Justin Bieber Thinks It’s Cute to Mock Country
Warning: Language
Once again the internet is going ape shit over another Justin Bieber arrest. Apparently he was joy riding his ATV in Canada on his father’s land when he thought he’d ram a minivan and assault the occupants on Friday as pop starlet Selena Gomez held on to his adorable little hips for dear life. Meanwhile the rest of us were working jobs. The fact that this asshole thinks he can do just about anything while hiding behind an army of bodyguards and lawyers is nauseating enough, but now he’s decided to add country music to his cultural lampoon list, along with Ann Frank, Argentina, Australian landmarks, and the rest of the world when he visited the Yasukuni Shrine in Japan dedicated to the memory of war criminals.
Last week Bieber, shirtless and bored, and joined by B-level rapping prospects—like he always seems to have hanging around him in an attempt to make it look like he has friends and any semblance of street cred—decided to take to Instagram and post a snippet of his mocking rendition of Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire.” With a pursed and insulting smirk indicative of a 14-year-old who’s never had his ass kicked and hasn’t gone through the most basic adult cognitive development, Bieber sings the chorus of “Ring of Fire” while strumming chords on a guitar.
Then later he posted a picture of himself wearing a cowboy hat sideways, saying “They gave me the sad cowboy hat.” (see above)
Yeah I know, let’s not give this little shit any more attention than he deserves. I just want to let him know that if he thinks it’s cute to mock country, or if he has any designs on “going country,” which he has talked about in the past, he will meet stiff and spirited resistance from this particular quadrant of the American media. Country music may be cute to you Bieber, but to some of us, it is a part of our culture and heritage. So do me a favor, and keep Johnny Cash out of your adolescent and vacuous mouth unless you’re willing to sing with respect.
September 2, 2014 @ 12:47 pm
If only he would take the song literally.
September 2, 2014 @ 12:53 pm
By the way, I know this is a stupid post. But this truly had me seeing red, and this was one of the only ways I knew to relieve the pressure.
September 2, 2014 @ 1:31 pm
Can’t say I blame you. I’m as sick of hearing about this little twerp as anyone; but as an SNL fan, I was recently tickled to read that Bill Hader (one of my favorite cast members in recent years) singled him out as the worst guest host he ever worked with.
September 2, 2014 @ 2:30 pm
I agree completely, Trigger. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t endorse giving the little asshole attention, but this was just infuriating.
September 2, 2014 @ 4:21 pm
Frankly I agree about the culture and heritage sentiment. A lot of young people today seem oblivious to the cultural heritage of certain things. Americans (the born and bred of 3 or more generations) have real strong American roots and cultural ties to this country for good or ill. I suppose he wouldn’t understand that being Canadian.
To me it is akin to Disney taking Greek legend and culture and to suit their needs giving Pegasus to Hercules for a children’s film. LOL! Or mangling any of the cultural stories they touch. I am not so much pissed at Bieber as I am mad at the fact that this is the place many young people find themselves in, since you can’t give kids a proper ass kicking or education if they aren’t yours and if they are parents seem to be to buddy buddy. My dad said a classmate of his got punched by gym teacher in math class. He was called out of class for doing something (I don’t know) and got socked and came back trying not to cry. My dad said seeing that sort of thing tended to keep MOST of us in line. The bad ones always would be there though.
But I thought his star had fallen a years or so ago. And not to defend his actions but it kind of cruel the way Usher and company scooped him up and just tossed him out with the bath water once his got facial hair. That is kind of disgusting. Still I do hope he gets his shit together or he me find Toby Keith waiting to put a boot up his rear.
September 2, 2014 @ 8:42 pm
Canadians have just as strong a cultural heritage and identity as we Americans, and country music — even American country music — has a significant place in Canadian culture. I’d venture to guess that Mr. Bieber has just as little respect for Canadian culture as he has for ours. He’s a punk no matter where you’re from.
