The kid is beneath my notice, personally, but I think a lot of the hatred isn’t so much for kid himself, but just a push back against the hype machine ramming him down everybody’s throat. The hype of artistic non-entities on the strength of superficial appeal to little girls has long been a malignent, festering cancer on the music industry. This tendency makes it hard for genuinely talented acts and real creativity to get any exposure. This practice in the industry has always been despised. I can remember the same kind of derision being directed at the Osmonds, and drivel like Leif Garret, then New Kids On The Block, then Backstreet Boys. Now it’s this fucking Bieber kid and those Jonas Brothers twats. There’s always some empty headed, vapid, no talent pretty boy or boy band being pimped to us like they’re the next Beatles. It’s obnoxious and it’s understandable that people would make snarky comments about it.
As someone who once wanted to break into the industry, I used to get bitter about the cotton candy, non-art commercialism of bilge like Bieber, but I just grew to realize that it’s a business, that shallowness sells, and that those who really do have break-out talent will still get noticed whether they fit the current commercial standards or not. I also learned that these these acts come and go, so it’s not worth getting hung up on a particular one. In 6 months, some other kid will be the new thing, and Bieber will be on Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew.
Wasn’t there an internet poll on which country this kid should perform next and the winner was North Korea?
I think because of the economy, most people on the cusp of homelessness and making hard financial decisions for themselves and their kids, that a 12 year old dickwad is a multi-millionaire is a bit much. Jealously is a hell of a thing (which is why I avoid stories of people winning the lottery)
As I mentioned above, I think that is a huge part of the hate-on. Like my buddy’s daughters thought Hannah Montana was super-duper fun-time awesome. She was super-saturating the little-kid and teeny-bopper market too. But she sort of mostly stayed in that market for a good long time. Parents could elect to go along with their kids to the a Miley Cyrus Disney feature, and be mildly amused. Parents had the Miley Cyrus overdose, but through their children.
What they didn’t do was try shoe-horn her in to the adult market in contexts where she was intrusive and didn’t belong. You didn’t see Miley Cyrus on Law & Order: SVU. You didn’t see Miley Cyrus onstage with rappers like they were trying to win a spot in the bubblegum-pop/gangsta-rap crossover market.
When Toronto had its big SARS event, it had: Rolling Stones, AC/DC, other rock legends, and… Justin Timberlake. Now, Timberlake is a pretty decent guy, decent performer, and he happened to be in town, but he was in front of the wrong crowd. He got pelted with plastic water bottles and bran muffins during his set, and afterwords told reporters: “It’s natural,” he said. “If I came to see AC/DC, I wouldn’t want to see me, either.” He at least can recognize when he’s twirling around in front of the wrong audience.
Bieber’s machine, on the other hand just keeps trying to shove him onstage, whever someone can fit hi, oblivious to the fact that his participation is a blight on the shows’ landscapes, and annoying to patrons.
Backlash is normal for anyone who is over-hyped, but it’s way worse when you’re getting in the way of an audience’s enjoyment of what they actually came to see.
It’s the niceness for me. He’s just so gratingly nice. And precocious. Maybe it just reveals that I’m getting all “get off my lawn!” before I even get a real foothold on my 30s, but seeing all these kids so into him makes me want to scream “Will you please listen to something that has some balls!!”
I mean, aren’t we old people supposed to think young 'uns music is too loud and “just noise?”
Or, in the future, will the old people be listening to Anthrax and the kids listening to Glen Miller?
I really want to feel like it isn’t a young people/old people for me, though, because I definitely felt the same way about Hanson…what, 13-14 years ago? And I was juuust barely out of their target demo at that time. I feel like I might have felt the same way about Michael Jackson too, if I was old enough to have been alive in the Jackson 5 era.
Because people are sheep and the current trend is to insult current trends.
Sometimes I feel like going to a Rufus Wainwright concert and doing the same thing people do to Bieber, except all the chicks would throw their trendy hipster flats at me.
Well, ignoring the fact that I guess I fall under your “sheep” category, I have to say this seems like an easy (and incorrect) kneejerk assumption.
Bieber doesn’t even have a song on the Billboard Top Ten right now. If your assumption is correct, where’s the “I don’t like popular trends” lash-back of Bieber-like proportions for Bruno Mars, Katy Perry, Usher, et al?
Certainly at least Bruno Mars is reaching Bieber levels of popularity, even if it hasn’t been as prolonged (yet).
