Justin Bieber arrived on the Grammys stage Sunday night dressed for a crucifixion.
He appeared for his performance of “Yukon” naked but for boxer shorts and heavy socks, his skin slathered in tattoos, a purple guitar slung around his neck. I’m here before you without armor, he seemed to be saying. Do your worst.
It triggered shock, and perhaps a bit of a protective impulse. Over the past decade, Bieber has come by his anxiety honestly, a teen star turned wayward young adult, whose re-emergence to critical acclaim this year, with his seventh studio album, “Swag,” was a welcome surprise.
He was up for four Grammys on Sunday, including album of the year. And yet he didn’t appear to be on a mission of salesmanship and convincing. In fact, for the first minute, he didn’t sing at all. Standing on a woolly rug, he tossed off the song’s sleazy opening peals and looped them with a pedal. Then he added a beat from a drum pad, and looped that as well.
Once he was free to sing, the musical bed of jagged, sensual hiccups he’d built matched the confident anguish of his tone. “What would I do / if I didn’t love you, baby?” he moaned. “What would I do / if I didn’t love you, baby?” he boasted. For most of the song, his eyes were closed and his arms were crossed, part defensive posture and part self-embrace. His singing, which is ordinarily sweet and direct, was more complicated — alternately tense and languid, full of measured attitude.
This was a high-degree-of-difficulty swerve, and by far the night’s most memorable and improbable performance. It also served as a focal moment for the show: a contemplative landing place in between the exuberance of the best new artist nominees and the communal spirit of the memorial tributes. (The other main superstar performers, Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars, essentially did cosplay of their earlier selves.)
It also forced reflection — about how Bieber has been perceived and pilloried, about how celebrity tends to extinguish the brightness from the eyes of its most promising young charges, about how by the time a spotlight like the Grammys stage arrives, there’s little room for error, or humanity,
That Bieber would thrive under these circumstances wasn’t guaranteed. He remains somewhat removed from the celebrity mainstream. When the host Trevor Noah approached him during the opening monologue, he looked stressed, as if Bieber were a fragile dish he feared breaking.
And to be fair, the Bieber that performed embodied that vulnerability, but in a far more durable and thoughtful fashion. His choice to perform unaccompanied except by his own loops was a literal means of communicating handmade artistry — the stuff of Ed Sheeran and Kanye West, of Tune-Yards and Andrew Bird. And also of Dijon and Mk.gee, two of Bieber’s primary collaborators on his new music, who blend texture and songcraft to rich effect.
But that choice takes on a different dimension coming from Bieber, who at his pop peak often appeared to be trapped inside his biggest hits, executing but not always enjoying. This resilient performance instantly reframed Bieber by nailing a familiar Grammy mode — the pivot to credibility, when an artist known for something light reveals themselves to be quite heavy after all.
Bieber took home no awards on Sunday night, but he carried himself like someone who wasn’t terribly preoccupied with trophies. The only other prop onstage during his set was a vertical mirror off to his left side, which both suggested a way to observe him without distracting him, and also that he truly was concerned with an audience of one — himself.
Jon Caramanica is a pop music critic who hosts “Popcast,” The Times’s music podcast.
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