A fascinating look at how the internet turned a 16-year-old into a pop phenom

Time (May 17) headlines Claire Suddath's article "Pop Star 2.0", a reference to Justin Bieber who is being hailed as "the first real teen idol of the digital age, a star whose fame can be attributed entirely to the Internet".

The intro draws you into the story before explaining how Bieber's manager first discovered him:

Late one night in 2007, Scooter Braun, an Atlanta-based promoter and music manager, was in bed surfing the Internet when he stumbled upon a grainy home video of Bieber belting out Aretha Franklin's "Respect." "It was such raw talent, my gut just went wild," Braun says, and then pauses. "Maybe I shouldn't tell people I watched videos of Justin Bieber in the middle of the night." Two weeks later, he flew Bieber and his mother to Atlanta and became his manager.

There is also a smart analysis of Bieber's appeal:

As a songwriter, Bieber specializes in two subjects: tender ballads about his parents' divorce and the kind of desperate puppy love to which anyone who has ever been a teenager can relate. His audience can be understood just by looking at his song titles: "U Smile," "First Dance," "One Less Lonely Girl." This is the brilliance of Bieber. Kids will listen to anything if it's catchy, especially if it makes them feel grownup, but Bieber's music says something they actually understand. Nobody is going to believe a 14-year-old boy when he sings, "You're my one love, my one heart, my one life for sure" — nobody, that is, except a 14-year-old girl.

And the longish concluding paragraph capitalises on that appeal:

The day after his appearance on SNL, Bieber gave a small concert at New York's Highline Ballroom for several hundred teenage girls, many of whom had waited for up to five hours to win tickets through a local radio station. The girls wore Bieber T-shirts, carried Bieber CDs and had Bieber backgrounds on their cell phones. "He's so sweet. He's not like every other guy who is just like, 'Ugh, whatever,' " says Alicia Isaacson, 13, from Long Island. It's a sentiment once professed for every artist from Shaun Cassidy to Paul McCartney. Every few seconds, a shrill cry of "Justin!" erupted from somewhere in the crowd. Security guards handed out water bottles and escorted those who felt faint or overwhelmed outside. Offstage, Bieber played with his baseball cap. "I'm really tired," he confessed. "Right now my schedule is just go, go, go. Sometimes I just want to sleep." That afternoon, he had cut his rehearsal to just half a song because he didn't have the energy. But signs of fatigue were gone now, and he took the stage with force. For the first few minutes, the only discernible sound was screaming.

Don't you want to know more about the only artist to have four hit songs before ever releasing an album?

• Photo courtesy: Time