Destruction, thy name is Bieber. Not frailty of voice nor cast on leg nor uncomfortably tall duet partners could keep Justin Bieber, the pint-size, swoosh-haired 15-year-old pop moppet from Stratford, Ontario — that’s Canada, people — from his appointed duty at Madison Square Garden on Friday night: decimating the larynxes of thousands of tween girls.
It was Z100’s Jingle Ball ’09, this year’s incarnation of the annual holiday-timed but not holiday-themed revue, and enthusiasm had been waning throughout the almost-four-hour show. Mr. Bieber, who released his debut EP, “My World” (Island), only last month, had a prime slot, just before Taylor Swift, the headliner.
Ms. Swift, who turned 20 on Sunday, is a grizzled veteran staring down the late period of her underage-crowd dominance. Comparatively, Mr. Bieber, a light-voiced pop-R&B singer, is fresh meat, and accordingly, was met with the sorts of shrieks normally reserved for slasher films and kidnappings. (Last month a scheduled appearance by Mr. Bieber at a Long Island mall resulted in injuries and an arrest.)
He sang, thinly, and despite the cast on his right leg — gray, matched by a gray high-top sneaker on his left — he managed to nail the outlines of his dance routines, though he took to a stool and strapped on a guitar for “Favorite Girl,” his best song of the night. After that, Mr. Bieber’s mentor, Usher, joined him, trying not to outsing him on “U Got It Bad,” one of Usher’s old gems. But even humility couldn’t make Usher appear as anything other than a parental figure, tolerated but not embraced.
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