#Believe
Me and Vanessa rocking the shades on the set of the “Boyfriend” video.
“Right Here” is one of my favorite songs on Believe because I worked on the lyrics and the melody, so I got to build this track from the ground up. It’s such a smooth, chilled song that really gets its point across. And, I had the opportunity to work with Drake, who I totally respect. He’s so cool and down to earth, plus he’s always got some great melodies and vocally we are on the same vibe. Drake and I wanted to work together because we knew we could create a great song for our fans.
Our only motivation was to come up with a song that felt right for both of us, and I totally think we did that with “Right Here.”
So I’d had this idea in mind to write a song about always being around if someone important needs me. I kept thinking about them not needing anyone else’s shoulder to cry on because I would always be right here for them. On another note, I have so many people in my life who have given me that sense of security and I wanted to let them know I’d do the same for them. Loads of people have done a lot for me over the years, and I am extremely grateful for their support—
everyone from my mom, dad, grandparents, Scooter, and our entire team, but most of all, you, my fans, who have never let me down. It’s because of you that I get to do the thing I love most, and that’s really cool. I made a promise to myself and my fans that I am never going to leave them and I know they are never going to leave me. I am going to be someone who is going to change but I am always going to be there—I will still be KidRauhl.
Me and Drake got an amazing vibe going in the studio. We both wanted to create something special, and there was magic in the air that day.
Joking around with Gabe Saporta from Cobra Starship.
Everyone knows I love a good practical joke and no one—and I mean no one—is immune. OK, there are a few people who I have called a truce with (you know who you are), but for the most part, I will take whatever chance I get to pull off a great prank.
While we were on our European tour, I made Dan Kanter my latest victim by playing a prank on him in Dublin, Ireland. He never even saw it coming—a trait that makes me really good at pulling off these types of practical jokes and everyone else a sitting duck.
We were staying in a hotel outside of the city, so there wasn’t much to do. When I get bored, I begin to plan my next target, and that’s pretty much what happened that day. The prank went down over Twitter. We all know rumors spread like wild fire, especially through social media. That’s when I got the idea to get a hold of his cell phone and go for it. I locked myself in the bathroom at the hotel and sent out a tweet from his account that read, “Hey guys just wanted to inform all of the fans first that I have resigned from working with Justin and I will be deleting my twitter soon.” As soon as I hit the “tweet button” on his phone, I verified the information on my Twitter account too. “You will be missed @dankanter but what you did was horrible. you will never be forgiven.”
Dan’s phone started blowing up with messages from people wanting to know what happened! Even his grandmother called out of concern. Much to my surprise, our fans were shocked—so much so that Fredo decided it was time to put an end to the joke by tweeting:
“@dankanter don’t worry. I saw Justin tweet that from your phone. Everyone FALSE ALARM! LOL *as Dan fights Justin for his phone back*”
Just to make sure everyone got that it was only a joke, Dan confirmed it was all a big prank, tweeting: “Got pranked by JB. Guess I should cancel those auditions for @davematthewsbnd @phish @metallica and @bobdylan and get #REVENGE”
As for me?
Well, trying to pull one over on my millions of Twitter followers (you know I love you guys!) seemed like a funny idea, but looking back, maybe it wasn’t.
Oh, who am I kidding…? It was hilarious!
I don’t know why, but pranking Dan is a lot of fun for me. Maybe it’s because he is such a sweet guy who has a big heart and is always kind to everyone. Anyone who meets Dan thinks he is the nicest person on the planet, so when I mess with him, it’s just…well, funny!
One of the best pranks I’ve ever pulled off was after doing the Juno Awards in St. John’s, Newfoundland. This one took some serious
preplanning. Three weeks ahead of time, I told Dan I was planning a surprise for him in St. John’s. I didn’t tell him who it was, but I said that I had arranged a private dinner with one of his favorite artists after the Junos. I told him to bring a suit because it was going to be a formal event. Dan traveled around with a garment bag for weeks, lugging that suit everywhere we went until we got to Newfoundland. Believe me, it’s a hassle to try and keep a suit from wrinkling while touring.
Dan spent those three weeks asking everyone on tour if they knew who he was going to meet. Of course, everyone was in on the joke so they kept quiet or responded by simply saying, “You’ll see.” The suspense was driving him crazy and I loved every second of it!
Every time Dan came to me and asked who he was meeting, he’d take a wild guess.
“Is it Dylan?”
“You’ll see,” I’d say.
“Elton John?”
“You’ll have to wait bro…”
“Bon Jovi?”
I’d just smile and say, “You’ll find out soon enough.”
For whatever reason, Dan convinced himself it was Bon Jovi, so he started reading up on the band, memorizing each member’s bio so he’d be totally in the know when they met.
