Justin Bieber

I watched the last ten minutes of Ellen a week or so ago, with Justin Bieber performing his latest hit. I didn’t catch the title, but then I didn’t really care. It was something repetitively innocuous about “love, baby.” The females were going crazy, especially the teeny-boppers, as they were once called, and even earlier called the bobby-soxers swooning over Frank. But whereas young Blue Eyes in those early years wasn’t as good a singer as he’d later become, he was a world or two better than young Master Bieber. Here’s this androgynous lad with carefully coiffed hair, doing his little dance steps with his backup singers/dancers, and the audience went crazy. The only parallel I could think of was Brittany Spears, the young sex-bomb who made all the pimply-faced boys soil their pants. She, like Justin, was a product of the media, both short on real talent, long on looks. I hear myself sounding like an old fogey who can’t appreciate the contemporary musical scene. True, I still most admire singers from the past who sang understandably and well without electronic help, singers like Frank Sinatra, Vic Damone, Jack Jones, Sarah Vaughan, Barbra Streisand, Ella Fitzgerald. But there are still plenty of legitimate singers today who rely on talent instead of media hype—Michael Buble, Carrie Underwood, Beyonce, Josh Groben, almost any cast member from Glee. So, Justin Bieber, let’s see if you can step up to the plate and become a real singer instead of just a pretty boy.