HOWARD SACKSTEIN
By the end of every show, each member of the audience recognised that Mercury had surrendered every part of himself to the crowd.
The Justin Bieber Purpose Tour was not that show! More than a performance of the band Queen, Justin Bieber at The FNB Stadium in Soweto, this past Sunday, was more like the British Queen – she arrives, she struts around, she waves, she leaves, but the bottom line is, she doesn’t do much.
Bieber arrived in South Africa after his second set of concerts in Hayarkon Park in Tel Aviv. During his latest concert in Israel, a religious woman, three weeks overdue, gave birth during the show.
Bieber and his Jewish manager, Scooter Braun, toured Israel together, posting Instagram pictures of himself and Bieber taking helicopter tours of Israel and swimming in the Dead Sea.
Braun who discovered Bieber on YouTube when the waiflike Canadian superstar was only 12, met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and wrote: “Such an incredible week. Although passions run high in this region, I walked away knowing that Israel is a beautiful and open society.
“Great food, great music, great innovation and great people. As the grandson of Holocaust survivors, I know the importance of the State where the Jewish people can forever be safe.”
During Bieber’s first tour of Israel in 2011, he commissioned a Hebrew tattoo on his left ribcage which says “Yeshua”, translated into English as Jesus.
A number of Bieber’s tattoos are religious in nature; Justin is a devout Christian. Scooter Braun revealed in 2010 that, for luck, Bieber reads the Shema before he goes on stage. “First he says a Christian prayer, then he says the Shema,” says Braun. “Justin heard me pray, he gets why I do it and now he does the same.”
Tens of thousands of Johannesburgers rushed the stage in the freezing cold and frigid rain at the weekend, to watch Bieber’s second appearance in the City of Gold.
Amid a staggering display of lasers, pyrotechnics and lighting which flayed across the misty arena, an understated Bieber arrived on stage in a nondescript tracksuit to underwhelm his audience with a lacklustre performance.
Bieber who successfully transitioned from a teen idol to a serious musician with his 2015 album “Purpose”, is a master musician, who clearly did not want to spend the night with his South African fans. One of the few interactions between the bored superstar and his audience, was when Biebs asked his fans to stop throwing light wands at him.
Strutting around the stage, the occasional dance move with his high energy athletic dancers and picking up a guitar, was simply not enough to make this more than a pedestrian performance.
Bieber ambled around the stage aimlessly and purposelessly. He appeared bored with both his audience and his performance. Absent from the concert was the sparkle and magic that has made him the most popular entertainer of his generation.
One of Bieber’s best songs of the evening was his massive hit “Sorry”, which has been watched more than 2,5 billion times on YouTube.
Is it too late now to say sorry?
‘Cause I’m missing more than just your body, oh
Is it too late now to say sorry?
Yeah, I know-oh-oh, that I let you down
Is it too late to say I’m sorry now?
Sadly for Bieber, the answer from the crowd was evident: Yup, it’s too late to say sorry, the Beliebers have lost faith.