September 3, 2014 @ 1:33 pm
The TaxMan has it exactly right. Maybe not blame his nationality for his behaviour there are ignorant asshats everywhere. To further the point, many American’s and Canadians share similar heritage having been settled from various European nations. Interestingly enough southern Americans share way more commonalities with Canada than one would expect. I for example, come from a Scottish heritage as does Mr Cash. So let’s look at that, the terms redneck and hillbilly have some roots in Scottish culture and it’s even believed they originated there. Y’all does not come from “you all” but rather ye all used by Scots. The irish scots settlers were thought to be too rough and unintelligent and basically banished to the hills where they became the hillbillies of West Virginia etc. Beyond the scots, the cajuns originally settled in the maritimes and were Acadians for the most part before moving down to Louisiana. What I am saying here is like it or not we Canadians and Americans (3 or more gens as you defined) have a lot more in common than you think. We also have many rootsy artists that are beloved Hank Snow, Stompin Tom, Rita McNeil, Wilf Carter just to name a few. But you wouldnt understand anyone else’s culture being an American and all. (I don’t actually believe all Americans being ignorant I am just seeing red over people thinking he wouldn’t respect country because he’s Canadian)
September 3, 2014 @ 7:40 am
I didn’t see this comment before I posted my first one. You’re over reacting. Johnny Cash was larger than life. He’s doing a duet and having fun. Even they know that they don’t have the chops to pull off JC and they’re laughing.
September 2, 2014 @ 12:57 pm
As long as he doesn’t make the grave mistake of mocking Waylon Jennings.
September 2, 2014 @ 3:06 pm
That would be ok. It might make Waylon come back and kick some ass.
September 2, 2014 @ 1:07 pm
Serious question: Is this guy even popular anymore, or is he just tabloid fodder?
September 2, 2014 @ 1:28 pm
This is a good question. His last studio album was released over two years ago, and there’s no news of when a new one would come out. If you’re a top flight pop star, you’re in and out of the studio, you’re playing tours. All Justin Bieber seems to do is screw off.
Though this is going to sound very old man, this guy needs structure. Egging his neighbors, street racing in Miami, screwing off on a 4-wheeler with his little pop girlfriend in Canada, this is the stuff bored teenagers do.
September 2, 2014 @ 1:36 pm
I would put him in the category of Lindsay Lohan about now. Someone who might, MIGHT, have had some talent and had a chance at a decent career but is now just a joke that people laugh at.
September 3, 2014 @ 11:08 am
I thought he “retired” not to long ago. It broke twitter for a few minutes before people realized they just didn’t care anymore.
September 2, 2014 @ 3:43 pm
I was thinking the same thing. You would think he would be persona non grata in a lot of the households that make up his fan base, which to my knowledge is/was teenage girls.
September 2, 2014 @ 4:25 pm
In a way to me this shows the worst side of the music business. The scooped him up and the dropped him. It is kind of disgusting and I’ve never been in that position but I can imagine when you see those kinds of $ signs it is VERY hard to stop the train and get off, his parents and friends included. Which is why you’d think some celebrity who has been there would step up and step in for his sake. Maybe they have and he isn’t ready. It don’t like his music but do feel kind of sad how quickly he was just used up.
September 2, 2014 @ 5:06 pm
I’d say more tabloid fodder, since I had to search to actually hear any of the little turd’s “music,” and it’s all pretty old at this point. (And it stinks. I’d rather hear Brantley Gilbert do a duet with a weed whacker.)
Selena Gomez is a pretty legit star though, at least in the teen world. I don’t know what she sees in this clown.
September 3, 2014 @ 10:08 am
Why would the weed whacker waste its talent on a duet with Brantley Gilbert?
September 3, 2014 @ 5:36 am
This guy has a higher ink : musical success ratio than anyone. You’d think he churns out hit songs that are skyrocketed to the top of the charts by tween girls. In reality, he has had 0 Billboard #1s, only 1 song ever that made it past #5, and no song that’s shown pop radio staying power or broader cultural acceptance.
I feel bad for the guy because he’s been used up and spit out by everyone, but I’d be happy to stop hearing about him ASAP.
September 2, 2014 @ 1:11 pm
Isn’t he the other half of Swift’s Genre Exchange Program?
September 2, 2014 @ 2:57 pm
Vastly underrated.
September 3, 2014 @ 12:02 am
As much as my ears would hurt, I can live with Justin getting one song on country radio for the novelty factor, if I never have to hear a Taylor Swift song again.
September 2, 2014 @ 1:43 pm
People, everything Bieber says and does any more is designed with the sole purpose of pissing people. Why? Because as long as he does and people talk about how much they hate him, he remains popular. I get that this ticked you off Trig, but by writing this article, you are doing exactly what he want.
September 2, 2014 @ 3:41 pm
Sure this boy is a girly-man whose balls haven’t dropped yet.
But I thought this post was going to express his symathy with the historical pop country artists who now bemoan the state and direction of country music.
I’m surprised someone hasn’t broken this pretty boy down like a shotgun.
