12.01- 12.02

http://www.usatoday.com/life/music/news/2010-06-21-justinbieber17_CV_N.htm
12.01
It's not much past 6 a.m., and Justin Bieber looks like any 16-year-old should at such an hour ...

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If you had landed here from another planet, it would be easy to think that Bieber is some sort of local deity. But often it's Bieber who feels like the alien, teleported from the galaxy Obscurity — aka Stratford, Ontario— directly into the maw of the American music machine.

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"It's crazy," Bieber says during a rare respite as he prepares for his aptly named My World tour, a six-month headlining run whose sold-out first leg kicks off Wednesday at the XL Center in Hartford, Conn. "Sometimes, I can't believe I'm doing this. I wake up and I think, where am I?"

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Relaxing in a Midtown hotel, playing video games on his iPad the day before his Today appearance, Bieber looks every bit the average teen — admittedly, one who has been blessed with no acne, a pixie-like grin and a mop of sandy hair that covers all but his face.

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But it's what happens when Bieber opens the mouth that has stripped him of a normal childhood. The cute kid can sing.

"He's a one-man Beatles," says Matthew Rettenmund, editor of Popstar! magazine, who bowed to reader requests and put Bieber on the cover in January. Now he plans to include him in every cover's collage of faces this year. "Justin is the heir to that throne occupied by Shaun Cassidy and countless others, but he's also the first real example of someone discovered by the Web."

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"It wasn't overnight, I put in a lot of time on the road going to radio stations at 6 a.m. and singing, all in the middle of my growth spurt." The 5-foot-6 singer laughs. "Thanks to the music industry, I'm going to be really short."

最後接
Of his hair, he shrugs and says: "I just kind of liked it, and now people are copying it. I used to have a buzz cut as a kid."



12.02
In 2007, when he was 12, Bieber entered a local singing competition and placed second doing Ne-Yo's So Sick. Mallette thought it would be fun to post a video of that performance on YouTube. Millions tuned in. More videos followed.


Usher is convinced Bieber can make the leap into adulthood without losing popularity, much as he and Timberlake have done.

"Justin (Bieber) is a talented child and one I felt I could nurture," Usher says. "He has a passion more than anything. I remember having that as a kid, and I see it in his eyes. ..
"I like that he stands up for himself, but also is very open to direction."

Bieber also is human. And the grind required to forge a career often gets to him. When he recently complained that he missed just being a normal kid, "I told him you have to be dedicated," Usher says. "It's about sacrifice, so be sure it's what you want." (In the end, Usher relented and flew in a gaggle of Bieber's buddies for a weekend of goofing off.)

Team Bieber consists of roughly a dozen people, including Usher, Smith and Mallette (Bieber's father, Jeremy, is remarried and has two young children). But none are around when Bieber sits down to chat while he digs into a plate of Boston Market chicken. Leaving a teen star alone with a reporter is far from typical public-relations protocol, and it speaks to the team's confidence in the star's grounded nature.

Grew up in the church

This decidedly un-MTV Cribsattitude likely has roots in his pious upbringing. Bieber says he and his mother have always attended church and "are really involved with God. He's always been like, I don't know, he's held our family together. We grew up with not a lot of money, my mom and I. She was young when she had me. We struggled, but we never blamed him."

A bit later, Bieber's mother hustles over to the Today stage in anticipation of her son's performance. A petite woman with an easy smile and a copy of the Billy Graham book Angels in her hand, Mallette shrugs to deflect a question about how she is coping with her son's sudden and outsized popularity.

"Sometimes it's crazy, sure," she says. "But we just try to take things one day at a time."