And that’s the inception of Justin’s YouTube journey. He went online not for the random local. Not for the stranger in the next town. Not for the province of Ontario. Not for the world. Justin posted the videos for his grandmother.
Because I was familiar with technology, I was able to not only upload the videos but also tag them for the search engine in such a way that his grandmother and even other relatives and family friends could easily find them in the YouTube video jungle. I even set up a channel specifically for Justin’s videos called “Kidrauhl.” The name was spun from his dad’s online screen name, “Lordrauhl.”
Grandma Kate loved the fact she could watch Justin online. It made her feel special. She was so proud of her grandson, she left one of the very first comments: “Well done, Justin. Hope the other one will be posted too, with the standing O intact!” Ironically, his first comment was from a stranger: “Holy [blank] . . . this kid is awesome.” His cousin followed up with, “Yep, he’s awesome. He will be famous. He’s only 12 now . . .”
Justin made it to the final three with “Basketball” by Lil’ Bow Wow and “So Sick” by Ne-Yo. He gave it his all during these performances. As the opening beats sounded on “Basketball,” Justin strutted onstage, raising his hands and clapping. He didn’t have to psych up the crowd to join in; almost everyone in the audience instantly clapped along with the beat, some even cheering him on.
I couldn’t help but think back on Justin’s first performances. He hadn’t quite connected with the audience, and they hadn’t warmed up to him. It was a struggle for Justin to get them moving. He tried getting them excited and encouraged them to clap as he sang, but it was no use. Outside of the few people who kept the beat, the auditorium was deathly quiet.
His final performances were nothing like that. As the crowd roared during the introduction of “Basketball,” Justin broke out in a breakdance windmill, then a stall. The cheering was so loud you couldn’t even hear the music. He grabbed the mic to start rapping and threw out his baseball cap into the audience. Girls screamed. Parents laughed. The judges couldn’t help but smile and shake their heads. This was it. The audience had a spot in their heart reserved for Justin. He knew how to entertain them. He knew how to get them hyped. And he definitely knew how to make the girls squeal.
He was on fire as he flew through the song, egged on by the boisterous crowd. On this song and his last of the evening, Justin did what he did best. He gave the audience what they wanted—an awesome performance. His passion was evident. It streamed out of him and melted into a puddle at the feet of the crowd. You can’t teach passion like that. You can’t manufacture that kind of spirit. And you can’t fake it. You either have it or you don’t.
Justin was in the final round with seasoned female performers. When he performed “Respect” and busted out moves during the sax solo, the crowd went bananas. Wearing his signature baseball cap backward and baggy pants, he let loose a playful rendition of air sax and didn’t even miss a beat when the microphone fell out of his hand. The audience laughed and Justin broke out in a teasing smirk. He picked up the mic and continued his passionate air sax solo. The snafu made Justin even more lovable, especially because it didn’t affect his performance in the least.
When the winners were to be announced at the end of the performances, Justin stood onstage with the two girls. Being so young, he looked tiny, like a grasshopper in the land of giants. I knew if he didn’t win, I’d be somewhat bummed, but the fact that he shared the stage with talented singers who’d had years of vocal lessons and coaching was an honor in itself. I was proud of him. Proud that he took a chance to even audition and proud that he made it to the top three. Justin’s cheering section of girls was screaming so loudly in support I was sure their voices would be gone by the end of the night. Family and friends joined the hysteria, keeping our fingers crossed and anxiously hoping that he would come in first place.
I know Justin was disappointed when sixteen-year-old Kristen Hawley was announced as the winner. But he knew not to be a sore loser. Whether he was playing hockey or soccer, I always taught him how to be a good sport. As the crowd cheered for Kristen and her face glowed, soaking in the win, Justin reached his hand out to hers. He firmly shook it and whispered, “Congratulations.” That small gesture touched my heart. As confident and bold as he was as a competitor, he always gave respect where it was due. I admired that about my son. And it made me even more proud.
I could see the disappointment building as we chitchatted afterward with the crowd. Judges, friends, family, and random members of the community came up to us, shaking Justin’s hand and telling him how awesome he did, even if he didn’t come home with first place. My son was polite, nodding and saying “Thank you,” shrugging and smiling when others told him he could always try again next year.
I knew he was putting on a brave front. He couldn’t hide from his mother how devastated he was. All mamas can tell what’s really going on behind a mask. Justin was born with a fierce competitive streak. He loved to win—at everything—so losing crushed him. He had poured his heart and soul into the competition. And week after week Justin beat the odds. Week after week, the crowd fell more in love with him. Nursing a loss was like losing a battle. As one of the judges patted his back and praised his performances, I knew it was only a matter of time before those raw emotions of disappointment would surface.
We drove home in silence. From the corner of my eye I could see the tears welling up. I knew that no matter how many times I told him I was proud of him, no matter how many times I told him he had done an amazing job, my reassurances wouldn’t even put a dent in how devastated he felt.