Bieber is basically just another teen pop star, but I think his popularity has gone supernova in a way that hasn’t been seen before, and I think a lot of this has to do with the Internet. Consider, for one thing, that Twitter has banned him from the Trending Topics list because, were he allowed, he would almost always be the No. 1 topic. Obviously, while the Disney machine (He is a Disney creation, right?) got the ball rolling on this, there’s no way they alone could maintain that kind of incessant chatter about a person.
Maybe this is just me getting old, but I honestly couldn’t tell you a single song he’s done. Even with Miley Cyrus I knew “Party In The U.S.A.” and I recognize almost all of Britney’s big singles.
As for me and my friends, there’s no strong dislike or anything. We might ironically talk about having “Bieber fever,” but that’s about it.
He’s also done collaborations with Usher and Sean Kingston. I find the whole thing inexplicable, myself. He has a nice teen-husky voice I suppose, but I wouldn’t say he’s a great singer.
He doesn’t come from Disney, he comes from Canada and got picked up by a producer in Atlanta, more or less independant from the Disney & Nickelodeon machinery.
Yes, I have three of his songs on my big iPod. I got myself a Nano just so I could have a Cyrus/Jonas/Bieber free zone.
Britney got the same thing as a teen. The majority of those people on the top 10 list are at least in their 20s. Hit the second page and you get Taylor Swift, who isn’t quite as hated, but is still debated hotly by people. See the Jonas Brothers. See Miley Cyrus.
The Billboard charts measure the popularity of the song, not the musicians. There’s plenty of Billboard chart toppers who don’t fill stadiums. I’m talking the popularity of the musician, not the popularity of their music.
I don’t know that I’d agree with that. She got a lot of negative attention for her whole teen sexuality angle, much the same as Christina Aguilera and i guess Miley Cyrus to a lesser extent. It wasn’t really until later in her career that she started getting the redneck loser label.
So? You didn’t mention age in your first post, are you saying that it’s OLD sheep and the current trend is to insult current YOUNG trends?
I guess so. But I’d see your Jonas/Swift/Cyrus and raise you Madonna, Michael Jackson, Christina Aguilera, and Justin Timberlake, just off of the top of my head. Each was a teen act who had their detractors and I do agree there will always be a certain level of “I don’t like it because it’s popular” for ANY pop icon, but surely none of my examples or yours come anywhere near the level of Bieber fury.
Ugh, I know, I can’t believe I’ve been thinking about this all morning now. :smack:
I couldn’t pick the guy out of a line-up, and I have no opinion on his music because I’ve never heard it. But since I’m on the Internet, I’ve seen all the sorts of comments alluded to by the OP. Honestly, I don’t think there’s anything particular special about the Bieber hate. It seems to be exactly the sort of emotion inspired over the past ten years by acts like Jonas Brothers, Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana, Britney Spears, Backstreet Boys, NSYNC, Hanson, etc. The ones who pander to the teen demographic rarely get any respect or appreciation by people outside of the teen demographic. Sometimes, those acts “grow up” and “reinvent” themselves and sometimes it works (Hanson is a pretty respected group now, obviously Justin Timberlake and Christina Aguilera made it). They’re easy targets, they’re not considered to be “real” musicians, and I personally think there’s a tiny hint of plain old misogynism (after all, bit hit against him is his fanbase, all teenage girls. There’s a strong tradition in entertainment of discounting anything that has primarily a female based audience. People who’ve never watched a soap opera or read a romance novel have really strong opinions about what garbage they are).
I don’t hate him. I don’t like him. I think he’s overexposed.
I do, however, hate his stupid hairstyle. Especially the fact that I’ve never seen a picture of him where he was without that carefully forward-blow-dried mop. Even in freakin’ CSI, where he was supposed to be playing a kid living with his older brother, who was a bomber. I can almost guarantee that no boy growing up with nothing but an older brother as a role model is going to have a haircut like that, let alone take the time to carefully blow-dry it every morning.
According to my 15-year-old daughter:
He sounds like a little girl
He’s conceited
He has a stupid bowl haircut and is obsessed with his hair
He hasn’t even gone through puberty yet
Love her or hate her, Katy Perry is a fully grown adult, writes her own songs, and sings in her own voice with no autotune and needing no backing track. I heard her sing live at 7am on a weekday on Howard Stern, and she sounded like a professional singer. She is a legitimate talent who paid her dues coming up through the ranks and hit big primarily through her own ability to write catchy pop songs. She is the antithesis of over-produced pop acts.
Justin Bieber is the equivalent of Ashley Simpson. The only talent in evidence is the producers behind them. And I would bet neither could actually sing live, without autotune or a backing track.
