I’m sitting on an airplane.
The guy next to me is sleeping, dangerously close to laying his head on my shoulder.
The air is unnaturally cold and I still have three hours to go.
Despite all of this, I am happy. Over the past few days I have celebrated, then lamented, then celebrated again.
Why, you may ask?
Simple. Justin Bieber is single once again.
Yes, that’s right. I have Bieber Fever. I’ve had it since “Baby” hit the top 10 during my middle school career.
I’ll admit that, at first, this love was mainly due to his hair (a sight which now fills me with astonishment that I ever liked it).
Nevertheless, Bieber has turned into more than a high-pitched teeny bopper with skateboarder hair.
The succession of his album releases show how much he has changed over the years.
His first album, My World, has a few decent songs, namely “Favorite Girl” and “Love Me,” but that’s only the beginning.
As one of his compositions, “Up,” states, “We can go nowhere but up from here.”
This is demonstrated in Bieber’s second album, uniquely titled My World 2.0.
This is the World that produced “Baby,” “Eenie Meenie” and “Somebody to Love,” all of which spent a rather substantial share of time on my “Best Songs” playlist.
Next comes a bit of a disappointment. I’m talking about Bieber’s third album, which doubles as his first attempt at Christmas music: Under the Mistletoe.
What a shame. While I will admit that “Mistletoe” and “Fa La La” were stuck in my head for quite a while, they weren’t nearly up to the standards that I had come to expect from Justin.
But, things were not over yet. My fears of Justin Bieber’s decline were assuaged with the release of “Boyfriend,” his first single that some of my friends actually liked.
Despite the somewhat annoying repetitions of “swag” (a word repeated multiple times in the song), I listened to this masterpiece for days on end until I left for camp and had to leave my music behind.
When I returned home, I was delighted to listen to Bieber’s most recent album: Believe.
Every song on that album is a step up for Bieber.
He has reached a new high that I can’t wait to see him top with his next release.
Not only has his voice matured, but he has come out with that classic pop feel. His songs now have the strong bass beat and the catchy melodies that were lacking in his previous songs.
The techno and computerized aspects of his previous songs had been a little over-the-top and had actually taken away from the essentially good songs.
In Believe, everything that is done electronically on a computer is toned down to a more reasonable level.
His songwriting skills have improved as well. The lyrics are clever while not being too complicated.
However, some things will never change. I am still ridiculed by my peers for my status as a Belieber (even though his hair has improved greatly).
In middle school, I had a certain friend who was holding back a laugh throughout the entire Justin Bieber movie, “Never Say Never.”
Now, I just receive looks of disbelief (and sometimes pity) whenever I mention his name.
In fact, when people first hear me say that I like Justin Bieber, they start laughing because they think it’s a joke. The thing is, though, that it’s not.
