Billboard’s Greatest Pop Stars of the 21st Century: No. 8 — Justin Bieber

With the first quarter of the 21st century coming to a close, Billboard is spending the next few months counting down our staff picks for the 25 greatest pop stars of the last 25 years. You can see the stars who have made our list so far here, and now we remember the century in Justin Bieber — who has now been a megastar for half his 30 years, accounting for some of the best and biggest pop music (and one of the most impactful career paths) of the past 15 years in the process.

Anyone who saw Justin Bieber’s 2007 cover of Ne-Yo’s “So Sick” could tell he was going to be famous.

The blurry clip of a barely discernible 13-year-old Bieber seems like nothing special at first, just a video his mom Pattie Mallette uploaded to the platform for his extended family to check out. “I know the videos of him are dark but you can hear him and get a sense of his stage presence,” Mallette wrote in the caption of the video, in which the teen is dressed in an unusually formal white button-down shirt, trousers and a tie. His magic quickly became apparent, as soon as Bieber began to belt the R&B track with a shocking sense of vocal ease for someone so young. He confidently makes his way around the stage, making eye contact with different audience members and never once seeming nervous, as if even he knew he was destined to be a superstar.

Even “superstar” feels like an understatement. With 23 Grammy nominations (and two wins), eight No. 1 albums on the Billboard 200, eight Billboard Hot 100 chart-topping songs, 33 Guinness World Records, 26 Billboard Music Awards, four RIAA-certified diamond records and an estimated 150 million records sold over the course of his career, 30-year-old Bieber has been a crucial part of the pop landscape for more than a decade, setting a new standard for pop artists to come by being a trailblazer in using social media to his advantage, without the need for radio or MTV backing to cross over to mainstream success. 

However, perhaps none of that would have been possible without a serendipitous discovery from Scooter Braun, the now-titan of the music industry who, at the time, was a marketing executive of So So Def Recordings. After accidentally stumbling upon the “So Sick” clip on YouTube, Bieber’s smooth voice and the “stage presence” his mother pointed out caught his attention. With the blessing of his mother, Bieber was flown down to Atlanta, Georgia – nearly 900 miles away from his hometown of Stratford, Ontario – to record some demos with Braun, who quickly introduced him to now-grown teen-pop royalty Usher. At just 13 years old, Bieber signed with Braun and Usher’s joint venture, Raymond Braun Media Group, and a year later, also signed with Island Records.

The good fortune kept pouring in for Bieber, who made achieving fame seem so easy. His debut single, “One Time,” was released in July 2009 and his first EP, My World, dropped just a few months later in November. “One Time,” “One Less Lonely Girl,” “Love Me” and “Favorite Girl” from the project entered the top 40 of the Hot 100. My World eventually became certified platinum in the United States.

But what was it about Bieber that made him so immediately popular? Sure, his honeyed vocals and his catchy love songs were enough to get fans to swoon, but there was a significant lack of male pop stars in the music market at the time. Another Justin – Timberlake – was still taking over radio with songs like “What Goes Around… Comes Around” and “Summer Love,” but he was 26 years old at the time, and many of his fans also skewed older. Bieber was the perfect age for young, hormonal teenage fans who soon coined the term “Bieber Fever,” a Beatlemania-type craze over Bieber’s bright smile, charming personality and swooping hairstyle that inspired similar ‘dos for boys across the globe for years to come.

Bieber Fever spread strongly into the start of 2010, when JB dropped the Ludacris-assisted “Baby,” the first single off his debut full-length project, My World 2.0. The track skyrocketed Bieber into a success for a global audience beyond the tweens that loved his 2009 EP, hitting top 5 on the Billboard Hot 100. The album, which was released in March 2010, featured a slew of other longstanding hit singles, including “Somebody to Love,” “U Smile,” “That Should Be Me” and “Eenie Meenie” featuring Sean Kingston. The project debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and earned him his first two Grammy nominations, for best new artist and best pop vocal album.

Bieber was now 16 years old, and wasn’t planning on slowing down yet. 2011 was just as busy as his previous two years. His Jon M. Chu-directed concert film Justin Bieber: Never Say Never hit theaters in February –  grossing $30 million on its opening weekend and $99 million total worldwide. The film arrived alongside a remix album, Never Say Never: The Remixes, which featured appearances from fellow stars including Usher, Miley Cyrus and Chris Brown. In his personal life, he also confirmed his relationship with another young star, Wizards of Waverly Place actress and pop singer Selena Gomez, when the couple made their red carpet debut at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party that year. He rounded out 2011 with his holiday album, Under the Mistletoe, which became the first Christmas album by a male artist to top the Billboard 200.

By the time his third studio album Believe arrived in June 2012, Bieber’s fame reached unprecedented levels of chaos and success. Still a teenager, he couldn’t leave the house without being hounded by paparazzi and fans, and he survived his first public controversy when a pregnant fan claimed Bieber was her baby daddy. While the paternity test came back negative, the experience inspired the Believe track “Maria,” a modern “Billie Jean” denying that he fathered the child. 

Clearly, Bieber was growing up, and Believe reflected that. The singer had gone through puberty and his voice was noticeably lower, and the track list strayed away from his past teen-pop sound, as Bieber played with elements of dance, R&B and hip-hop reflect a newer, more mature chapter in his career. Believe debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and featured Hot 100 top 10 hits including “Boyfriend,” “Beauty and a Beat” featuring Nicki Minaj and the Big Sean-assisted “As Long As You Love Me.” With four chart-topping albums under his belt, Bieber’s Believe Tour launched in September 2012, and grossed $212.2 million across 155 shows.

