We’re Pretty Sure Justin Bieber Just Threw Shade at Taylor Swift
Pop singer Justin Bieber is in hot water after posting an Instagram video reenacting Taylor Swift's viral video from after her laser eye surgery. Bieber deleted the clip after the Swifties (Swift's superfans) began shaming him, but as every internet user knows by now, nothing from social media ever disappears completely.
Bieber's now-deleted video is rough reenactment of video footage taken by Swift's mom Andrea following her daughter's laser eye surgery and shared during Swift's recent appearance on Jimmy Fallon's late-night TV talk show. In the (admittedly hilarious) original clip, Swift — who's wearing post-surgery eye goggles and under the influence of some serious painkillers — is exceptionally concerned about pulling the wrong banana out of the bunch.
"It's not the banana that I wanted! It's not the right banana! It has no head!" Bieber yells from one end of his kitchen in his reenactment. His wife, model Hailey Baldwin, is filming from the other end of the kitchen and can be heard giggling in the background.
Normally, we'd be all for laughing a video like this off as a celeb imitating a viral moment, but Bieber and Swift's history calls his exact intentions into question. The two started out friendly enough — he even opened for her on tour years ago — but Bieber got involved in Swift's feud with rapper Kanye West, which sent things south.
Bieber is managed by noted Swift enemy Scooter Braun, the celebrity talent manager who purchased Big Machine Label Group, Swift's former label home, from its founder and CEO, Scott Borchetta, at the end of June. After the sale of BMLG (including its publishing arm, Big Machine Music) was announced, Swift — who left the label for Universal Music Group when her contract was up in 2018 — claimed that she had not received so much as a friendly heads up about the sale of the label (and, with it, the master recordings for her first six albums) ahead of time from her former label boss, Borchetta, and alleged that Braun subjected her to "years" of "incessant, manipulative bullying" via his clients, including Bieber and West.
Swift and West's feud is a whole different beast, but Bieber inserted himself into it after West's wife, Kim Kardashian, leaked a recording of a phone call between Swift and West that reportedly showed that Swift had been lying about not knowing that West would be calling her out in his song "Famous." (Swift says the footage was edited, and that she'd consented to the use of her name but not the line "I made that b---h famous.") After Kardashian posted the footage and social media users turned on Swift, Bieber shared a screenshot of a video call between Braun, West and himself, with a caption that called out Swift.
"As the years have passed we haven't crossed paths and gotten to communicate our differences, hurts or frustrations. So for you to take it to social media and get people to hate on Scooter isn't fair," Bieber posted on Instagram after Swift took aim at Borchetta and Braun over the summer. "What were you trying to accomplish by posting that blog? Seems to me like it was to get sympathy. [Yo]u also knew that in posting that your fans would go and bully Scooter. Anyway, one thing I know is both Scooter and I love you."
Currently, Bieber is part of a new country song, "10,000 Hours," a collaboration with Dan + Shay. Released on Friday (Oct. 4), it's the first single from the country duo's forthcoming new album. Dan Smyers and Shay Mooney met Bieber years ago through Braun, who is their co-manager (with Jason Owen), and recently attended Bieber and Baldwin's wedding.
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