Music

Watch Justin Bieber Join Ariana Grande On-Stage At Coachella And Poorly Lip Sync His Own Song

Is it too late now to say sorry?

by Joseph Earp  23 April 2019

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Justin Bieber is not very good at staying out of the limelight.

After all, it was only a few weeks ago that the ‘Baby’ singer announced he was taking a break from the public eye in order to work on some deep-rooted issues, and warned that fans should not hold out for music any time soon.

Turns out that ‘break’ was to last just under a month, as Bieber took to the stage last night to perform at Coachella after being invited up by his friend Ariana Grande.

To be fair to Bieber, apparently he had no idea that he was going to be asked to come up.

“I haven’t been onstage for two years,” Bieber told the surprised and delighted crowd. “I came out here, and I had no idea I was going to be on this stage tonight. I had to get back on, I had to get my swag back, you know what I’m saying?”

From there, he launched into a version of ‘Sorry’, helped by Grande.

Well, launched is maybe a little overenthusiastic. In fact, the performance was a little bizarre.

For a start, it was reasonably clear that he was lip syncing. At times, he dropped his mic away too early; at other times, he shot it up too quick. To fans watching at home via the Coachella livestream it was particularly obvious what was going on, and they started tweeting about it en masse.

Secondly, the whole thing was a little low energy. Which is totally fine — as Bieber pointed out, he hasn’t done this in some time — but it did create a bizarre feel, as though everything was just slightly off.

Oh, and only capping off the strangeness was Bieber’s brief, portentous, three word farewell: “Album coming soon”.

Turns out that we were wrong to expect a Bieber hiatus then, hey?