It’s a slow day for music news and I can’t believe I am talking about Justin Bieber who made a visit at a local Barnes & Noble store last Sunday in LA. I was not aware of the event, not following his er,.. career, but it is a good thing I did not decide to go to the Grove shopping center where the bookstore is, because, as anyone who have heard of the teen phenomenon would suppose, it was a nightmarish vision of thousand of little girls screaming, rushing to the doors, and finally forcing the store to shut down! The store had to block his doors with black curtains to let thousand of fans streamed in to get their signed books and pose for a photo with the teen-idol.
I saw some footage on TV the following day, and it was just as you would imagine.
But wait, a bookstore? Bieber wrote a book? Yes, his autobiography, ’First Step 2 Forever: My Story’. What can he even be talking about?
Interviewed by the Associated Press, he said he wrote all his own thoughts down, and when the journalist asked him where he was seeing things going for him, he answered:
‘I see myself being like, 30, like, married, like, probably. I don’t know. It seems far away for me. But I want to be a young dad. I don’t want to be old and not be able to kick around the soccer ball, you know? … I see myself making a smooth transition from being a teenage, um, you know, teenage heartthrob basically to, you know, to an adult singer. I want to make that smooth transition, kind of like Usher or Justin Timberlake did it.’
‘… teenage heartthrob to an adult singer’? The guy has so much confidence it’s scary.
In the book, he admits to be religious, OK, a lot of people are, but his answer to one of the questions asking him how he manages to reconcile his faith and the Hollywood life, is really frightening:
…’ Basically, I don’t even consider religion. Like, I’m a Christian, I believe in God, I believe that Jesus died on a cross for my sins. I believe that I have a relationship and I’m able to talk to him and really, he’s the reason I’m here, so I definitely have to remember that. As soon as I start forgetting, I’ve got to click back and be like, you know, this is why I’m here.’
‘… I’m able to talk to him and really, he’s the reason I’m here’?
So because you have a personal relationship with God, he made you a billionaire? I forgive him because he is only 16, and his parents are more to blame but when I hear so much confidence, so many certitudes, it scares me to death.
Meanwhile, Usher, who signed the young guy, said basically the same kind of insanity. This is what he declared to USA today about two months ago:
‘I feel as if God specifically placed [Bieber] in front of me, because of how I started, I understood the hardships of trying to find yourself in this industry at that age, and I wanted him to have an instant, organic connection to his fans. And he’s done that.’
Yeah God was so busy with Bieber’s destiny lately, he forgot about a lot of things going on in the world…