Justin Bieber: 'I'm not who I was pretending to be'
Singer makes surprising admission in emotional Facebook video posted Wednesday night
Canadian pop star Justin Bieber has apologized to fans for coming off as "arrogant" and "conceited" following an appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show.
The 20-year-old made the surprising admission in an emotional video posted late Wednesday to his Facebook page.
Warning: clip contains explicit language.
- On mobile? Watch Bieber's video post here.
"It’s been a minute since I’ve been in a public appearance, and I didn’t want to come off arrogant or conceited or basically how I’ve been acting the past year and a half," Bieber said in the dark and grainy recording titled "Here we go."
Bieber made the missive Wednesday night after he taped the episode of the popular daytime talk show. A clip of the show, which aired Thursday, can be seen here.
"I’m not who I was pretending to be," admitted the young star. "Often we pretend to be something we’re not as a cover-up of what we are truly feeling inside, and there were a lot of feelings going on in there."
'I'm not that kid'
The singer rocketed to fame at age 13, when record label executive Scooter Braun discovered the Stratford, Ont.-raised Bieber on YouTube. In Wednesday's Facebook confessional, Bieber admitted that growing up in the music business has been "hard."
He also expressed a desire to brush off his bad boy image.
Bieber, who turns 21 on March 1, has made headlines for:
- Warring with photographers.
- Urinating into a restaurant mop bucket.
- Allegedly vandalizing hotels.
- Complaints he egged neighbours of his posh suburban L.A. home.
Over the summer, he pleaded guilty to careless driving and resisting arrest after being taken into custody while allegedly inebriated. He was also accused of street-racing through Miami Beach in a yellow Lamborghini.
"I'm not that kid," Bieber said in his Facebook video. "I'm a person who genuinely cares and, although what's happened in the past has happened, I just want to make the best impression on people, and be kind and loving and gentle and soft."
Ready to rehabilitate
Recently, Bieber has been showing signs that he's ready to rehabilitate his sullied image, by:
- Posing for a Calvin Klein underwear campaign.
- Performing an impromptu acoustic show in L.A.
- Reacting with good humour to a recent SNL spoof.
- Agreeing to subject himself to further mockery on an upcoming Comedy Central Roast.
In his Ellen interview, Bieber explained he wanted to be roasted as a way of owning up to his past mistakes.
- Justin Bieber to be roasted on Comedy Central, responds to SNL jokes
- VIDEO | Watch the SNL Bieber parody here
"I think it’s just cool to be able to laugh at yourself," Bieber told DeGeneres. "I’ve done some things that might not have been the greatest."
With files from The Canadian Press