AMAZING GRACE

He made every mistake a child star can make, including the ones that nearly destroyed him. Now, fortified by God, marriage and a new album Justice, Justin Bieber is putting his life back together one positive, deliberate step at a time

- ZACH BARON

T-SHIRT BY x KARLA. TROUSERS BY GIORGIO ARMANI. SNEAKERS BY NIKE. NECK CHAIN BY TIFFANY & CO. WATCH BY CARTIER

Justin Bieber and I have just met when I ask him something and he talks and talks – for ten illuminating and uninterrupted minutes, he talks. He talks about god and faith and castles in Ireland, about shame and drugs and marriage. He talks about what it is to feel empty inside, and what it is to feel full. At one point, he says, “I’m going to wrap it up here,” but he doesn’t, he just keeps going, and that is what it is like to talk to Justin Bieber now. Like you’re in the confessional booth with him. Like whatever rules about privacy or the thick opaque wall of massive celebrity that people like Bieber are supposed to follow don’t apply.

He has lived a well-documented life – maybe among the more well-documented lives in the history of this decaying planet. But, to my knowledge, there is not one example of him speaking this way in public – in a moving but unprompted, unselfconscious torrent of words – prior to this moment. I will admit to being disoriented. If I’m being honest, I had been expecting someone else entirely – someone more monosyllabic; someone more distracted, more unhappy; someone more like the guy I’m pretty sure Justin Bieber was not all that long ago – and now I am so thrown that the best I can do is stammer out some tortured version of… How did you become this person? By which I mean: seemingly guileless. Bursting with the desire to connect, to tell his own story, in case it might be of use to anyone else.

It’s a question that’s not even a question, really. But what Bieber gently says in response is: “That’s okay.”