Justin Bieber: Bebbbeier!

Unlocks: Aug.9.2025 In Honor Of "U Smile"

The opulent, soundproofed recording studio in Justin Bieber’s sprawling Malibu mansion felt less like a creative sanctuary and more like a gilded cage. For years, the familiar hum of the mixing board, the scent of fresh coffee, and the pressure of a looming deadline had been his reality. But lately, it was just… noise. And the thought of another catchy hook, another autotuned vocal run, another stadium filled with screaming fans, sent a shiver of existential dread down his spine.

He picked up his vintage acoustic guitar, strummed a desultory, dissonant chord, and sighed. “I can’t do this anymore, Chad,” he mumbled to his oldest friend, who was sprawled on a plush leather sofa, scrolling through crypto charts.

Chad, a perpetually chill former high school buddy now dabbling in NFT art, looked up. “Do what, Biebs? The new single? ‘Forever Yours, My Love’ is shaping up, man. Number one potential.”

Justin slammed the guitar down, an un-Bieber-like act of rebellion. “That’s the problem! It’s always number one potential. It’s always ‘shaping up.’ I’m tired of shaping up, Chad! I’m tired of being shaped! I want out. I want to live in a yurt. I want to learn pottery. I want to be… un-famous.”

Chad blinked. “You wanna retire? Just announce it. Everyone loves a good retirement story.”

“No,” Justin said, pacing like a caged panther. “You don’t understand. I can’t just retire. My label, my team, the fans, the system. It’s a machine. If I just stop, they’ll keep pulling me back in. ‘Just one more tour, Justin!’ ‘The fans need you, Justin!’ I need a plan. A plan so devious, so strategically catastrophic, that they’ll beg me to stop.”

Chad slowly put down his phone. “You want to… self-sabotage?”

“Precisely!” Justin’s eyes lit up with maniacal glee. “I’m going to make music so utterly, unequivocally, unforgivably bad, that I become… commercially unviable.”

Chad frowned. “But… you’re Justin Bieber. Even if you farted into a microphone, it’d go platinum.”

“Ah, but there’s a nuance,” Justin leaned in conspiratorially. “It can’t just be bad. It has to be aggressively bad. So bad it offends the very concept of sound. So bad it makes people question their life choices. A musical abomination that sends the industry screaming into the night.”

The first step was the single. Justin dismissed a perfectly good pop track and replaced it with something he titled, with perverse delight, "Ode to a Sentient Sock Drawer."

"Picture this, Chad," he explained, eyes gleaming. "It starts with a two-minute solo on a kazoo, played entirely off-key. Then, my vocals come in, heavily auto-tuned, but intentionally pitched wrong, like I'm having a seizure mid-note. The lyrics? Pure, unadulterated nonsense. 'Lint traps whisper secrets of the dryer's hum / Polyester dreams, a future yet to come.' And the beat? Just a constant, syncopated loop of a toilet flushing, punctuated by a cat screeching."

Chad looked pale. "That… that sounds like a war crime."

"Exactly!" Justin clapped his hands. "It's art, Chad! Performance art! The art of career suicide!"

Scooter Braun, Justin's manager, nearly had a stroke when he heard the demo. "Justin, what in God's name is this?! Is this a joke? Is this performance art? Because if it is, it's not funny and it's certainly not art!"

"It's my truth, Scooter," Justin said, feigning deep artistic conviction. "I'm exploring the banality of domesticity through the lens of discordant sonic landscapes."

Scooter, ever the pragmatist, tried to spin it as "experimental." The label, bewildered but trusting Bieber's Midas touch, reluctantly released "Ode to a Sentient Sock Drawer."

The world collectively raised an eyebrow. Critics were baffled. Fans were concerned. Some thought it was a brilliant post-modern commentary on pop music. Others just thought Justin had lost his mind. It debuted at a respectable, but not chart-topping, #47.

"Good," Justin muttered, rubbing his hands together. "They're still giving me the benefit of the doubt. Time to double down."

The album, "Whispers from the Wormhole of My Laundry Basket," followed. It featured tracks like:

• "The Ballad of the Rusty Faucet": A six-minute track composed almost entirely of dripping water, interspersed with Justin attempting operatic falsettos while gargling.

• "Echoes from the Empty Fridge": A spoken-word piece delivered in a monotone, listing the contents of his refrigerator on a Tuesday, set to the tune of a broken washing machine.

• "Toilet Flush Tango (feat. My Cat, Mittens)": A reprisal of the single's core sound, but with Mittens' actual, frustrated meows integrated as key melodic elements.

The public reaction was swift and brutal. Memes exploded, but not the flattering kind. Critics universally panned it. "Justin Bieber's career has officially become a performance art piece about how to systematically dismantle one of the biggest music empires on Earth," wrote one prominent reviewer. Another simply stated, "This album made my ears bleed, then apologize for existing."

