topping albums, his household-name presence, and his mainstay in the media, combined with his off-the-rails, do-whatever-the-fuck-I-want-and-sniff-a-leopards-butthole attitude, then Justin Bieber is the rockstar that we’ve all been waiting for. He is available to shout at, criticise, and generally add a shade of Technicolor to our monochromatic life’s. For that alone, I celebrate him. But if we can separate the man from the music – and we should, because we’re not five, and he hasn’t killed anyone – then Justin Bieber is a pop star who is consistently putting out brilliant material that needs to be heard beyond his personal army of tween girls and myself.

To paraphrase Chris Crocker, my favourite celebrity of all time, “Leave Bieber Alone!”. If you don’t, I’ll put my hamster inside the washing machine and set it to super-spin cycle.

Follow Ryan on Twitter: @RyanBassil

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