An accidental click on YouTube turned Justin Bieber into a star
In 2007 Scooter Braun was hunting for videos of a different singer when he clicked on a 12-year-old from Stratford, Ontario, covering Ne-Yo's So Sick. He tracked down the boy's school, then his mother. Within about a year Justin Bieber had a record deal, and within three he was topping the Billboard album chart.
Bieber was born in London, Ontario, on 1 March 1994 to parents who were both 18 and split up soon afterwards. His mother, Pattie Mallette, raised him in low-income housing in Stratford with help from her mother and stepfather, working a string of poorly paid office jobs. He went to French-immersion schools and taught himself piano, drums, guitar and trumpet. After he placed in the top three at a local singing contest, his mother posted the clip online for relatives, and more covers followed. That summer he also busked on the steps of the Avon Theatre with a rented guitar.
Mallette hesitated when Braun called, partly because he was Jewish and she had prayed for a Christian manager, but church elders persuaded her. At 13 Bieber flew to Atlanta to record demos, and a week later he was singing for Usher. L.A. Reid signed him to Island Records in October 2008. His first single, One Time, came out in July 2009, and the debut EP My World made him the first artist to put seven songs from a debut on the Hot 100.
My World 2.0 opened at number one in 2010, making him the youngest solo male to top the Billboard 200 since Stevie Wonder in 1963. Puberty caught up with him that year; he admitted some notes on Baby were now out of reach and had to be sung live in a lower key. He sang Lionel Richie's opening line on the 25th-anniversary remake of We Are the World for Haiti.
After a run of controversies, the 2015 album Purpose produced three US number ones, and those songs filled the top three of the UK chart at once, a first. He has sold an estimated 150 million records and holds a record 22 MTV Europe Music Awards.
Source: Justin Bieber
