Justin Bieber: 'I know success isn’t a be-all, end-all to my happiness'

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Justin Bieber has learned success doesn’t equal happiness.

The Yummy hitmaker has been open with his mental health struggles and rebellion issues over the years, and he now accepts that rocketing to mega-fame as a teenager left him feeling “empty”, because it wasn’t “fulfilling” emotionally.

In a candid new Billboard interview, he admits he has used his downtime during the COVID-19 lockdown to reflect on what makes him truly happy, and he has realized he’s no longer desperate for success.

“Everything was about success, benchmarks and such, and then I was just still empty, you know?” he says. “All my relationships were suffering, but I had all this success and all of this money, and it just wasn’t fulfilling for me.

“At this point, I’ve reached a level of success so many times that I know success isn’t a be-all, end-all to my happiness.”

The 27-year-old singer’s main source of happiness is his wife, Hailey Bieber, who he insists has been “so helpful” in making sure he “takes responsibility” for his actions.

“One thing that has been so helpful is my wife is so by the book,” he explains. “She’s so structured and routine and so responsible. (She helped me) realize that I either take responsibility for this or else I’m not going to be able to sustain a certain lifestyle that I want.”

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Justin also reflected on his turbulent past in the interview, and insists he no longer feels like a “bad person” for going through a rough patch in his life, because he knows he’s “not that person anymore”.

“I can talk about that part of my life and not feel like, ‘Oh, man. I was such a bad person’, because I’m not that person anymore. I also have done the work to know why I was making those decisions. I know where that pain was coming from, that caused me to act the way I was acting.”