What Justin Bieber's Coachella Set Really Meant
Justin Bieber's Coachella set was everything I needed. It's been a couple of days since, and I still can't get over it.
What can't I get over? The Bieber Fever. I've been infected to the point that I knew the cure... watching Weekend two. I even told my roommates a week in advance: "the TV is mine on Sunday afternoon." Knowing they had no other option, I also warned them of possible singing along.
"I don't get how you and everyone can care about a persons life that you don't know so much," one of the boys commented. "I separate the person from the song. If the song is good, it's good! Who cares who made it."
I immediately became defensive. "Because it's more than music. We grew up with him. He was from small-town Canada, born a street away from a house I'd once lived in. I saw him first on MTV, back when the channel still played music videos. I even emailed a friend saying, 'There's this new singer you need to listen to', and that was in the fourth or fifth grade!
Then in university? 2015? Being a girl, in uni, in Ontario in 2015 meant that Justin was the background music to all of our nights out. Every dj seemingly had a Bieber button, a guaranteed way to get the people dancing.
Hearing Justin Bieber play and sing Coachella was eight minutes of nostalgia and feeling the rush of your lifetime hitting you in doses, some songs hitting you harder then others. Finishing with Daisies, the song that we go out to now, brings us into the present. Justin has wandered us through memory lane, and now we're caught up. We get it, he's doing him now. Whatever that means, we support it."
Now, in typing this out, I've realized that Bieberchella was not only taking us on a journey through time, addressing who we were in the years that his songs were released, but also served as a humanizer.
Having Justin in a smoke sesh setting, we were immediately brought back to our teenage selves. He was inviting us to lounge with him, to join his watch party. He was taking us back to how his career and life happened, re-watching it all as if he's right there in the room.
The way that the shots were directed also seem significant now. Turned away from us, singing to the screen, we're watching over Justin's shoulder. Just like we would at a friend's house, crowded around a computer watching YouTube videos. The throwbacks to old viral clips only added to the nostalgia -- that specific kind of ease you can't really manufacture.
We're forced to focus on the old visions of him -- the ones that were permanently etched in our heads, dividers in our lives. His performance, the details, it was awesome getting to waltz through memories right alongside him and millions of other people, all in his hazy computer room.
It was also definitely filmed for YouTube and for future rewatching. Since he was using YouTube as his first social media platform, you know that it's probably still in his heart (and wallet, really!)
Anyways, that's why it was so good, from a fan's perspective.
Now, if you're wondering what it meant to Justin Bieber, well, Aakash Gupta has a theory that I agree with:
"A 13-year-old Canadian kid uploaded R&B covers to YouTube in 2008 from his bedroom. A talent manager named Scooter Braun stumbled on the videos and signed him.
For the next 15 years, Braun controlled everything. Tours, branding, business deals, public image. The kid became the biggest pop star on the planet, sold 150 million records, racked up 32 billion Spotify streams, and had three Diamond-certified singles before turning 25.
Then in 2022, he got hit with Ramsay Hunt syndrome. Partial facial paralysis. Cancelled the world tour. Disappeared from public life entirely.
Here's where it gets interesting. In January 2023, he sold his entire 290-song catalog to Hipgnosis for $200 million. Every song he'd ever released. "Baby." "Sorry." "Love Yourself." All of it. Gone. At 28 years old, he cashed out his past.
Then he dropped Scooter Braun. After 15 years. No manager. No agent. For the first time in his career, nobody was making decisions for him.
Fast forward to this weekend. Coachella calls. He picks up the phone himself. Rolling Stone confirmed he negotiated his own headlining deal directly with Goldenvoice. No agent commission. No manager cut. $10 million for two weekends, and he kept all of it.
Then he walked onto the biggest stage in music, sat down behind a MacBook, and pulled up YouTube.
He played "Baby" from 2010. He played his bedroom covers from 2008. He harmonized with his 13-year-old self in front of 100,000 people. Katy Perry joked about whether he had YouTube Premium.
Half the internet called it lazy. The other half called it genius.
They're both wrong. It was a receipt.
He sold his catalog for $200 million. He fired the man who discovered him. He negotiated his own deal. And then he went back to the exact platform where it all started and said: I built this from a laptop. I'm headlining Coachella from a laptop. And for the first time in my life, every dollar is mine.
The kid from YouTube just closed the loop."
((Ok but also this set of IG photos makes me think he's like GRU and we're all the minions hahah can someone please make an edit where Justin is on the coachella set x moon or something and the coachella crowd is below jumping up and down))
((Also I'm so pissed I went to buy merch on Saturday and it was $95 AUD which I thought uhhhh I don't need a shirt for that much, it's just a dropshipped shirt. I changed my mind yesterday though, and they were all sold out!!!))
