“I’m having the best night,” Justin Bieber sullenly told the bulk of the 75,000 people in attendance at V Festival, “although I’m a little hungover.” Bieber was papped clubbing in London on Friday, and judging by his lacklustre and distracted performance 24 hours later, it must have been a considerably better night than this.
While Adele sparked a nationwide singalong at Glastonbury and The Maccabees made Latitude their swansong, it was Bieber, the laughably precocious Canadian singer and YouTube star, who was responsible for one of the most intriguing festival bills of the summer. His headline set at V in Chelmsford, Es𝑠e𝑥, was his biggest British show since his Believe Tour in 2013.
Believe sound-tracked peak bratty Bieber, the tail-end of an adolescence lived in the public eye, featuring arrests, public urination and a monkey abandoned in Germany. But Purpose, the album that brought the 22-year-old to V, celebrates his remarkable turnaround – in record, at least.
In the dawn of 2015, just as it was widely understood that Bieber had trashed his career as publicly as he had his Ferrari, he released one of his best hits to date: Where Are U Now. The song, along with some clever PR stunts, recast Bieber as a remorseful, talented young adult. Suddenly, Beliebers weren’t just little girls, they were grown adult music-lovers.
Unfortunately, both would have been disappointed with his performance on Saturday night.
Justin Bieber gave a lackadaisical performance at V Festival CREDIT: PA
The man who sold out Madison Square Garden aged 18 was lackadaisical and distant here. His most verbose moment during the turgid 90-minute set saw him listing the different fast food vans he could see around the festival site, as people heckled him.
At times it was difficult to establish whether Bieber was actually singing; he spent a lot of time with his back to the crowd and the volume of his featherlight vocals didn’t change regardless of the increasing distance between his mouth and the microphone. But mostly it was clear that he wasn’t: he held the mic down by his side, mouthing the lyrics as he stared blankly at the crowd.
When Bieber did sing, there were shimmers of the prodigious talent that has earned him 100 million record sales. He was most animated after his calvacade of performance aids – a troupe of dancers, a backing band, a hype man who interacted with the crowd on his behalf – abandoned the stage, leaving Bieber with only a guitar. A passable acoustic medley followed, including his current Number 1 single Cold Water, and Love Yourself, the winsome track he wrote with Ed Sheeran.
Justin Bieber said he was hungover at V Festival CREDIT: PA
Bieber’s vocals were clear and soulful on Purpose ballad Life is Worth Living, even if the rest of his performance undermined its sentiment.
During the long stretches when Bieber wasn’t singing, he was trying to keep up with his dancers. He has always made complex, street-inspired routines part of his performance, but here he missed steps and offered half-hearted gestures. During Sorry, a song that inspired headlines when he sung it on a hoverboard in the rain during the Grammys earlier this year, Bieber shrugged his shoulders and then proceeded to hug every member of his entourage.
Bieber will be returning to these shores in October as part of his Purpose World Tour. Let’s hope, for the sake of those people who have paid £60 for a ticket, he can put on a better show than this.
