Justin Bieber performs his song Yukon during the Grammy Awards in Los Angeles on Feb. 1, 2026 – a performance that continues to resonate within the music industry.Kevin Winter/Getty Images
Justin Bieber’s startling, scene-stealing solo performance at this year’s Grammy Awards was the talk of music’s so-called biggest night. He wore nothing but socks and boxers, unconcerned with professional decorum – or even basic “no shoes, no service” societal standards.
The 32-year-old pop star showed up shorn-headed and unshaven; he could just as easily have been walking into the kitchen for a midnight piece of pie as he was leading up to the musical presentation of his life.
After strumming an electric guitar riff into a looping device and setting a lonely beat into a drum machine, the tan and tattooed Canadian sang Yukon, a slow, vaguely reggae-ed ode to love and SUVs. Make that self-love − a full-length mirror stood next to him.
This was a quiet, immaculate display of harmony and raw vulnerability by a pure musical animal appearing in front of an audience on his own terms.
When it was over − and I mean, turn-out-the-lights, Vince Carter slam-dunk-competition “it’s over” − a television camera panned to his socialite wife. Hailey Bieber flashed a hand gesture and satisfied look, as if to say, “I told you so.” Full credit to her for standing by her man-child.
The performance was a surprising elevation from an artist whose career has been both phenomenal and checkered. Bieber has performed publicly just twice since 2021, and his 2025 LP Swag, which earned four Grammy nominations, was his first album in four years.
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Health issues, both mental and physical, concert cancellations, creative lulls, self-admitted anger issues and enigmatic behaviour are part of a package that includes an often-awkward stage presence. His uncharismatic hosting of Saturday Night Live at the age of 18 in 2013, for example, was painful to watch.
On stage at Crypto.com Arena for the Grammys in Los Angeles, however, Bieber owned his introverted nature spectacularly, like a reverse peacock.
“Anyone who saw it saw someone in complete control of who he wants to be as a creator,” said Tyson Parker, executive director of Canada’s Walk of Fame. “This was a man, not a boy, who has shed so many skins in his career, who stood there in his shorts and sang his heart out.”
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Parker is a former vice-president with Universal Music Canada, Bieber’s label in this country. He was there in 2010 when the swoop-haired teen idol from Stratford, Ont., released his breakout hit Baby, a sign of things to come: “Thought you’d always be mine, mine … Now I’m all gone."
Bieber has been a come-and-go guy from the start, his professional status and personal well-being ebbing and flowing unpredictably. One day he’s among the world’s hottest pop stars; the next moment he’s troubled, bratty and irrelevant.
There’s more backsliding to Bieber than an Olympic luge trial.
After the release of Swag (and the follow-up Swag II), Rolling Stone magazine dubbed Bieber the “comeback kid of the year.” Time and time again, critics have applauded the singer’s career upswings. But that media narrative is getting tired − at this point, the tail is swagging the dog.
For every tantalizing Despacito (2017’s English-language remix of the Luis Fonsi Latin-pop hit that featured the Biebs), there is a groaner single such as 2020’s Yummy. When do we stop calling Bieber’s frequent revivals “comebacks,” and start recognizing his penchant for postponed shows, public gaffes and so-so albums for what it is: The frustrating ups and downs of a wildly inconsistent artist?
After a hiatus marked by a cancelled North American tour and facial paralysis in 2022 he said was caused by Ramsay Hunt syndrome, Bieber surprise-released Swag on July 11, 2025. Though it failed to debut at the top of the Billboard 200 chart and digital downloads were sluggish, the album’s streaming numbers were high enough to suggest a resurgence. Mature, reflective and often spiritually minded lyricism from the God-fearing father of a toddler was a good sign as well.
Fatherhood, family and faith have helped ground the pop star, industry watchers say.Renell Medrano/Supplied
Less than a month later, however, Bieber posted photos of himself on social media shooting an assault rifle and a pistol in an ammo-strewn open field. Shirtless, wearing flip-flops and his body fully inked, he looked more like a trailer-trash caricature than a pop icon.