The night of the dinner, I sent a car to pick Dan up and take him to the restaurant. When he got to the front door the manager met him and brought him back to a room where a large security guard was waiting. The security guard spoke very little English, and when he did speak, he had a thick German accent, so he didn’t say much of anything when Dan tried to talk to him. The manager seated Dan at the table and told him to wait there.
Dan actually began to sweat, wondering who’d be coming through the door. Five minutes went by before the bodyguard said to Dan, “Are you ready to meet the band?” At this point, he was visibly shaking as they walked into another private room.
When he walked through the door I was standing there in a hoodie sweatshirt with the rest of the gang, who were all dressed in casual clothes laughing hysterically at Dan who was in his suit! Dan thought it was hilarious. I actually had a dinner waiting for everyone, so in the end it wasn’t so bad—except maybe for Dan who was in his suit for the rest of the night.
Anthony, one of my dancers, totally didn’t see me coming! You’ve been pranked!
Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. I can’t really explain the reason why, but people sure do like to talk about my hair. I’m just a regular guy who wakes up like everyone else and puts clothes on—usually a hoodie, jeans, some fresh kicks, and a baseball hat. I’m not really sure how something as simple as a haircut catches on, but mine sure did. If you look back at music icons through time, everyone from Elvis, the Beatles, Billy Idol, and Michael Jackson have all influenced style, especially hair styles, so I guess it makes sense that my haircut might do the same.
I wore my signature style for several years until one day I decided that I wanted to do something different—you know, change my look like David Beckham does. My hair stylist, Vanessa, is the only person I let cut my hair. We met at my first professional photo shoot ever. She was given the task of cutting my hair so that it still looked suitable for me. I felt comfortable with it and it captured what she referred to as my “Canadian hockey helmet hair.” I think that meant she didn’t like the look I had going. I was still recovering from the worst haircut ever—what I painfully referred to as my Bart Simpson cut. Needless to say, I was hesitant to let anyone mess with my hair ever again. I am definitely vocal about what I like and don’t like, so I was placing a lot of trust in Vanessa for that first cut. But once she gained my trust she gained my loyalty—and I have never looked back.
So when it came time to change things up, Vanessa and I talked
it through and we were on the exact same page—as my music and career were growing and evolving, so did my personal style—including my hair. OK, so hang on. Breathe deeply. Hold the phones. Flip your hair one last time and for God’s sake, someone, please alert the media because I got—a haircut! Really? It’s a haircut, people! Just a haircut. The fabric of the universe wasn’t altered—just the length of my hair!
Believe me, there are days I’ve thought about shaving my head completely—you know to make myself a little more aerodynamic on the basketball court or channel my inner Michael Jordan. Could you imagine the media frenzy that would cause? Although I’d likely never really shave my head, in 2011 I pretended that I did on Jimmy Kimmel Live—or, as I like to refer to him, “Bieber’s barber.” Don’t worry, it was just a joke and Vanessa doesn’t ever have to worry about Jimmy taking her job!
With my dear friend Vanessa—the only person in the world who is allowed near my hair!
I definitely have my own style—I like being able to express myself through my clothes.
Given my love of practical jokes, it only made sense that after five years of it being off the air I became the first guest host on MTV’s revival of their hit show, Punk’d. The first show we did involved planning my biggest prank ever.
And who was my unsuspecting victim? My good friend Taylor Swift.
I called and asked Taylor if she would come over to my beach house and help me write a song for my album. Taylor agreed and even asked me if I would do a surprise open for her at her show later that week in Los Angeles.
While we were at “the studio” (actually a house in Malibu rigged by the Punk’d team to look like an actual beachside recording studio), I convinced Taylor to set off some fireworks with me, one of which “accidentally” landed on a boat which was hosting a wedding party, setting fire to it—meaning the guests (who were all actors) had to swim to shore for their lives. Taylor totally believed she blew up the boat! She is such a sweet and kind person and though Taylor didn’t start crying, she was very freaked out thinking she had ruined the strangers’ wedding. By the time the “bride” swam to shore, Taylor was so apologetic, saying, “Oh my God! I’m so sorry!” over and over to the bride and groom, who weren’t very happy with her.
I, of course, was totally in on it—making Taylor feel responsible for the situation until I finally had to tell her what was up and that she had just been Punk’d.
Thankfully, she started laughing and said, “How could you do this to me?”
Another episode I did on Punk’d involved the old “bait and switch” on Miley Cyrus. She thought MTV had planned a prank where she was supposed to punk me, but what she didn’t know was that the joke was really on her because it was all an elaborate setup from the start. The concept was to make Miley think she’s set up some skateboarders to harass me about where I parked my car, but in reality I was going to make it look like I completely snap and start beating up the kids in the parking lot. Miley watched the entire scene unfold on the video monitors in the trailer where she was hiding from me, still totally unaware that the joke was actually on her. After I start beating down the alleged skaters, Miley freaked out and immediately wanted to call the prank off. She pleaded with the producers to stop shooting and help the kids in the parking lot, who at this point were laying on the ground as if they were really hurt. Before she could get out the door, I took off running so she wouldn’t be able to confront me on the spot.
