The Justin Bieber Experience

He might do skateboard tricks in his hotel suite and compare himself to Ghandi, but Bieber is close to shedding his brattish image. Tom Howard spends two hours with a pop star on the cusp of redemption.

- Tom Howard

Here is an enjoyable selection of things Justin Bieber got up to between September 2012 and December 2014. He vomited onstage in Arizona; abandoned his pet monkey at German customs; went to dinner at Mr Chow in London wearing a gas mask; wrote “hopefully she would have been a Belieber” in the guestbook of the Anne Frank Museum in Amsterdam; was caught sneaking out of a Brazilian brothel; had a scuffle with Orlando Bloom in Ibiza; was arrested for assault and dangerous driving in Ontario, Canada; posted on Twitter that he had “officially retired”.

The 21-year old was, for a while, the biggest freak show around. Today, as he walks into the suite of a five-star hotel in London, introducing himself with a handshake, a smile and a “hey man”, he’s here to tell NME why un-Beliebers have got him all wrong. 

It’s a week before ‘Sorry’ – the second single from Justin Bieber’s fourth album, ‘Purpose’ – is due to come out. Bieber recently posted the words “if you don’t like ‘Sorry’ I will punch myself in the face repeatedly” on Instagram. Sounds like he’s feeling pretty confident. “Yeah, I don’t know, I just really love the song,” he says, of the Skrillex and Blood Diamond-produced track. “It’s a simple melody, but I think music right now is missing those effective real songs.” For someone who’s sold almost 50 million records, has the second-most-watched video on YouTube ever (‘Baby’, with over 1.2 billion views) and pulled in $77 million on his 2013 tour, Bieber is curiously unsure of himself when talking about music. But his mind’s been elsewhere since he last released an album, 2012’s ‘Believe’.