Justin Bieber Strips, Gets Booed at Fashion Rocks
To the delight of very few people gathered at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center, Justin Bieber awkwardly stripped down to his Calvin Klein underwear on Tuesday night during a live CBS telecast of the cross-medium special event “Fashion Rocks,” drawing out annoyed boos from the crowd.
As Today Show correspondents pointed out in their roundtable discussion, Bieber’s brief (or boxer-brief) appearance was doomed from the beginning. Accompanied by model Lara Stone, the singer walked onstage in a blazer and pants, with the audience already dishing out mild heckles. But Bieber earned even more hostile boos with his abrupt undressing, which was prefaced by the announcement/product placement, “I actually don’t feel comfortable unless I’m in my Calvins.” He then flexed and made strange faces while gazing into the crowd, earning a mixture of fan screams and jeers.
“Grandma always said kill ’em with kindness,” Bieber tweeted after the event, “and then strip on live national tv. Lol.” He then served up some additional (assumedly free) advertising for Calvin Klein in a hashtag-laden follow-up tweet: “Good times tonight. Thanks for having me tonight #FashionRocks. #mycalvins :)”
Today reportedly reached out to Calvin Klein in an attempt to confirm if Bieber is now affiliated with the company – but they received no response to this potentially Earth-shattering query.
Of course, underwear boos have been the least of Bieber’s worries in recent months, as the singer has faced a number of legal battles. The latest happened earlier this month, as the singer was charged with dangerous driving and assault after a vehicle collision in Ontario.
In more positive news, Bieber has been working on new music, including a collaborative LP with 17-year-old singer Cody Simpson, due out in November. Simpson told Canadian magazine, Tribute, that the sessions were initially an experiment but blossomed into a more substantive project: “We went in and ended up being in the studio till six in the morning,” he said. “[We] came out with a song, went in the next night and then ended up writing like 12 songs in seven days, working all night.”