Who’s your Justin Bieber?
I’ll be honest. I wasn’t sure what a Justin Bieber is until recently. Every time I heard the name, I just assumed it was some new Cartoon Network show, maybe one about a little alien robot guy who comes to earth to save humanity but becomes the best friend of a precocious miniature Schnauzer instead.
I was disappointed when I discovered the truth. He’s neither alien nor robot. Not even a cartoon. He’s a very young, pouty-lipped boy from Canada whose job it is to make young girls write “Mrs. Justin Bieber” in the margins of their fourth grade notebooks.
Oh. He also sings.
Image via Wikipedia
After torturing myself by watching a few videos, I was ready to write a scathing indictment of the music industry, tween girls and the parents who let their young, impressionable children listen to such horrible music instead of indoctrinating them into the world of good rock and roll. Did I say indoctrinating? I meant educating.
After further review of the Justin Bieber phenomenon, my scathing indictment was put on hold. Why? Because we all have our Justin Biebers. Ok, maybe just the females. And maybe we’re far removed from the Beibers of our lives, but we had them.
My daughter had *NSYNC. No matter how hard I tried to steer her to more acceptable music (she never did get the nuance of Faith No More), she swooned and screamed for Justin Timberlake and company. I planned on giving her a well meaning lecture about manufactured bands and how video killed the radio star, but in the blink of an eye she slipped into a Hot Topic/Blink 182 stage and I gave her the “what is punk rock?” lecture instead.
Before the 90s invasion of boy bands there were, well, other boy bands. I was working in a record store in the 1986 when New Kids on the Block released their debut album. Day after day, young girls would come into the store, stare at the NKOTB posters on the wall and scream. They’d pick up a New Kids album and scream. Then they’d run into the cassette department (you know, cassettes, those little plastic cases with the….never mind, relics from another time) and scream. In unison. Sometimes the screaming would overlap with the squeals of some blue-haired lady fainting over the life size cutout of Julio Iglesias. See, we all have our Biebers. Even the old ladies.
Me, I had David Cassidy. Long before the days of MTV and the Internet, pop icons were made on tv and then made larger than life in magazines like Tiger Beat and 16. The Partridge Family introduced me to this smoking hot guy who sang love songs to me (What? He was totally singing to me) and I sent him a rambling, stalkerish fan letter requesting a picture, his autograph, some saliva in this enclosed test tube and maybe a date. I got back an autographed picture. I scrawled Do you think you love me? I think I love you! on the back of it and tucked it under my pillow so I could kiss it good night. Did I care if the Partridge Family made good music? No. I only wanted to look at David. He could have been barking like a seal for all I cared. He was cute. Those eyes. That smile. I wouldn’t feel that way about another pop idol until years later when Robert Plant made me believe that his lyrics meant something other than he got high and read Lord of the Rings a lot.
My point is every generation – and I’m inclined to say every female – has had their own Justin Bieber; a pop singer who makes you swoon so hard you don’t notice that you’re being played for the preferred demographic you are.
I’ll let the Bieber crowd off without a lecture. But I’ll be waiting for The Next Big Thing to replace “Mrs. Justin Bieber” in the notebook margins.
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Mine was Lisa Loeb. I didn’t care a lick about the music, I just wanted to stare into the flickering image of that angelic, bespectacled face on MTV until she would whisper my name in her sweet voice. She never did, but I don’t regret a moment of the time I spent waiting for it.
My Justin Bieber was former Chicago Cubs first baseman, Leon Durham and former Chicago Bears Quarterback Jim McMahon. And Chicago (present).
My older sister was into Shawn Casidy. Talk about sick! I admit that, albeit late, I did eventually gravitate toward Ozzy Ozborne and AC/DC. I think any one of my Justin Biebers would have bitten the head off Justin Bieber and spit it into eternity. So would Lee Smith, former Chicago Cubs relief pitcher.
I concede that there is a role for the Justin Biebers of this world. There is also a role for us Generation X/Ys to mock the Justin Biebers with our Shinedowns, Nirvanas, and Seethers.
If you need me, I’ll be polishing my Metamucil bottle.
Nyaaa!
Shaun Cassidy. Dear satin-baseball-jacket-leather-pant-feathered-hair-wearing Shaun Cassidy.
Da doo ron ron indeed.
I always liked Rob Halford.
I never understood why until later in my life.
Yeppers. Chawn Kasity. A name so revolting, that I dare not speak it, much less spell it correctly, for it doth desire to bind all evil unto itself. Amen.
I’m a little ashamed to say that, to the best of my recollection, my Bieber was probably the Spice Girls. I never cared for the music, thankfully, but I was around 13 at the time and they had breasts, so…
Michele, while I get what you’re saying here, I kind of feel like the situation is slightly more “dire” than, say, liking David Cassidy. I feel like kids today are much less likely to upgrade to something more legitimate than you or I were. The next step for most of them is more likely to be someone like Ke$ha or Lady Gaga — that is, if they don’t remain hitched to Bieber’s career.
Yes, I’m a pretentious twat. I’ll be the first to admit that. I’m probably overreacting. Still, I plan on being as careful (read: “manipulative”) as possible with my kids, when the time comes. My parents raised me on The Police, The Beatles, Paul Simon, Peter Gabriel, and Springsteen (quiet, you!) so I know it can be done, and done well.
Yes, I have some embarrassing Monkees lunchboxes in an attic somewhere.
I think Reverend Wife had a thing for David Cassidy as well. Must be your ages. ;o)
What, no Scott Baio in the group?
I had a mad crush on Elvis Costello when I was in grade school. Okay, I still kinda do. He was my first musical love and, well, we never really get over those, do we?
And — Faith No More! Nothing like hearing that on vinyl:
We care a lot about the welfare of all the boys and girls
We care a lot about you people cause we’re out to save the world
I’ll admit Scott Baio was cute. Also, Willie Aames on Eight is Enough.
Andrea, if you like Faith No More, stick around. You’ll be seeing that band’s name a lot around here.
What’s interesting to me watching my kids is that music is no longer linear for them. As in, they’re not turning on the radio to discover what they like, which is inevitably the newest hits. They’re discovering through me populating their iPods, or YouTube, or video games, or… well, just about anything BUT the radio. The idea of turning on the radio to listen to songs you probably won’t like interrupted by commercials seems mostly foreign to them — unless Breakfast with the Beatles is on (thanks, Beatles Rock Band!), or my 10-year-old daughter dials in the hip-hop station (thanks, hip-hop dance class!).
I’ve had to go through this with each of my kids: I have the radio on in the car, they hear a song they like, and they ask that I play it again. And then I have explain radio like it’s some mythical, magical mystery: “Kids, in a land farrrrrr away, there’s a person sitting in a small room, playing songs that are sent maaaaaaaagically through the air to a giiiiiiiiant tower, which sends them all over! And the person in the booth is alllllllllll-powerful, which is why I can’t play you ‘Surrender’ again.”
When I was young I thought radio stations were these huge studios where bands took turns playing their songs live. Never mind the logistics of it, I was only five.
My kids discovered music through me, for the most part. I take no responsibility for my daughter’s love of indie music.