Justin Bieber is gearing up for a comeback at Coachella — and there’s a helluva lot on the line for the former teen heartthrob.
He’ll headline both Saturdays, April 11 and 18, at the Indio, California, festival, and recently gave 500 fans a glimpse of what to expect with an intimate warm-up show at The Roxy in West Hollywood.
“This has been so beautiful. It’s a little sneak preview into Coachella, which is gonna be so much fun,” he told the small crowd.
But it’s been a slow burn to get Bieber back into the spotlight. In recent years, the 32-year-old has exhibited physical and mental woes — from crying in social media videos to worrying weight loss and temporary facial paralysis — as the toll of childhood fame has weighed heavily on him, even impacting his marriage to Hailey Bieber.
“People keep telling me to heal … Don’t you think if I could have fixed myself I would have already?” the star posted online last summer following rants at the paparazzi. “I know I’m broken. I know I have anger issues.”
And last month he was pictured flinging a bottle of water at a cameraman during a date night with Hailey.
His most recent tour, in 2022, was cut short after he was diagnosed with Ramsay Hunt syndrome, a disorder that left him unable to control one side of his face in 2022. And 14 dates of his 2017 tour were canceled as he struggled with mental health issues.
“Bieber has something to prove … to himself and to the industry,” said a well-placed music insider. “And Coachella will be a real indicator of how he moves forward. There’s a lot riding on this, no doubt.”
There are indeed a host of dragons Bieber has had to slay in making his stage comeback.
The star had not performed in four years before his February appearance on stage at the Grammys, where he played “Yukon” while stripped down to his satin boxer shorts and a pair of socks.
Bieber also seemingly referred to long-rumored issues in his marriage on the song “Walking Away” from his critically acclaimed seventh studio album, “Swag,” released last year: “Tell me why you’re throwing stones at my back/ You know I’m defenseless/ Girl, we better stop before we say some s–t/ We’ve been testing our patience/ I think we better off if we just take a break/ And remember what grace is.”
And the track “Daisies” appeared to paint a picture of emotional uncertainty as he sang, “Do you love me or not? … You said ‘Forever,’ babe, did you mean it or not?”
Page Six has learned Bieber spent years struggling financially, with his spending soaring to more than $1.3 million a month back in 2022, leaving his credit rating in the toilet.
Well-placed sources told us that Bieber, who shares one-year-old son Jack Blues with Hailey, 29, was forced to sell his back catalog to Hipgnosis Songs Capital in January 2023 for a reported $200 million. While that’s typically something older artists do later in their career, we’re told that Bieber needed a cash infusion to pay for his $17 million mansion in La Quinta, California, and cover millions of dollars he owed to former manager Scooter Braun.
Braun, who discovered Bieber when the singer was just 12, paid the debt — $26 million of a $40 million advance — to concert promoters AEG when 2022’s “Justice” tour was canceled.
But the pair fell out when the singer, who agreed to pay back the loan over 10 years, reportedly only made one single payment that was not the full sum.
The battle ended last July when, according TMZ, Bieber agreed to repay the $26 million, as well as half of $11 million the music millionaire alleged Bieber owed for various unpaid commissions over the years.
Despite many years of a close friendship as well as a working partnership, there is apparently no love lost.
“Justin hates Scooter,” said another industry insider. “And so does Hailey.”
Page Six has reached out to reps for the Biebers and Braun.
TMZ reported in March that Bieber got into a heated argument with his childhood mentor, Usher, at Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s Oscars bash in Los Angeles. But this was denied to Page Six.
Performing at Coachella is an intriguing prospect for Bieber’s future, the music insider said, as AEG runs the festival — and “This could be the precursor to a tour.”
“This is a hard business,” said the insider, adding that this year’s festival is “the most in-demand Coachella in a long time … the first weekend is sold out” — with tickets getting snapped up in less than an hour. “It’s crazy. You have Bieber and Sabrina Carpenter [headlining the Friday shows] on the bill. Everyone is really curious to see what happens.
“Clearly, this is the launch for a potential comeback tour. This is not a one-and-done situation,” the insider said.
After the release of “Swag” and its follow-up, “Swag II,” Rolling Stone wrote: “Just when everyone was counting him out, Bieber surprised the world with the best music he’s ever made.”
Tapping into his anger and trauma seemingly helped.
On the “Therapy Session” skit with comedian Druski on “Swag,” Bieber confesses, “That’s been a tough thing for me recently, is feeling like I have had to go through a lot of my struggles as a human, as all of us do, really publicly.
“And so people are always asking if I’m OK, and that starts to really weigh on mе.”
Extreme weight loss in 2024 left Bieber looking almost skeletal, worrying fans and prompting his rep to tell TMZ in 2025 that he was healthy and not using drugs — and note that the past year had been “very transformative for him as he ended several close friendships and business relationships that no longer served him.”
Bieber has gone on to air all his issues in public, to the point where rumors have run rampant about his mental and physical stability.
“I personally have always felt unworthy,” he posted on Instagram last March. “Like I was a fraud.”
Days later, he vented about pent-up hatred from his past: “I was always told when I was a kid not to hate,” he wrote. “But it made me feel like I wasn’t allowed to hate it and so I didn’t tell anyone I’ve had it. Which made me feel like I have been drowning feeling unsafe to acknowledge it.”
“If you don’t like my anger you don’t like me,” he then declared in June, posting screenshots of his texts raging at an unnamed target. “My anger is a response to pain I have been thru. Asking a traumatized person not to be traumatized is simply mean … I enjoyed our short lived relationship.”
In April, Bieber launched his Skylrk clothing brand with a CGI video that depicted him walking into a house full of his old Drew House merch — and burning the place down.
Last November, he was seen crying in a resurfaced Twitch stream as he sang about a doomed relationship, prompting fans to wonder if he was singing about his former girlfriend Selena Gomez.
Meanwhile, his relationship with Hailey has stayed under the microscope. Last May, the “Baby” singer was vilified for a bizarre Instagram post when his wife was featured on the cover of Vogue.
He admitted that, during a “huge fight,” he’d told her she would never be in Vogue, adding “Yikes I know, so mean.”
Sharing that he said the words out of spite, the Grammy winner explained that “because I felt so disrespected I thought I gotta get even.”
Hailey will be by her husband’s side when he takes the stage at Coachella. Despite their ups and downs, sources said, the couple are still in it.
As crowds prepare to launch upon Palm Springs to see Bieber, the industry source said: “Coachella is not going to be ask you to headline if there’s no appetite … Justin is like Teflon. Despite everything, people still love him.”
“He’s a talented kid,” added the music insider, “and people only want to see him succeed. It’s always hard when you [were once a teeny hopper and [then] want to be a legitimate music artist. But everybody wants him.”