September 2, 2014 @ 4:13 pm
Still the best I’ve ever heard this little squirrel fart sound. Long live Johnny Cash.
September 2, 2014 @ 4:31 pm
Bieber is on the way to obscurity, when was the last time he did anything notable aside from acting like a punk? The little girls who made him famous are growing up and out of that sad phase of their lives now and soon enough Bieber will be seen by the next generation as an old washed-up joke.
September 2, 2014 @ 5:06 pm
I think this little shit needs to get a life yeah? Stop making fun of real country fan’s hero aye?…. Canadian piece of shit.
September 2, 2014 @ 5:25 pm
BLAME CANADA!!
http://www.youtube.com?watch?v=bOR38552MJA
September 3, 2014 @ 4:17 am
Hey, he was still okay before he went to the states. No return on damaged goods.
September 7, 2014 @ 3:49 pm
LOL
September 3, 2014 @ 8:17 am
It’s “eh”. If you’re going to mock Canadians at least get it right.
September 2, 2014 @ 5:46 pm
Didn’t he have some sort of collaboration with those assclowns from Rascal Flatts a while back?
September 2, 2014 @ 11:20 pm
Yes, it’s called “That Should Be Me.”
September 5, 2014 @ 1:45 pm
I remember he showed up with Rascal Flatts at the CMT awards. That was a few years back though. I really didn’t need any other reasons to dislike Rascal Flatts but it happened (I can barely stand to look at them anymore).
September 2, 2014 @ 7:07 pm
Funny thing is that where he is from in Canada, and myself having grown up in the same area, is for the most part a country music hot bed. I can tune into six country stations on the radio pulling out of my driveway. He is quite disliked in his home town and especially in the surrounding area. He is from a town that is surrounded by farming communities and Canadian rednecks. We don’t put up with that shit, that’s why the US can have him.
There is nothing I can do but laugh at the guy, he just tends to embarrass himself continually. To be honest, he is lucky he didn’t hit a tractor.
September 2, 2014 @ 7:16 pm
Bieber is the penultimate definition of #asshat. Can’t wait to see what he does to top this. /s
September 2, 2014 @ 9:54 pm
He is the second last definition of hashtag non-existent word?
September 3, 2014 @ 4:32 am
“Asshat” is an internet-coined term for a-hole.
September 3, 2014 @ 3:47 pm
“Asshat” pre-dates the internet by quite a few years. We used to call each other asshats in high school…in the 80s.
September 5, 2014 @ 10:10 am
And what did you mean by penultimate?
September 5, 2014 @ 11:35 am
Oh, I dunno. Maybe the tipping point where the Biebs crosses the line and does something so heinous all the highly paid lawyers in the world won’t keep him out of prison.
September 2, 2014 @ 9:06 pm
“With a pursed and insulting smirk indicative of a 14-year-old who”™s never had his ass kicked”
It’d be so fun to change that.
September 2, 2014 @ 9:53 pm
I don’t find Bieber’s 13 second performance insulting or offensive in any way. What am I missing?
September 3, 2014 @ 4:41 am
Canada will give us a Neil Young and a Gordon Lightfoot and a Leonard Cohen, but then it tries to negate all that goodwill with Bieber. At least this incident happened in Canada. If he had brown skin, ICE would have deported him already for the mayhem (and actual crimes) he’s committed in this country.
September 3, 2014 @ 6:02 am
yer a dad gum idiot hayday. first off neil young gordan litefoot and leonard cohen suck. they are all comunist to. so you can keep em. and I guess you don’t pay much attention to the news cause ICE aint deportin any of the thousands of illegal aliens with brown skin that are sneakin into our country every day you dumb liberral.
yall tried to censor me from sharin my opinyun bout music. well this aint russia so Ill talk of I want. an now Im gonna make sure to tell all yall bout what I think of u.
September 7, 2014 @ 3:59 pm
Good satire, but you ruined it with the part about ICE, because that part’s true, that they don’t deport the border jumpers.
September 3, 2014 @ 5:20 am
> Meanwhile the rest of us were working jobs.
‘I mean real (jobs), not writing down gobbledygook.’
http://www.tv.com/shows/king-of-the-hill/pilot-55229/
September 3, 2014 @ 7:35 am
Beiber is a twit but the video is harmless. It’s an impression of JC. You’re reading more into than there is.
September 3, 2014 @ 8:23 am
To all the Canadian bashers, just remember that everyone in the Band was Canadian except Levon Helm.
