And Finally Artist News

Justin Bieber tells fans to stop “obnoxious” screaming

By | Published on Wednesday 19 October 2016

Justin Bieber

Justin Bieber is still having to contend with his fans’ incessant screaming as his UK tour continues. Having berated an audience at the O2 Arena in London last week, he told a crowd in Birmingham on Monday night that the noise they were making was “obnoxious”.

The singer was attempting to tell the audience at the Barclaycard Arena about the loneliness of touring, but they refused to sit in reverential silence for long enough to listen.

“I’ve been on tour for a while now”, he began. “I’ve been away from my family. I’ve been away from a lot of my friends… Hey, guys. Could you do me a favour? Could you guys just relax? For, like, two seconds? Thank you”.

He may have said thank you, but the screaming didn’t actually stop for anything like two seconds. Or at all. Still, he gave it another go: “So I’ve been on the road for like, ah… I get it, I get it, I get it, but I’m like two feet away from you and I can hear you. I appreciate it, I appreciate all the love, it’s amazing, but can you show it in a different way? Just try to show you love me in a different way”.

That’s just the sort of thing Jesus would say, isn’t it? Show your love in a different way. This could have been Bieber’s sermon on the mount if only everyone would shut up and let him speak. He just wants to deliver a parable about how hard and lonely touring can be. Now, instead, he had to switch to a lecture on the history of and modern views about screaming.

“The screaming is just so obnoxious”, he said. “I get it, it’s been in our blood and some [you think] random good will come when you scream and stuff, but if we could just scream after the songs – enjoy the song, scream, it was awesome, it was fun – and then, you take a chill pill for a second and we just listen to me speak, because I don’t feel like I’m being heard sometimes and it gets a little frustrating. So, if when I’m speaking you guys could not scream at the top of your lungs, is that cool with you guys? Could we do that? Okay”.

The audience was screaming throughout this whole speech of course, though the biggest scream came when he asked “could we do that?” So maybe he was getting somewhere. Though if I were an audience member, I might be slightly miffed that I’d just been called obnoxious by my hero.

“Like I was saying”, he began again. “I’ve been on tour for a while now. I’m away from my friends, I’m away from my family. So it can be tough sometimes… but I have all you beautiful people to keep me company. Now scream. There we go”.

Boom! Save! It might have looked like he was talking about the loneliness of touring and the dehumanisation of crowds, but no. I feel there is much we can learn from this young man. I wish I’d bought tickets to one of his shows now.

A fan who videoed this whole exchange and then slung it up on YouTube told the Birmingham Mail that they’d only started recording in order to capture the sound of the screaming “because we didn’t think we’d heard anything quite as loud at a concert before”. So maybe Justin had a point.



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