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Justin Bieber · S1 E4
The Click
A music manager in Atlanta accidentally clicks on a video of a kid from Ontario. He watches it twice
Scooter Braun is clicking through YouTube in his Atlanta apartment, searching for a completely different artist. He misclicks, and a twelve-year-old kid from Ontario starts singing.
"U Smile" (Justin Bieber, official music video, 2010). The vocal sits right at the front of this track, gentle and unforced. That's the quality Scooter Braun heard in those grainy YouTube videos: a kid who could carry a song with nothing but his voice. One misclick was all it took.
U Smile, Justin Bieber (2010)
"U Smile" keeps the production gentle and nearly stripped back for a pop single. The drums barely push, the synths stay low, and Justin's voice sits completely exposed at the front of the mix. Listen for the slight crack in the chorus. At sixteen, he hadn't learned to smooth that out yet. The producers could have fixed it. They chose not to.
Sources
Bieber, Justin. "First Step 2 Forever: My Story." HarperCollins, 2010.
The Man in Atlanta
Scooter Braun is twenty-six and working in Atlanta's music scene. He'd been a marketing exec at So So Def Records under Jermaine Dupri, and he knows what star quality looks like. He's clicking through YouTube clips of a singer from a talent show when a related video catches his eye: a kid in a bedroom, singing into a webcam.
Sources
Bieber, Justin. "First Step 2 Forever: My Story." HarperCollins, 2010.
Never Say Never (documentary), Paramount Pictures, 2011.
“I clicked the wrong video. I was looking for somebody else. And this kid just started singing, and I said, I need to find this kid. I need to find his mother.”
— Scooter Braun, Never Say Never documentary (Paramount Pictures, 2011)
TAP TO REVEAL: How did Scooter track down a kid with no public contact info?
The Leap
Pattie doesn't say yes right away. A stranger from Atlanta calling about her thirteen-year-old sounds like a scam. She takes weeks to think it over, prays about it, and eventually agrees to bring Justin to Atlanta with money she doesn't really have.
Sources
Mallette, Pattie. "Nowhere but Up." Revell, 2012.
The Click: The Facts
Never Let You Go, Justin Bieber (2010)
"Never Let You Go" is about refusing to give up on someone, and that's exactly Scooter Braun's story. He saw something in a YouTube video that nobody else had noticed, and he wouldn't stop calling until he got through. The song is from My World 2.0, but the sentiment goes all the way back to an apartment in Atlanta and a phone that kept ringing in Stratford.
Never Let You Go, Justin Bieber (2010)
"It's a battlefield of love." Justin wrote this about a relationship, but read the lyrics in the context of Scooter's persistence and Pattie's hesitation, and the words take on a different meaning. Someone sees something worth fighting for. They refuse to walk away. That's the whole story of this episode.
What was Scooter Braun's background before he discovered Justin Bieber?
Pattie books two plane tickets to Atlanta with money she can barely spare. Next season: a thirteen-year-old walks into a studio, Usher is in the building, and the bidding war for Justin Bieber begins.
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