September 3, 2014 @ 8:40 am
All from Ontario, too. And here’s a fun fact I just learned. Richard Manuel was from Bieber’s hometown of Stratford, Ontario.
September 3, 2014 @ 9:40 am
Speaking of Canadian musical artists, who could forget Hank Snow, the original Canadian country singer?
The folk duo Ian & Sylvia were also from Canada, and for a while in the early 70’s they moved to Nashville and styled themselves as a country-rock group called Great Speckled Bird. In fact, they once performed on the old Johnny Cash Show under that name, singing “Crazy Arms,” partly in French.
September 3, 2014 @ 3:50 pm
The Guess Who was a great gift from Canada.
September 3, 2014 @ 9:43 am
Wow. So, the Beebs has like a 10 second clip of he and two dudes singing a Johnny Cash song, while smiling and seeming to have fun with it, and everyone is outraged…that makes sense. Not to mention this has got to be the most covered “country” song in all of history. I don’t get it. What’s everyone’s beef?
September 3, 2014 @ 2:07 pm
I agree! I have no love for Bieber, and he seems like a (youthful) creep in other contexts. However, we’re letting that color our interpretations of this. He might very well like Johnny Cash.
Hell, does this mean Johnny Cash hated Elvis? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBAqBMgLgvw
September 3, 2014 @ 2:15 pm
The only thing Justin Bieber likes is his reflection. Johnny Cash and Elvis were good buddies. Justin Bieber would run his own mother over in his Lamborghini if it thought it would get him attention.
September 5, 2014 @ 10:13 am
A crappy response like this, which doesn’t really address the (non) issue is beneath you.
September 3, 2014 @ 3:55 pm
I agree. I can’t stand the Beeber – but I didn’t find anything offensive about the video. In fact it probably tops the list of least offensive things the little shit has ever done. I’ve heard many shitty cover bands NOT do the favor of keeping their shitty Cash covers trimmed to 10 seconds – nobody whined about them.
September 3, 2014 @ 9:58 am
Please, can someone kick this little turd right in the throat?
September 3, 2014 @ 12:46 pm
This shithead is in serious need of a throat punch!!!
September 4, 2014 @ 9:54 am
Frankly, I do not know what Selena Gomez sees in this guy. They were broken up for a while but she felt compelled to go back to him. I reluctantly took my 9-year old daughter to see Selena in concert and she seems like a good girl so I just don’t understand why she bothers with him. And my 9-year old daughter also likes traditional country music – she loves Hank Sr., especially. She is a fan of alt country and Americana as well. I’m taking her to see The Avett Brothers next month.
September 4, 2014 @ 11:36 pm
You know how di”# crazed girls become over the guy who takes their virginity.
That’s all this is.
September 5, 2014 @ 4:02 am
Not this girl. I broke up with him about 3 months after the deed & never looked back. He was a nice guy & decent in the sack, but I was ready to move on.
September 4, 2014 @ 11:10 am
From Bieber’s antics it seems clear that his idea of cool is being a total ass.
September 5, 2014 @ 9:32 am
Funny, I am from the days when country really wasn’t “cool”. I know plenty of folks who have, and still do mock country music. They are the ones who don’t listen to it, never will and thats fine with me. What pisses me off is when hacks like FGL and bean counters like Scott Borchetta push some sort of garbage pop-edm-southern-rock gangster-rap hybrid as country, causing the younger generation of fans to think thats representative of the genre, or asshats like Blake Shelton who decide to crap all over traditionalists and insult them when the bro-country money starts flowing in.
September 7, 2014 @ 3:08 pm
What’s new? Mocking country music is the time-honored short cut by wanna-be “sophisticates” and conformists to try to draw attention to their sophistication.
If they only realized that only insecure conformists have to go this route, because some truly sophisticated people both then and now enjoy and understand country music, even bluegrass 😉
September 7, 2014 @ 3:10 pm
Isn’t this little twerp from Canada anyway? He’s not fit to lick Gordon Lightfoot’s boots.
November 21, 2014 @ 1:59 am
Didn’t see that much disrespect. I was impressed he knew the song well enough to play it.
May 27, 2024 @ 7:49 pm
“Never had his a** kicked?” Which is likely the sort of sentiment Bieber,then TWENTY,mocked,Country’s tendency to take itself and its history a shade too seriously.
Now that Bieber,30,has established himself as a great artist,perhaps at a 10-year remove,this column can be seen as a young man’s attempt at pre-fame relevance.