Justin Bieber Was So ‘Badly Behaved’ China Banned Him
At only 26 years old, Justin Bieber has already spent half of his life in the public eye. But although his rise to fame at such a tender age has opened up an amazing amount of opportunity, it also introduced a lot of chaos into his life. For several years, Bieber’s life was so out of control that he got in trouble both personally and legally. In fact, he managed to get himself banned by an entire country.
He tasted fame at an early age
Bieber was only 13 when he uploaded videos of his singing to YouTube, and he caught the interest of fans and people in the music industry. Music manager Scooter Braun discovered his work and realized that he had stumbled on some very promising young talent.
Braun’s instincts were spot-on, and Bieber quickly rocketed to fame. His debut album, My World, went platinum in several countries, and soon he was famous around the globe. He went on to release so many hit albums that he broke a record that had been held by Elvis Presley for almost 60 years. When he was 26, Presley had been the youngest person to have seven number one records on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Bieber managed to get seven to the number one spot by age 25.
But there was a dark side to Bieber’s extraordinary rise to fame. It didn’t take long for him to become overwhelmed by all the money, power, and attention, and things started to spiral out of control.
For years, trouble followed him
BBC reports that Bieber shared on Instagram about the effects of his early fame.
I went from a 13-year-old boy from a small town to being praised left and right by the world, with millions saying how much they loved me and how great I was … you hear these things enough as a young boy and you actually start believing it. Everyone did everything for me, so I never even learned the fundamentals of responsibility.
He started using drugs and alcohol, and soon he was running into trouble with friends, neighbors, and the law. According to Harper’s Bazaar, in 2017, Bieber was in the middle of a global tour when the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Culture released a statement, making it clear that he was no longer welcome in China.
“Justin Bieber is a gifted singer,” they said. “But in order to maintain order in the Chinese market and purify the Chinese performance environment, it is not suitable to bring in badly behaved entertainers.”
The reason behind the ban was unclear, but the message was not. China was not going to put up with Bieber’s wild behavior anymore.
From chaos to the best season of his life
Bieber ended up canceling the final 14 dates of that 2017 world tour, saying that he wanted his “mind heart and soul to be sustainable.” In the years since then, he seems to have worked to put his life back together.
In 2018, the singer married Hailey Baldwin, a relationship he credits a lot of his healing to. These days Bieber’s life seems to be pretty calm. He’s happily married and back at work creating music. He’s referred to this as the best season of his life, and it seems as though his darker days are behind him.
Fans hope that Bieber will keep doing better and not go back to the bad behavior that characterized his dark years. Maybe, if he keeps his nose clean, China will even relent and let him come back someday.
