Justin Bieber’s Instagram feed is a perfect little portrait of an adolescent appetite paired with the kind of material wealth to accommodate it. At one point, he was seen whirling around on a Back to the Future-style hoverboard aboard his private jet.
He was raised by his single mother in Stratford, Ontario, Canada, and taught himself to play guitar, drums, piano and trumpet. When he was 12 years old, he took second place in a local talent competition and his mother began posting YouTube clips of him performing. It wasn’t long before he had amassed a large fan following, and in 2007, his performance at the contest caught the attention of talent agent Scooter Braun, who helped him secure an impromptu audition with Usher and sign a record deal.
Bieber rose quickly through the music industry, and by 2009 he was selling out Madison Square Garden and appearing in a 3D concert film, Never Say Never, that was released to movie theaters. At the time, he was the only kid on the planet whose career soared to such heights in just a few short years.
But as he became more of an international pop star, his image started to tarnish. He sparked outrage in 2012 for visiting a museum that had an exhibit dedicated to Anne Frank and saying the young Holocaust victim “would have been a Belieber,” and he was criticized again in 2013 for holding up a picture of President Obama while urinating into a janitor’s bucket at a shopping mall.
In the aftermath of these incidents, it was obvious that he needed to change his image and act like a normal teenager, not an entitled, overindulged pop star who couldn’t stop acting juvenile. But he also realized that if he didn’t do so, he might lose his appeal with young people and his career might fade.
He shifted gears again, and now he’s trying to give back to the kids that he feels he let down. The message behind his new music, the inspirational messages on his Instagram feed and the deliberately calm manner in which he goes about his days is all designed to comfort the kid who once felt lost in a hungry maw of tabloid hysteria and teen-pop obsession.
If that wasn’t enough, he’s even taken on philanthropic projects, including helping to raise money for children with cancer and visiting hospitals and military bases to meet with wounded soldiers. He’s also been known to highlight social injustice and visit famine-torn countries and earthquake-ravaged Haiti.