The tear that runs down his cheek in a solitary streak doesn’t cause unsightly stains or bloodshot eyes, but Justin Bieber would have known the fury it would fuel.
Sure enough, after uploading two selfies of himself crying to his 292 million Instagram followers last weekend, all hell broke loose.
Was the pop star suffering another mental health crisis? After all, her previous battles with everything from drug and sex addiction to low self-esteem have been well-documented since she found fame as a teenager.
Or was he hinting at trouble in his five-year marriage to Hailey Baldwin Bieber, 27, a socialite, top model and devout Christian who is credited with not only helping Justin recover from the excesses of fame, but also Have you kept your religious faith intact? ?
The couple has always made it clear that their marriage is no picnic — or, as Hailey said in 2019, “really rocky,” and rumors of a split circulated online after Hailey was photographed at a pre-Oscars party. without Justin in February.
The chaos ensued after Justin Bieber uploaded two selfies of himself crying to his 292 million Instagram followers last weekend.
The star also posted a photo of herself in Central Park, New York, adding a curious comment about marriage.
Hailey appeared to try to quell speculation about any marital problems when she reposted a photo of Justin.
Although gossip sites reported that she had moved out of the couple’s £20 million Beverly Hills mansion and was seen without her wedding ring, Hailey, daughter of actor Stephen Baldwin and niece of actor Alec Baldwin, dismissed suggestions of a split as “delusional” and described Justin as the ‘love of my life’ on her 30th birthday last month.
Until now, all my support. However, beneath those Instagram photos of her husband visibly upset with her, Hailey wrote that Justin was “a pretty crybaby,” with a smiling crying emoji interpreted by some as a taunt.
So what is the truth behind that tear? And Justin is too worried for even his beloved wife to save him?
Given the fishbowl level of fame the singer has lived in for nearly three decades, it’s perhaps inevitable that his mental health has taken a hit.
Raised in poverty in Ontario, Canada, by his single mother, Pattie Mallette, who, he said, sometimes suffered from depression (his largely absent father Jeremy, he added, “has anger issues”), the singer found fame, at age 13, after his Future manager Scooter Braun found videos of him at a local singing competition that his mother had uploaded to YouTube.
By the time he was 16, hits like One Time and One Less Lonely Girl turned him into what Justin describes as a “made” star.
Meanwhile, Hailey’s privileged upbringing was a world away from Justin’s. One of two sisters, Hailey was home-schooled in New York by her devout Christian parents: her mother Kennya, 56, and her father Stephen, 57, a recovering cocaine addict whose films include The Usual Suspects and Born On The Fourth Of July.
“I have some serious morals that were instilled in me because of how I was raised,” Hailey has said.
She seemed bewildered upon meeting Justin for the first time in 2009 backstage during his appearance on America’s Today show. He was 15, she was 12. Her uncle Alec had given her tickets to the show.
“Everyone was in love with him,” Hailey later said. “But for the first few years we had a strange age difference.”
Of course, despite his heartthrob status and an army of fans called “Beliebers,” Justin, who started smoking marijuana at age 12 or 13, was still youthfully vulnerable. Last month, images emerged of the then-15-year-old with Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs, the rapper who faces an ongoing sex trafficking investigation.
In the video, Combs talks about spending 48 hours with the singer looking for girls.
“Right now (Justin) is spending 48 hours with Diddy, him and his son,” Combs says. “They’re having the time of their lives, and we can’t really reveal where we’re hanging out and what we’re doing.” But it’s definitely every 15-year-old’s dream.” They are, he says, “going to go crazy.”
As Justin’s fame grew, his life fell apart, boundless and rocked by the adulation of his millions of young fans. At 18, he admitted, “he had no skills in the real world, with millions of dollars and access to anything he wanted.”
It was, he recalled, a “terrifying” time, during which he described drugs as “a numbing agent that just keeps happening.”
Justin has been married for five years to Hailey Baldwin Bieber, 27, a socialite, top model and devout Christian.
