Is it just me, or is Justin Bieber the best thing in the world right now?

Wherever you were on Saturday night, there was one song which got everyone gassed. 

It was the song man piled into the living room for, started dancing on the table for. The song people risked red wine on cream carpets for. The song people started doing that embarrassing jumping at the same time as filming a group snapchat selfie with your mates for. The song the smoking area emptied for.

It was the song which made you think I’m young and I’m alive and I’m in my twenties and actually nothing will stop me and unlike all human beings who’ve gone before me, I might possibly live forever and right after this I’m going to have another drink or another line or another bomb and then I’m definitely going to pull. 

It was a Justin Bieber song.

Yeah, that’s right. You lost your shit to a Justin Bieber song this weekend. And the weekend before that. And the weekend before that. You lost your shit to What Do You Mean? or Sorry or Where Are Ü Now. You bought his entire album on iTunes even though you never buy music or use iTunes.

Unless your head has been stuck in the Marianas Trench for the last month, your head has been part of a full-body-losing-its-shit-on-the-D-floor response to yet another Bieber banger.

This goes beyond dancing – you’re happy to tweet about liking Bieber. You’re happy to make a Facebook status about it. You’re happy to playlist these songs and even happier when they come on.

You made your peace with Justin Bieber and it’s turning out to be one of your better decisions, like sending a crisp, well-phrased reply to a message from someone you’d really like to shag.

Imagine the social purgatory you’d have been confined for a year ago for saying what we’re all saying now: Justin Bieber is fucking cool and I really enjoy his music.

I could go into when this happened, this Bieber thing. I could go into why it happened (he hired better producers).

We could sit together and talk about all the shit Justin did, the way he spent fame’s mad gold. The time he was done for vandalism and totalling a supercar and partying with Brazilian hookers. The time he was filmed shouting “Fuck Bill Clinton” while pissing in a bucket. The time he lost his monkey. The time he wrote “I hope she would have been a Belieber” in the visitor’s book of the Anne Frank museum in Amsterdam.

Looking back on it, we could remember what we felt during those times (we felt Justin to be a cunt) or reflect on what is so obvious now: he was being the biggest punk, the biggest maverick in the world.

I could tell you a story about a boy who’s life was hotel room after hotel room. Who was manipulated and stabbed in the back. Who was under more pressure than the average head of state, whose every action was dissected by an ugly culture of: Bieber does something, everyone is furious with Bieber, Bieber does something else.

I could tell you this Pinocchio story about how he went from someone rinsed on Twitter by freewheeling urban tastemakers like Clive Martin to someone we’d play unironically at a house party full of people we’ve never met. How he became our Timberlake, our Michael. How people who hated him for years find themselves loving him now.

It’s a story that enriches all our lives but it’s not the story that matters.

The only thing that matters is the music, and right now his music is very, very good. So thanks Justin, thanks for the nights you’re giving us right now.

Thanks for the nights still to come.