Justin Bieber Could Have Me Killed

One tweet. That's all it would take. 140 characters from Justin Bieber articulating my need for death, and a task force of Beliebers would geolocate me via my Instagram photomap. Once my location was confirmed, a swarm of 11 to 14 year-old girls would descend upon me in numbers that I could not possibly escape from. My limbs would be ripped from my body, and my head would be delivered to Justin Bieber on a stick, an example to those who might defy King Bieber. Justin would touch the bloodied hands of the devout. Shallow reward it might be, the mere confirmation that their hero manifested himself in a corporeal form would be satisfaction enough.

Okay, so Justin Bieber is not going to have anyone killed (I think). However, it is undeniable that he is the most famous living American export to the world, which is even more impressive considering he's actually Canadian. He is our culture's perfect bishonen, a beautiful youth boy with the face, voice, arms, legs, abs, pectoral muscles, veins, fingernails, blood, hair, saliva, and earlobes of an angel. He is the point of societal singularity, the blissful elimination of choice—where our generation could fan out over five Backstreet Boys and five *NSYNC dudes, the next generation gets fucking ONE pop boy wonder. And they love it. What I am trying to say, I suppose, is that people care about Justin Bieber to the point it is well-established within the canon of his fandom that his penis is named Jerry.

There is one thing about seeing a teen idol in concert that you just have to see to understand. The screams. The deafening war cry of a generation, a chant “JUST-IN! JUST-IN! JUST-IN!” in perfect unison, as a ten-minute countdown for Justin Bieber ticks away on a giganto-screen where Bieber will soon perform. Every time a minute goes by, the screams get more intense, more deafening. There were openers, but fuck the openers. They exist as a token of Justin Bieber’s benevolence. With a minute left before Bieber takes the stage, the screams get so loud, ping-ponging off the ceiling of the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey, that I’m forced to put earplugs in. Thirty seconds left. This is like waiting for a rocket to take off. But better.

Zero seconds. Bieber time. We first see silhouette, shrouded in mystery. Fireworks go off, and we see a flash of wing. Is it? Yes. Bieber. He's being lowered onstage wearing a pair of fucking angel wings. HE IS A DEITY IN DROP-CROTCH PANTS. It’s worth noting that one can buy pewter keychain replicas of these wings for $10 at the merch table, and they’re also selling basketball jerseys that say “Swaggy” on them for $40, ripoff Supreme snapbacks that have the word “Swaggy” in the box logo for $35, and Swaggy sunglasses for $15. People have gladly paid for these items, and why not? They are tokens of Justin’s divinity that you can hold in your hand, instead of the fleeting vision of a boy in all white, unstrapping an angel harness on a penis-shaped catwalk and launching into “All Around the World.”

“How many of you in the audience believe?” Justin asks us. This question is rhetorical. We all do. Obviously. The audience is bouncing in perfect unison. If adults cared about working together and solving the world’s problems like children care about dancing to Justin Bieber, we would have no problems.

As for Justin’s stage show itself, it’s terrifyingly professional. His backing band is somehow able to replicate the dubstep drops that pepper his newest record Believe, the dancers are great without ever distracting from the Chosen One. The set pieces are astonishing, Justin’s every move planned down to a T, from the way he sensually wipes his face with a towel to the carefully-timed removal of his shirt. The show is punctuated by video sequences where Justin is able to go backstage and change. The best video sequence is the one that features the Biebs as a spy, ninja-fighting enemies and jumping over roofs and shit, only to return for “She Don’t Like the Lights,” now sporting black drop-crotch pants, a black jacket, and a black fedora. It’s half Vaudeville, half K-Pop, half cult of personality. If you truly believe, these three halves add up to a whole.

It’s indisputable that Justin Bieber has the sort of talent that we’re only blessed with once in a generation. But as of now, he hasn’t made music that reaches the same levels of dizzying perfection Justin Timberlake or Michael Jackson. He has no Thriller or FutureSex/LoveSounds. Hell, he doesn’t even have a Justified. Additionally, Bieber seems constrained by the paradigms established by Jackson and Timberlake—those dudes danced, so he has to, too. But while Michael Jackson’s legs were lightning bolts beamed down from Zeus himself, Bieber’s dancing seems like an acquired skill rather than an ingrained one. His real strength lies in the fact that he can play pretty much any instrument you throw at him, which he proves by playing acoustic guitar on a raised, moving platform. There is a certain beautiful irony to watching Justin Bieber sing the lyric, “I will catch you if you fall” from 40 feet in the air.

Indeed, Justin Bieber seems to want to escape the shackles of pop stardom. When he introduces his band, he gets his bassist to play the beat from Tyga’s “Rack City” as he raps a little of it. He says “chick” instead of “bitch,” obviously, but an impromptu Tyga cover is an example of the slight ways in which Bieber desperately wants to evolve into something more than a pretty face. After he raps “Rack City,” he instructs everyone in the audience to follow his guitarist on Twitter.

Without a doubt, the absolute highlight of the evening is the “One Less Lonely Girl” portion of the show, where Bieber picks a girl out from the audience and serenaded her with his song “One Less Lonely Girl.” Tonight’s non-lonely girl definitely looks 18, and definitely seems like she wants to jump his bones. After the song, he takes her backstage as a video of him as a child air-humping is shown on the screen. There is no way that this is a coincidence.

[Sad, terrifying GIF via BuzzFeed]

There is a sinister truth to this all, however, and that is that Justin Bieber seems to be screaming for change. He wants to make adult pop, but he’s saddled with material aimed at 12-year-olds. He can’t offend, he can’t get risqué, he can’t explore his sexuality on record. Taylor Swift’s dubstep drops are harder than his. And while songs like “As Long as You Love Me,” “One Time,” “Beauty and the Beat,” and “Boyfriend” are unassailable bangers from the 345th chamber of soul, they seem juvenile and stilted to Bieber. His dancing is robotic, herky-jerky. He might hate dancing. His expression is blank, as if he's yearning to be anywhere but onstage. We believe, but it’s not so clear that he does any more.