There are seven billion people on this planet, but we can all agree on one thing: this is Justin Bieber’s world, and we’re just living in it. The road he’s taken to unchallenged global domination has involved the kind of challenges and character-building experiences that suggest – nay, demand – exploration in an autobiography that we can only presume will be recognized with a Nobel Prize for literature later this year… but he is not the first one to have attempted this strange journey. Others have made their way along similar paths before, and their broken bodies, shattered dreams and regretful choreographies are the asphault upon which Bieber’s crack team of Bieber-carriers now tread each and every day.
You know what they say about men with big glasses.
The question: who were these boy demigods of days gone by, and what can Bieber (and all of us who live in His shadow) learn from them?
• 1970s: Leif Garrett
Consider Garrett the protoBieber. Goofy shag haircut? Check. Soulful eyes peeking out from beneath those bangs and long lashes? Check. Danceable songs that make young girls and cougar-types feel all tingly? Check. Massive chart success as a teenager? Check. For all intents and purposes, up to a point you can basically conclude that Bieber = Leif 2.0. That said, Mr. Garrett’s skyrockets-in-flight-afternoon-delight rise to the pinnacle of mass media saturation and riches was paralleled by his equally spectacular self-immolation and professional collapse, which began with a DUI and car crash at the tender age of 18 – which left his best friend a paraplegic – and then accelerated as he got sued and his career fell apart and then he basically vanished for about 20 years and when he finally resurfaced, it was because he got busted by the LAPD with some black tar heroin and then he appeared on VH1′s Celebrity Rehab and… damn, it’s just depressing. Bieber? Let’s consider this your abject lesson in “how not to do things.”
Leif Garrett the way you want to remember him:
trying to recapture his 70s magic by appearing on CHIPs
• 1970s: Andy Gibb
The yang to Leif Garrett’s yin, Andy Gibb was another 70s Tiger Beat phenom who piggybacked off the enormous contemporaneous success of his BeeGees brothers to launch what was, for a time, a massively successful solo career — with multiple massive singles and bizillion-selling albums, long floppy hair and enough teen idol adulation to stretch all the way to the moon and back (that being, of course, the generally accepted scientific standard for measuring teen idolness). And then Victoria Principal came along and ruined everything, and he became a raging drug addict and dropped off the face of the earth and then tried to mount a comeback by appearing on Punky Brewster and Gimme A Break! and then, five days after he turned 30, his heart basically exploded and he died. Lesson to Bieber: AVOID VICTORIA PRINCIPAL.
Warning: video may contain peanut parts and/or disco.
• 1980s: New Kids On The Block
Apparently the harsh lessons of the 70s were taken to heart, as there was a long fallow period between the end of the cretaceous period when the Garretts, Gibbs, Shaun Cassidys et al were wiped from the earth and the dawn of the next great terrible horrifying in a way that must never ever ever happen again age of teenboyidolsingingsensationness: the ascent of NKOTB and the boybandopocalpyse that followed. People tend to harsh on the 80s, but if there was a single redeeming factor it would lie in the fact that while there was plenty of goofy fashion and musical mistakes taking place… precious little of it was attributable to protoBieberians.
That said, NKOTB pretty much destroyed life as we know it. Using the (moderate) success of New Edition as his prototype, Boston-based force of evil Maurice Starr had a brainstorm: if he could teach some pretty white kids to dance and sing like New Edition, only more… uh… white… well, he could make a bizillion dollars. Turned out: he was right. In no time flat, the New Kids tore through North America (and beyond) like the bubonic plague — generating an omnipresent pestilence of horrible, horrible, horrible music, fashion, t-shirts, posters, videos and press coverage that killed millions.
The fact that this cultural pandemic was subsequently replicated across the early 90s by the Backstreet Boys, ‘N Sync, O-Town and probably a dozen other boy bands whose names I never bothered learning only adds to their lingering stench cultural influence — and while the überBieber Himself may not necessarily point to NKOTB as a key influence, the fact is: without NKOTB, there would be no ‘N Sync. With no ‘N Sync, there would be no Timberlake. And with no Timberlake… no Bieber.
On behalf of Boston: we’re very, very sorry for this.
• 1990s: Hanson
Mmmbop. Ba dudap bop. Oooooh, yeah.
This will now be in your head for the rest of the day. You’re welcome.
Hanson was an evolutionary leap beyond the boy bands in the sense that they were not a pre-packaged team of teen idols drilled to choreographic perfection by some deeply creepy svengali-type and force-fed to the masses via the corporate hit-making machine, but rather a threesome of actual brothers whose family-driven love of music led them to learn to play, compose, and ultimately create their own songs. It was Hanson that helped to switch on the lightbulbs in the skulls of the Disney coven of brilliant evil leadership team: wholesome kids + singing talent + exposure = major marketability. Which is how Hanson begat the Jonas Bros which begat legions of hungry cougars looking for the next spiffy young singer they can watch carefully until he turns 18. (By which we mean you, Bieber.)
• Not Applicable: Michael Jackson or Stevie Wonder
Sorry, Bieber. You’re not even remotely the same species as the young Michael Jackson or the (any edition) Stevie Wonder.
• • •
So: what path will the überBieber take in the days ahead? Will he be Justin Timberlake and translate flawlessly from teen idol to adult star to actor and beyond? Or will he be the Lief Garrett/Andy Gibb cautionary tale of his generation? Or will he be Hanson — a massive success one year; an afterthought five years later? Leave your thoughts via the magic of comments.
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