That said, Bieber is undeniably riding a wave. While he didn’t convert any of his Grammy nods into statuettes, losing album of the year to Bad Bunny was no disgrace.
At this weekend’s Juno Awards in Hamilton, the eight-time winner is up for a career-high six trophies, tied for the most with Calgary singer/dancer Tate McRae. Next month, he headlines the taste-making Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio, Calif., along with Colombian singer-songwriter Karol G and Sabrina Carpenter.
“Good times, let’s keep them rolling, baby let’s enjoy the moment,” Bieber sings on the icy-synthed Swag-opener All I Can Take. “I got a gift, a-know it. I’ll cherish it and hold it. There’s a reason − there’s a reason for all this.”
Bieber, it would seem, is in a good place. Parting ways with long-time manager Scooter Braun in 2023 and selling his publishing rights and artist royalties from his master recordings to Hipgnosis Songs Capital in 2022 (for more than US$200-million, according to Billboard magazine) may have helped the singer get his swag back.
“It seems like he has found a renewed sense of independence and transparency,” said religion journalist Cathleen Falsani, who wrote the 2011 book, Belieber!: Fame, Faith and The Heart of Justin Bieber. “And that was telegraphed with the stripped-down Grammy performance. There wasn’t a lot of artifice to it. I think he’s saying that’s how he wants to be in the world now, which is how I believe he’s always wanted to be.”
Throughout his career, Bieber has often posted about his religious devotion on social media. Falsani thinks Bieber’s upbringing in a Canadian evangelical church helps keep him grounded. “It’s an anchor,” she says. “The boat might tip over, but Justin doesn’t sink to the bottom.”
If not at the bottom, Bieber has often been underwater. In early 2014 as a 19-year-old, he was charged with driving under the influence, resisting arrest without violence and driving with an expired licence after a late-night drag-racing escapade in Miami Beach. A week later, he turned himself in at a Toronto police station and was charged with assault in connection with an attack on a local limousine driver in late 2013.
Bieber performs in L.A. in 2016, after a series of public missteps took some of the teenage pop star’s glamour away.The Associated Press
Before that, he attracted criticism for writing in the guest book at the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam that he was sure the Holocaust victim “would have been a Belieber.” In 2012, the Sorry singer was named Villain of the Year by British music magazine Kerrang! in the same year he earned Juno’s Fan Choice Award.
But now? He’s a financially secure first-time father whose Swag II is up for album of the year at the Junos. While he won’t perform at Sunday’s gala, Bieber’s star turn at the Grammys still reverberates within the industry.
“There was a lot of emotion on the stage,” said Allan Reid, president of the Junos and the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. “I also felt he was reaching a new level of artistic expression.”
A memorable award-show appearance can significantly boost a career. Jessie Reyez’s collaboration with Daniel Caesar on her song Figures at the 2018 Junos in Vancouver, for example, was one of Junos’ most streamed pieces of content.
Even a non-televised showcase can pay off. At the Ottawa Junos in 2017, William Prince’s performance of Breathless during an in-memoriam segment at a private Junos dinner took breaths away.
Three months later, Prince’s manager at the time, Nathalie Kleinschmit, told Reid the positive reaction from the appearance changed her client’s life.
“A strong performance can become a crystallizing moment,” Reid said. “It can be career-defining.”
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Or career re-establishing. Bieber’s striking Yukon staging at the Grammys confirmed his prodigious ability for anyone who may have forgotten.
Some had not.
“At Universal Music, we always knew Justin Bieber was a first-round talent,” said Parker, using a sports analogy. “The songs were there and the image was there, right from the beginning.”
Parker doesn’t characterize what’s happening with Bieber today as a comeback.
“It never has been because he’s never really gone away. His capacity for reinvention is endless, and it feels like now that he’s turning the page of a career arc that could be lifelong.”
The Juno Awards air live across Canada on Sunday at 8 p.m. ET, on CBC TV and CBC online platforms.