Justin Bieber releases new song ‘Broken,’ sets record with ‘Baby’

Justin Bieber will turn 20 on Saturday, but the troubled pop star had a different number on his mind early Monday: 1 billion.

That’s the number of times Vevo says Bieber’s “Baby” video has been streamed, “making it the most watched clip ever” on the music-video site, according to a press release.

An uptempo love song with a harmless guest rap by Ludacris, “Baby” was the biggest hit from Bieber’s debut full-length “My World 2.0,” which came out in 2010 but now feels like a relic from a much earlier age.

Indeed, the singer last week released his first song since being arrested in January in Miami Beach, Fla., a springy electro-funk track called “Broken” in which Bieber seems to address the uproar over his recent run-ins with the law (and the tabloid press).

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“I guess they want a reaction, but I ain’t gonna give it to ‘em,” he sings in his supple man-child croon. “They trying to get at me, I ain’t gonna feed into it.”

“Broken” appears on a new mixtape, “We Know the DJ Radio 4,” by Tay James, who identifies himself on Twitter as “the official DJ for Justin Bieber.” The song also features an appearance by the rapper Blake Kelly.
Listen to “Broken” -- in which Beiber goes on to boast (not unreasonably) that “someone like me is hard to find” -- below.

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Twitter: @mikaelwood