Hailey is credited with helping Justin recover from the excesses of fame.
He took “everything” from alcohol to the tranquilizer Xanax, MDMA and mushrooms, to the point that his staff took his pulse at night. “People don’t know how bad it got,” she said. ‘I would wake up in the morning and the first thing I would do was take pills, smoke a joint and start the day. “It just became scary.”
In 2013, his behavior became increasingly erratic. The then-19-year-old was accused of throwing eggs at his neighbor’s house in a Los Angeles celebrity enclave (the lawsuit was settled in 2015); He was photographed leaving a brothel in Brazil and abandoned his pet capuchin monkey in Germany. The following year, in Miami, he was arrested for driving his Lamborghini under the influence of alcohol.
He was remorseful, describing his antics as ‘idiotic’ and somehow managed to keep his fans – and his on-again, off-again girlfriend from 2011 to 2018, actress Selena Gomez – on his side.
Then, in 2014, at the height of his volatility, Justin did something totally unexpected: he found God.
Hailey recalled, “One day, Justin walked into Hillsong (the New York church) and said, ‘Hey, you’ve gotten older.’ I was like, ‘Yeah, what’s up?’ He eventually became my best friend. Meanwhile, Hillsong director Carl Lentz convinced Justin to move to his New Jersey home for an “informal detox” where the couple played basketball and hockey for several weeks. , after which Justin says he stopped using drugs.
“I’m so proud of him,” Hailey told Vogue in 2019. “Keeping it up without a sober coach, AA, or classes.” I think it’s extraordinary. “He is, in some ways, a walking miracle.”
It seemed that in religion Justin had found a sense of belonging that replaced his self-loathing. When he and Hailey met at a church conference in Miami in June 2018, he had taken a vow of celibacy because he said he needed to address his “legitimate problem with sex,” which, he said, “can cause a lot of things.” of pain’.
The “common denominator” in their reconciliation “is always the church,” Hailey said, while Justin described getting married as his “calling” and something he was “forced” to do.
He proposed in the Bahamas the following month and hinted to Vogue that they didn’t have sex until after their low-key civil ceremony in New York in September.
However, marriage has not been the panacea that Justin expected. As he put it: “The first year of marriage was really hard.”
He was seen crying in a car with Hailey and said he had “a little emotional breakdown because I thought marriage was going to solve all my problems and it didn’t.”
Hailey didn’t seem to be enjoying herself much either, saying in a joint interview with Justin the following year: “I’m not going to sit here and lie and say it’s all a magical fantasy.” It’s always going to be difficult.
“You don’t wake up every day saying, ‘I’m absolutely in love and you’re perfect.’ That’s not what being married is. Marriage,” he continued, “was about wanting to fight for something.”
Fighting with each other was “good,” added Justin, who suggested the couple had been too afraid of saying the “wrong” thing to express themselves, “and it’s been really hard to get (Hailey) to say what she feels.”
Of course, millions in the bank have softened some of the emotional blows. In 2023, the Biebers bought their Beverly Hills mansion and much of their married life is shared on social media. They have two dogs, Oscar and Piggy Lou, and matching Peach tattoos to celebrate Justin’s number one single of the same name.
Having children, something they’ve both professed a desire for, will take “another season of sailing,” Hailey says, especially since her modeling career has gone stratospheric. Her net worth is now estimated at £16 million and in 2022 she launched Rhode, her beauty and skincare line.
There are also plans to pursue acting. “I would love to be a Bond girl,” she said.
Meanwhile, Justin hasn’t released an album since Justice in 2021 and still appears to be searching for an elusive peace.
A friend speculates that after Justin’s intense levels of fame, “standard dopamine levels don’t turn you on anymore.” Others speculate that his fractured upbringing is to blame.
Although Justin has praised his wife for having ‘walked hand in hand with me while still keeping my emotions, mind, body and soul intact (sic),’ one wonders how much longer she will be prepared to do that, and if the cracks in her marriage of five years are the real factor behind this week’s tears.