Justin was always hardest on himself. He’s still that way today. If at the end of a concert, he doesn’t feel like the performance was up to his exceptionally high standards—even though everyone else thought he did an outstanding job—he’s miserable. Justin has always been a perfectionist and works hard to be the best, whether he’s playing soccer or hockey or performing onstage in front of thousands of people.
What started as a way to connect with his grandmother morphed into random strangers finding the videos and even making specific requests. Justin and I started recording oodles of videos of him singing all kinds of songs. But we didn’t just make videos for YouTube. I have thousands of videos of Justin simply being silly. He would fool around and make crazy faces and sounds, beatbox, and even make up raps.
I got a kick out of every performance he did—whether it was a song for his YouTube fans or him breakdancing to Michael Jackson in front of no one else but me. When Justin sang or played music, I couldn’t help but notice how much soul and passion he emanated. When I watch these old home videos, absent of professional lighting, proper audio and visual equipment, or even a good videographer (my skills still have not improved), I love how raw and organic they look and sound. They are the most natural expressions of my son’s talent. Where he began. How it all started.
I stayed awake many nights past midnight, a Tim Hortons caffeine fix to my right and my laptop opened in front of me. While Justin slept, I was up monitoring the YouTube channel, uploading new videos, keeping track of stats, and checking comments to make sure they weren’t offensive. Maintaining the channel was time consuming and required a lot of energy and effort, but I loved it. I looked forward to it. It was something fun to do. Every time I posted a video, I would refresh the page every two seconds to see the new comments and the change in view count.
Friends and family weren’t the only ones watching Justin’s videos. I had strategically tagged all his videos by the song title and artist, so searches for that particular song or artist would bring up Justin’s video. That’s how so many people were able to find his videos so effortlessly. While comments came in pretty quickly after we posted the first video, they started pouring in over the next few weeks from people all over the world.
“Wow, dude. You’re pretty good.”
“Nice voice, you’re so talented.”
> “Justin, you’re amazing. Watching this makes me want to marry you, lol.”
“He’s going to change the world.”
YouTube is different today than it was back when we were first posting Justin’s videos online. Back then, YouTube had thirty or forty different awards in different categories—ranging from “Most viewed of the day” to “Most favorited” and “Most responded to,” to name a few. The site would give out a number of different awards every day. One afternoon while Justin was gearing up for a hockey game, I noticed one of his videos got a YouTube award. It was his first, something like “10th most viewed video of the day.”
I was so excited I started laughing. Right before my eyes my little boy, who really wasn’t so little anymore, was attracting a crazy amount of attention on the internet. “Justin, you’re not gonna believe this,” I called out while he grabbed a Gatorade out of the fridge and started chugging. “You got a YouTube award.”
Justin looked at me and nodded. “Cool,” he said with a smile. My son was nowhere near as excited as I was about his videos and online following. His channel was on my radar all the time, even at work.
Freelance jobs designing websites were slow in coming, so I took a part-time job at Conestoga College doing administrative work. I was also still teaching some basic computer courses to senior citizens at nearby nursing homes and giving private home lessons. Whenever I had a break in the middle of showing sweet old ladies how to use social media to stay connected with their grandkids, I would check the YouTube channel. How many more comments did Justin get? What did they think of his new song? How many people viewed his video since last night?
When Justin would get home from school, I was a nonstop blabberfest, giving him a play-by-play update on the responses from his videos. I was a vocal Energizer Bunny. My chatter eventually got on his nerves. Even proud mamas need to back off sometimes and give their child a little space. I admit, it was hard for me to simmer down my enthusiasm, despite Justin groaning at my incessant status reports of his growing fan base.
After his channel started gaining popularity, I cocreated a YouTube channel with a man named James, a statistics genius and video editor, whom I met in an online community. We designed the channel so well-known YouTube kids could collaborate on videos together. Through working together, we formed a friendship, and he ended up helping me with Justin’s YouTube channel. It was great to have someone to share my excitement with since Justin seemed so nonchalant about his rising online fame.
The success of his home music videos snowballed in the blink of an eye. Six months after Justin lost the Stratford Star competition, his YouTube popularity was at such a peak, monitoring his channel was like having a part-time job. I was diligent at first in sifting out the negative comments from haters—and boy, some people who had never met Justin and didn’t know anything about him had some awful things to say; I don’t know how people can be that mean to anybody, let alone a child. But the comments poured in faster and in such great numbers (as many as a few hundred a day) that they became impossible to monitor.
I would have needed to dedicate every single hour of my day to keep track of everything. For a short while, James helped me pick up the slack (thanks, James!) until finally we had a team of our own to help manage the channel. Ironically, when Justin’s manager Scooter came on board, he and I would obsessively monitor every video of Justin’s, just like James and I used to do, except on a larger scale.
Soon enough, Justin was a YouTube celebrity. That was enough for me. It was such a fun, entertaining, and exhilarating experience, I couldn’t even imagine what real stardom was like. Frankly, I didn’t even want to imagine that kind of life.
His popularity got to the point where it wasn’t just random strangers who had something to say about his rising YouTube fame. He piqued the interest of a few nationally syndicated talk shows that wanted him on their program. As honored as I felt, I was nowhere near ready to even consider those opportunities.
