The Herald's entertainment team are daring each other to do terrible things. This week, Siena Yates listens to a different Justin Bieber album every day ahead of his Mt Smart Stadium show.
* Scroll down to read the latest entry in this week's instalment of I Dare You.
Monday: My World (2009)
Let me just preface this by saying I don't hate Justin Bieber, at all. His music has always, at the very least, been the epitome of catchy pop and I've listened to him on and off since he first turned up with that ridiculous haircut and his hi-top Supras.
So the joke's on you, workmates. I ain't even mad.
Actually, listening to Biebs' first album [2009's My World] was kind of fun (at first).
I jammed Baby so hard at the gym that the woman on the treadmill next to me literally stopped me to say, "is that Baby?" with a disgusted look on her face.
What can I say? I'm a sucker for Ludacris. Yes, it was Baby. And then it was One Time and then ... well, then the good times pretty much came to a screeching halt.
Between the ridiculous writing, the chipmunk voice and the noughties production, most of the songs on My World are awful.
But none so much as First Dance, in which the Biebs - aged approximately six and a half at the time - sings about taking a girl's virginity under the guise of taking her to her first prom.
Want receipts? I quote: "If you give the first dance to me girl, I promise I'll be gentle, I know we gotta do it slowly. If you give your first dance to me I'm gonna cherish every moment. It only happens once in a lifetime."
"No teachers around to see us dancing close I'm telling you our parents will never know, before the lights go up and the music turns off, now's the perfect time for me to taste your lip gloss."
Biebs, bringing the class since 2009.
Tuesday: Under the Mistletoe (2011)
It's March. It's March and I am listening to Christmas songs. Guess what, workmates? I take back what I said yesterday: I am definitely mad now.
The songs on Bieber's second album Under the Mistletoe are the worst kinds of Christmas songs - the kind that still try to stay in one's preferred genre and just add some mildly holiday-themed lyrics and a jingle bell every few bars.
Listening to the Biebs try to hit runs and falsettos while singing about a goddamned turkey is just ridiculous, and it gets worse when Usher inexplicably turns up for a feature with his faux-heartfelt whining about Santa Claus being on his way.
The best parts are when Bieber covers classic Christmas songs like Santa Claus is coming to Town, which starts with him saying "Santa's coming girl! Woo!".
Drummer Boy sounds like Bieber trying to impersonate Missy Elliott and features Busta Rhymes rapping about sipping eggnog, seeing the family, and wishing his Twitter followers a Merry Christmas.
And let's not forget that God-awful reboot of All I Want for Christmas which Mariah somehow let herself get roped into. And may we never, ever forget the resulting music clip, in which Mariah - old enough to be Bieber's mother - becomes his romantic interest.
Actually, this was kind of all worth it just to relive this:
Ah, finally, it's time for the album that made it socially acceptable to admit you like Justin Bieber. Kind of. Almost.
When it comes to 2012's Believe, I still have a lot of questions. Like why are there 17 songs on this album? What were Drake, Nicki Minaj, Big Sean and Jaden Smith all doing on there? Who thought it was ok to have the word "swaggy" in a song? And who approved the track name Beauty and the Beat?
Also: What exactly is Biebs asking me to believe in? Why is he dreaming of dying in someone's arms? Do you think he knows he sounds like someone doing a drunken, mocking impression of a 90s boy band a lot of the time?
I don't know.
What I do know is that Ludacris is back which makes an otherwise unbearable track (All around the World) a little bit better. As long as You Love Me isn't actually as bad as I remember thinking at the time, and Boyfriend is still a major jam.
Sure, the Biebs still hadn't quite come into his own yet but he was giving it a fairly good try at this point, attempting to shirk his old pop image and step into the R&B realm. If only he could let go of those whiny guitar ballads.
But anyway, rather than wax negative, I'm just going to revisit Boyfriend instead because that was the song that really turned the masses in Bieber's favour, and also because this amazing Biebs/*NSync mashup exists and I want you all to hear it:
Thursday: Purpose (2015)
How is this album so much better than all of the others combined? HOW?
Did the Biebs get singing lessons? And songwriting lessons? And how-to-not-be-a-douchebag lessons?
Because it's only been three years between this album and the last (I'm purposefully ignoring 2014's Journals because it was never officially released as a studio album) but so much has improved.
His voice is far less whiny and strained, his lyrics are far less whiny and try-hard, and the production is far less 90s R&B (could this be because Usher seems to have significantly less input these days? Who knows).
Justin Bieber is now totally listenable. Enjoyable, even. And not just a couple of songs, either. Most of the album is fine at worst and much of it is actually good - and that's without any Ludacris! (Love you, Luda.)
The smartest thing Bieber ever did was enlist Parris Goebel to work on those music videos, because now when you hear songs like What Do You Mean and especially Sorry, you can't help but want to dance, and that instantly makes a song more likeable.
But also, there are so many songs where Bieber's voice is just infinitely better than it's ever been and it actually has a pleasant tone to it, now. Sometimes it still gets lost (All In It, I'm looking at you) but ultimately, Purpose is a much easier listen than its predecessors.
Of course, there's always room for improvement, but his growth on Purpose has given me hope for future albums and more importantly, hope for this Saturday's live show.
Don't you let me down, Biebs. We've been through too much together now.
Friday: Believe the Movie (2013)
Disclaimer: Since Justin Bieber has only four official albums and there are five days in the working week, I've been forced to watch Bieber's movie Believe. (Thanks team).
These types of movies always annoy me because there's always this huge effort put into making whatever pop star it is look like they're the new Beatles or Michael Jackson.
You know what I mean; constant shots of girls screaming, crying and declaring their love and never ending snippets of roaring crowds pressed up against wire fences. I'm not buying it.
Nor am I buying the relentless attempts to showcase just how heartfelt and genuine Bieber is, and how he's pouring his heart out in his music. No he's not. And that's fine, some of the greatest pop songs on earth are about trivial nonsense.
Sometimes you make songs because you know the fans will love them and they will make you money and that's also fine. Just don't try and dress it up as something that it's not.
Anyway. Believe was mostly just the kind of nonsense that I used to dislike Bieber for back in what I like to call his pre-Purpose days. But hey. We all did some stupid things when we were 19, am I right?
It's not important. Because the best part of this entire thing is about a minute of footage during which the Bieb's manager Scooter Braun goes outside to "give back to the fans" and basically looks like he's either going to abduct them or sell them drugs.
Hood up, voice low, Scooter heads out to offer up some free tickets to loitering fans, but because he's trying to avoid causing a scene, he looks sketchier than James Franco in Springbreakers, constantly hushing teenage girls when they try to scream.
And when you get over the creepiness, the hilarity ensues when Scooter tells a group of girls he only has enough tickets for some of them and they have to choose one girl to leave behind while the rest go inside.
I kid you not, it's like watching Katniss volunteer at the Hunger Games. Everyone's crying - literally sobbing - and saying things like "No, I won't let you do this, I can't, there has to be another way". It. Is. Gold.
Believe is worth watching if for no other reason than that, I swear.