A few minutes later, I suddenly reappeared to let her know that not only had she just been Punk’d—I also wanted her and the rest of the world to know that I am un-punkable! Her reaction was pretty hilarious and I loved every second.
I hope I get to do more shows in the future because it’s the type of pranks I love to pull and MTV and the producers of Punk’d can help me scheme more elaborate stunts than I could ever pull off on my own. My former stylist and good friend Ryan is working with the team at MTV and Punk’d now, so I am sure they haven’t seen the last of me!
I wonder who my next victim will be?
Whenever we get toward the end of a tour, the practical jokes among the crew and me become kind of a regular thing. We’ve been on the road for months and everyone gets a little punchy. I guess we like to keep things interesting, and believe me, they are!
By now you know I can’t be punk’d, but I will admit that my crew got me pretty good on September 5, 2010, at the Maryland State Fair show during the North American leg of the My World tour. At one point in every show I have a tradition of bringing a girl from the audience up on the stage so I can sing “One Less Lonely Girl” and present her with a dozen roses. Usually, this is a very special moment for the both of us, but at this particular show my crew decided to pull one over on me.
Boy did they ever. And I mean, BOY!
It’s not easy to get something past me, but my crew decided it would be hilarious to bring Marcus Wade, our special effects operator, up on the stage instead of a girl from the audience. Marcus is a big burly dude who definitely looks like he does a lot of heavy lifting. He’s hardly what I expected, so when I saw him sitting atop the stool in the center of the stage, I practically stopped cold in my tracks.
“Hold up. That’s a grown man!” I said to myself.
But I did what I had to do and kept right on singing, changing up the words to “One Less Lonely Boy” without missing a beat.
There was no way I was going to give Marcus a dozen roses, so I handed those to an audience member in the front row. I made my way over to Marcus, who was reaching out to me like a lovesick puppy, only instead of hugging him, I gave him an open-handed smack across the top of his shaved head. Knowing I had just been pranked in front of an entire audience, I did the only thing I could think to do in the moment—I grabbed my general manager, Allison, from backstage, as I knew she was the mastermind behind pulling this off. I brought her out so I could hug her and avoid any contact with Marcus. Yeah, it would have been the perfect plan, except Marcus picked me up in his arms and carried me off stage like a little rag doll. Good one, Allison—just remember, paybacks can be brutal!
I have the best fans in the world, but some of them have become what we refer to as “Super Fans,” meaning fans that follow me around from city to city, everywhere I go. (You know who you are!) They somehow show up in the front row at concerts during various legs of my tour. One fan, Teddy, came to see me in Paris, Zurich, and Israel! Now that’s dedication.
We were touring in Australia for the first time ever, so Scooter was getting tons of requests from every media and press outlet for interviews with me. We also got a tweet from @JBSource, a Twitter-based fan club that has 90,000 followers of their own. It turned out that the two girls who created it were coming to my show. The girls somehow got to Scooter to see if they could interview me for their Twitter page. They wanted to do a video interview and post it for the other kids to see. We had already turned down over 100 different outlets, but we both knew we had to make time for these girls. Scooter said they were the most important interview we could do there.
And man, was he right.
We brought in the two girls, one of their dads and two of their friends. I loved doing that interview because I totally knew who they were. It turned out that their video was one of the most viewed videos of that week—all of the fans on their site watched it, which was awesome for me because speaking directly with my fans is one of my favorite things to do.
This picture was taken backstage during a meet and greet in Santiago, Chile. The little girl in my arms slept the entire time. I couldn’t help but love that she was unimpressed to be backstage at a Justin Bieber concert—it was kind of refreshing and very sweet.
Before playing in Barcelona, I’d only done one other general admission show and I vowed I’d never do another ever again. Since there are no assigned seats, everyone jams the arena and tries to get as close to the stage as they can. It’s like one giant mosh pit. The crowds get so crazy that I didn’t want anyone to get hurt. H
owever, the Palau Sant Jordi Arena in Barcelona only does general admission shows, so I had no choice but to go on with the show as planned. It had been a really hot and humid day, and people had been waiting outside the arena for hours in the sun. We arranged to have water handed around to keep everyone hydrated, but people were passing out everywhere.
Once they were allowed inside the arena it was an insane scene, like watching the famous running of the bulls, except it was people charging the stage for their “spot.” Thankfully, no one got hurt in the stampede, but we were all concerned because of the heat and the size of the crowd. The temperature inside the arena was worse than being outside because the air was still and humid. We had extra medics on hand and lots of extra security for that show, and besides a few fainting fans along the way, it pretty much went off without a glitch.
Justin Bieber: Just Getting Started (100% Official) Page 6