CHAPTER
Thirteen
I couldn’t believe the number of emails Justin started getting through the YouTube channel from managers and various record label executives who wanted to pilot his career and turn him into a star. It was all very overwhelming. And strange. I was used to having an inbox full of messages from fans commenting how cute Justin was and how much they loved him. As it was, I couldn’t keep up with those comments and messages.
So I didn’t. But not just because I didn’t have the time. I didn’t want my son anywhere near that path. I figured all the people who were hounding us were determined only to turn him into a cash cow to fill their pockets. Isn’t that how the music business works? So thanks but no thanks. We’re not interested.
I ignored the emails, having no intention of showing them to Justin. The truth was, I had a pipe dream that Justin was going to become a worship leader or youth pastor. All my talented musician friends were worship leaders, so I assumed that Justin’s talent would warrant him treading down that same path. When the emails about music opportunities kept on coming, it challenged me to look outside my bubble.
I was also hesitant because I was afraid. Everyone knows what happens to many child artists. I had heard all the horror stories about the music industry as a whole. I didn’t want to be naïve in thinking Justin would be immune from the dangers and temptations in that business. Almost a teenager, he would have plenty to deal with in high school on his own. So according to my initial calculations, there was no way God was opening the door for Justin to enter the music world.
As a praying mother, I did just that—I prayed about the opportunities. Because of my fear and my then-limited perception of the way God operates, I unintentionally prayed from a place of doubt. “Surely this isn’t Your will, right?” I guess in a way I acted as if I knew better than God. I could better protect my son. I could better determine his future. “And if this is Your will,” I said to God, “You mean You’re opening the door for him to sing in the Christian music industry, right?”
Immediately I was reminded of a verse in the Bible: “You are light for the world. A city cannot be hidden when it is located on a hill. No one lights a lamp and puts it under a basket. Instead, everyone who lights a lamp puts it on a lamp stand. Then its light shines on everyone in the house. In the same way let your light shine in front of people” (Matt. 5:14–16).
I heard God speak into my heart. How is Justin supposed to be a light in the world if he’s not in the world?
“But he’s only thirteen,” I argued out loud. “He’s not grounded. I know You have a hook in his heart, but he doesn’t have any roots. This doesn’t feel safe.”
Do you trust me?
Sigh.
Apparently, not enough. The answer was obvious.
When Justin was a baby, I dedicated his life to God in a special ceremony at my church, much the same way that Hannah dedicated Samuel in the Bible (see 1 Sam. 1). I remember praying that day, asking God to raise Justin up to be a leader and a voice to his generation.
This story came to mind as I was praying about Justin’s future one evening. I felt God telling me to trust Him. To let go of my plans for Justin. It was time for me to give up creating the kind of future for my son that I wanted him to have, that I thought he should have. And that’s when I finally started paying attention to the emails and calls coming in. I even considered the possibility that God could be the one opening those very doors.
In the middle of 2007, a manager from Atlanta named Scooter tried to contact me through several avenues. He was relentless. He sent emails to me through the YouTube channel. He tried to get through to other people who he hoped would get in contact with me for him. This guy messaged one of my top friends on MySpace, called Justin’s great-aunt whom my son had never met (in addition to anyone with the last name Bieber where we lived), and tried to get in touch with me via the Avon Theatre, the venue in the YouTube video where he had watched Justin sing. All these people called me and left message after message
that some young guy named Scooter with a Gmail address was trying to reach me about Justin.
Probably one of Scooter’s boldest moves was when he called Justin’s school by way of the Stratford Board of Education. It wasn’t common knowledge that Justin had a YouTube identity. He was a jock, a cool and popular kid. Most of the students didn’t know how he spent his extra time outside of sports. Justin kept his entertaining hobbies on the down low. Although his classmates knew he’d competed in the Stratford Star, no one knew Justin continued singing.
When Scooter’s messages finally reached the school, someone on staff started streaming his videos on the TV monitors in the hallway the next day. When Justin walked into school that morning, a gigantic screen blasted one of his YouTube videos. Now everyone knew. Though he was embarrassed by the attention because he had a reputation as a jock, not a singer, there was one advantage—the girls. They were excited for him, proud of their local up-and-coming YouTube sensation. And they weren’t shy about letting Justin know.
After Scooter unintentionally outed Justin, he continued to track me down, and I continued to keep my distance. I didn’t know much about him other than what I was told from the people in my life he was contacting. I knew his name was Scooter Braun. He had name-dropped popular music stars, so I knew he’d worked with famous artists like Usher, Justin Timberlake, and Britney Spears. I also knew he had a Gmail address. The latter two bits of information kept me from calling him back.
I wasn’t impressed by name-dropping. I’d heard it all before from other managers and so-called record execs who promised they had worked with or were friends with that pop star or this celebrity. It was usually a long stretch from the truth. Scooter’s Gmail address also made me suspicious. Why wouldn’t he have an email address with his record label name? All the other emails I got came from reputable management groups, like joeschmoe@so-and-so-company.
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