However, by the start of 2013, the negative effects of childhood fame on mental health began to appear. Bieber and Gomez split for the first time in November 2012, and in March 2013, Bieber was getting aggressive with paparazzi in London. He soon began to display increasingly erratic behavior – including wearing a gas mask to dinner, urinating in a nightclub’s cleaning bucket (as well as on a photo of Bill Clinton), spitting on fans, sneaking out of a Brazilian brothel while wearing a sheet, vandalism and, of course, writing that he hoped Anne Frank would have been a “Belieber” in the Anne Frank House guestbook – and Bieber announced in December 2013 via Twitter that he was “officially retiring.” The announcement came just a day after he released his singles collection Journals, which continued to display his artistic maturity by experimenting with downtempo R&B on songs like “All That Matters” and “Confident.” However, the sound was a bit too jarring for his pop-loving fans, and the album flopped commercially compared to his previous works. 

His retirement proved to be equally turbulent. In January 2014, he was arrested in Miami Beach, after getting pulled over in a bright yellow Lamborghini. He was charged with driving under the influence, resisting arrest and driving with a suspended license. He later pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of reckless driving. Bieber later revealed that from the ages of 19 to 21, he was heavily addicted to drugs – including prescription pills, lean, psychedelic mushrooms, MDMA and marijuana, which he used as a coping mechanism for extreme amounts of anxiety and pressure he was understandably feeling at the time. 

Things began looking up again for Bieber in 2015, when he found his sense of Purpose with his sixth Billboard 200 leader and his most successful commercial project to date, led by his comeback hit “Where Are Ü Now” with Skrillex and Diplo, an unexpected and successful pivot by the star into the EDM landscape. He followed it up with “What Do You Mean?,” which became his first leader on the Billboard Hot 100, clearly indicating that the music scene was missing Bieber’s presence. The project produced two more No. 1 hits, “Sorry” and “Love Yourself,” which remain inescapable on the radio and streaming playlists to this day. While the Purpose tour kicked off in March 2016 to build on the success of the groundbreaking album, Bieber’s mental health issues persisted. The run was canceled in July 2017 as the singer shifted focus on his well being. 

Over the next two years, Bieber lent his vocals to a handful of successful collaborations, including DJ Khaled’s “I’m the One,” BloodPop’s “Friends” and the inescapable hit of 2017, a remix of Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee’s “Despacito.” The historic track marked a major step in Latin music breaking into the global mainstream, and spent a whopping 16 weeks atop the Hot 100, then tied for the longest run in the chart’s history. However, at 23 years old and nearly a decade into his career, Bieber seemed to be taking a much-needed break from his recording career. In late 2017, he began opening up about the effects of childhood stardom in interviews and in his music in order to put his past actions into perspective and highlight his immense growth.

By 2018, he rekindled his romance with model Hailey Baldwin, and the two were married in September of that year. A year later, he announced that his fifth studio album, Changes, was on the way, and released a vulnerable, in-depth YouTube Originals docuseries. The 10-part series focused on the ups and downs of Bieber’s life throughout his musical hiatus, including his marriage, sobriety journey, battle against Lyme disease and mental health. In the grand scheme of his career, the docuseries marked a major pivot for good, with Bieber shedding the pop star persona and showing fans the human at the core.

Bieber dropped Changes in 2020, and subsequently gained three Grammy nominations and one win for best country duo/group performance for his Dan + Shay collaboration, “10,000 Hours.” Justice arrived a year later and was nominated for album of the year and best pop vocal album at the 2022 Grammy Awards. The album’s standout hit, “Peaches,” became his first Hot 100 No. 1 of the 2020s and gained four nominations including record of the year and song of the year. Justice also featured the Benny Blanco collaboration, “Lonely,” a devastatingly raw look at how fame sent Bieber into a downward and isolated spiral, capturing his past 15 years in one single. “Everybody saw me sick/ And it felt like no one gave a s—/ They criticized the things I did as an idiot kid,” he sings on the diaristic track. 

Now, in 2024, Bieber hasn’t released a new single or album in a few years, but it seems like the 30-year-old star is experiencing a healthy, loving life for the first time, much to fans’ happiness. He’s been married to Baldwin for six years, and the duo welcomed their first child, a son named Jack Blues Bieber, over the summer. With his whole life to that point being spent on overdrive, it’s relieving to see Bieber cruising and enjoying his newest adventure, fatherhood. Hopefully, the ride will inspire yet another chart-topping album – and one more example of his one-of-kind presence, which has persistently shined through the darkness for over 15 years now.

Read more about the Greatest Pop Stars of the 21st Century here — and be sure to check back Thursday as we reveal our No. 7 artist!

THE LIST SO FAR:

Honorable Mentions

25. Katy Perry
24. Ed Sheeran
23. Bad Bunny
22. One Direction
21. Lil Wayne
20. Bruno Mars
19. BTS
18. The Weeknd
17. Shakira
16. Jay-Z
15. Miley Cyrus
14. Justin Timberlake
13. Nicki Minaj
12. Eminem
11. Usher
10. Adele
9. Ariana Grande

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