Radio stations refused to play it. Sales plummeted. Spotify streams were non-existent, except for ironic listening parties. Calls from Scooter became increasingly frantic, then bewildered, then resigned.

Finally, after the album sold a paltry 300 copies in its second week and a planned stadium tour was canceled due to zero ticket sales, the call came from the label president himself.

"Justin," the voice on the other end was strained, "we… we've had to make some difficult decisions. Given the… direction your recent work has taken, and the… feedback from the market… we're going to have to… suspend your contract indefinitely. We just… we don't know what to do with you anymore."

Justin paused, savoring the words. "You mean… you're dropping me?"

"Effectively, yes. We wish you all the best in your… experimental endeavors." The line went dead.

Justin let out a whoop of triumph that echoed through the silent, no-longer-gilded studio. He burst into Chad's room, where his friend was trying to explain NFTs to a confused houseplant.

"We did it, Chad! We broke free! I'm officially creatively unviable! I'm free!"

Chad slowly removed his headphones. "So what now? Pottery? A yurt?"

Justin grinned, a genuine, unburdened smile that hadn't graced his face in years. "First, I'm going to learn how to bake sourdough. Then, maybe I'll buy a modest little cabin in the woods. And then, for the first time in forever, I'm going to pick up a guitar and play something just for me. No pressure, no expectations, no toilet flushes or sentient sock drawers. Just… music."

And for the first time in a decade, the music Justin Bieber made was truly, perfectly, his own. And sometimes, late at night, when no one was listening, he'd hum a little tune that vaguely sounded like a cat meowing. Old habits die hard.

Months turned into seasons in the secluded cabin nestled deep within a whispering redwood forest. Justin, now just ‘J.B.’ to the handful of local eccentrics he occasionally encountered at the general store, had traded designer sweats for comfortable flannel and meticulously styled hair for a perpetually messy bun. His sourdough starter, affectionately named 'Dough-minator', was thriving, and his pottery skills, while rudimentary, were improving. He made lopsided mugs and surprisingly sturdy, if imperfect, bowls.

The opulent studio in Malibu was a distant, almost forgotten dream. Here, his studio was a sun-drenched nook by a large window, overlooking a babbling brook. It held an old, worn acoustic guitar, a cheap keyboard, and a single, battered notebook filled with scribbled lyrics that would make Scooter Braun weep, but for entirely different reasons. There wasn't a microphone in sight, nor a mixing board.

One crisp autumn afternoon, as the scent of pine needles and damp earth filled the air, Justin sat by the window, idly strumming. He wasn't trying to write a hit, or even a song that made sense to anyone but himself. He was simply exploring the sounds, letting them flow. A stray, melancholic chord led to another. He found himself humming, a quiet melody that felt like the rustling leaves outside, or the gentle sigh of the wind through the trees.

Then, almost involuntarily, a familiar, slightly off-kilter, 'mraow' sound escaped his lips. He paused, a wry smile touching his lips. It wasn't the grating, intentionally discordant cat screech from "Toilet Flush Tango." This was a soft, almost tender meow, followed by another, then a third, each evolving into a melodic phrase. He found himself weaving the sounds he'd once weaponized into a delicate, understated melody – a quiet lament, perhaps, or a simple tune of contentment.

Chad visited once a month, bringing updates from the outside world alongside organic coffee beans and artisanal cheese. He’d found a niche selling digital art that depicted hyper-realistic yurts in fantastical landscapes. He often asked Justin, “Ever miss it, Biebs? The roar of the crowd? The private jets?”

Justin would just shake his head, a genuine calm in his eyes. “I still get to travel, Chad. To the creek and back. And the roar of the crowd? That’s just the wind in the trees now. Much better acoustics.”

One evening, by the flickering light of a beeswax candle, Justin played the “cat meow” tune for Chad. It was simple, raw, and undeniably his. It had no chorus, no bridge, no catchy hook designed for radio play. It was just a sequence of notes that felt like coming home.

Chad listened, really listened, for perhaps the first time in their many years of acquaintance. When Justin finished, a comfortable silence hung in the air.

“That…” Chad began, searching for the right words. “That’s actually… really good. Like, genuinely good. It’s… peaceful.”

Justin chuckled softly. “Yeah. It’s just music. For me.” He paused, then added, “Turns out, an actual cat meow, when you’re not trying to blow up the music industry with it, can be quite beautiful.”

He picked up a freshly baked loaf of sourdough, ripped off a hunk, and offered it to Chad. The faint, persistent hum of the industry machine had been replaced by the quiet hum of his own contentment, a steady, harmonious frequency that finally, truly, felt like freedom. And somewhere, deep in the woods, real cats name “Sushi and Tuna” stretched and let out a soft, satisfied purr!