![]() The chorus – “you’ve got that yummy yum” – was meme-able nonsense, the rest went in one ear and out the other. It was apparently designed with the intention of becoming a sensation on TikTok, the vastly popular social network where kids post short video clips. It arrived heralded by the single Yummy, which if nothing else, offered a stark indicator of the point pop music has reached in 2020. ![]() “Being human,” he says at one point, “is challenging”.įor all the onscreen captions giving viewers details of how to contact mental health and substance abuse helplines, the documentaries are patently not a philanthropic exercise: they’ve been made to promote Bieber’s new album. If Bieber appears better than he was during the tour for his 2015 album Purpose – during the London shows, he stood miserably on stage, unable to muster the enthusiasm even to mime to a backing track – he still seems fragile and troubled, talking with his head in his hands about the effort it takes him to get out of bed in the morning, explaining how the oxygen chamber he keeps in the studio “decreases anxiety”. But an ineffable unease oozes from the screen. It’s designed to assure all and sundry that its star is recovered from mental and physical illness, and years of drug use that apparently began when he was 13. It’s a 10-part puff piece, the ruthlessly clear-eyed, non-partisan tone of which can be gleaned from the titles of its episodes: Making Magic, Bieber’s Back. ![]() The latter isn’t intended as a cautionary tale. Meanwhile, on YouTube, there’s Justin Bieber’s Seasons. Over on Netflix, there’s Taylor Swift’s Miss Americana, a film that makes 21st-century celebrity look like something you’d mete out as a last-ditch punishment: a lonely, exhausting world of constant scrutiny, unending bullshit and dealings with people ostensibly on your side whose commitment to your best interests looks shaky to say the least. Connoisseurs of documentaries that reveal the full horror of becoming famous – particularly at a young age – are currently spoilt for choice.
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