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Justin Bieber’s Comeback Coalesces With Jack Ü’ As ‘Where Are Ü Now’ Goes Platinum In The U.S.

By Page Mackinley
Published on: 05:02 PST, Jul 15, 2015

From a slow to steady start, Justin Bieber, Skrillex and Diplo’s collaborative “Where Are Ü Now” single is now burning bright. The acclaimed banger is now officially certified platinum in the U.S.

The track is the second cut from the Skrillex and Diplo Present Jack Ü album.

The news comes after the song received a gold certification from the Recording Industry Association of America (R.I.A.A.) last week. “Where Are Ü Now (featuring Justin Bieber)” was officially certified platinum on July 10, 2015.

What that means is the trio’s bittersweet single has moved at least one million units in the U.S. Under the R.I.A.A’s digital singles program, a unit means one paid download or 100 streams. While Bieber is credited as the featured artist, the R.I.A.A. listing names Skrillex and Diplo as the primary artists.

Elsewhere, Bieber and Jack Ü’s chart slayer hit No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot Dance/Electronic Songs chart. The feat was repeated on the Dance/Electronic Streaming Songs, following the June 29 drop of the single’s official music video. According to Nielsen Music, the visual generated a 66-percent increase in streams, to the tune of 10.7 million U.S. streams.

Another spin-off effect of the video was the ascent of “Where Are Ü Now” into the Top 10 of Billboard’s Hot 100. After punching its way to No. 8 last week, the single is now at No. 9. The shift is sixth top 10 on the singles chart for Bieber, and a first for Skrllex and Diplo (as artists).

In addition to its new U.S. platinum status, streaming numbers for “Where” remain high. So far, it has racked up over 150 million streams on Spotify worldwide. From Friday, July 3, to Sunday, July 9, it was the sixth most streamed track on Spotify in the U.S., eighth over in the U.K., and seventh globally, according to the Associated Press.

Meanwhile, the success of “Where” has been widely acknowledged by the music press as a signifier that Justin Bieber has marked his first rehabilitative milestone by breaching the U.S. Top 10 and going platinum.

Billboard’s Jason Lipshutz writes, “This is a good (re)start for Bieber. After everything he’s gone through, Bieber scoring another Top 10 single was far from a foregone conclusion; now, step one in his musical comeback has been accomplished.”

As Bieber continues to prep his highly anticipated Rick Rubin and Kanye West-produced new album (which drops this year), Diplo offered his view on his unlikeliest collaborator to date in a new interview with Rolling Stone magazine.

When asked if “Justin Bieber [is] officially cool now?” the producer-DJ replied, “He’d been stuck in a rut where he has to do a certain thing because of his fan base,” implying that the heartthrob has now extricated himself from that rut.

Diplo went on, recalling, “Guy from Disclosure texted me, ‘Yo, man, that Bieber record is amazing,’ and I’m like, ‘Man, you would’ve never written that a year ago,’ and he’s like, ‘I know, this is very difficult for me to text right now.’ ”

Musing, he added, “Bieber’s personal life is whatever it is. He’s a rich kid and he’s pretty much gonna have to be a jerk.” He continued, “But he’s respectful to me, and he has that weird gene where he’s good at everything: better at basketball than me, better at drums.”

Nutshelling Jack Ü’s approach to working with Bieber, Diplo concluded, “For us it’s more like an art project where you utilize his voice.”

Bieber is set to perform “Where Are Ü Now” with Skrillex at Billboard’s first-ever Hot 100 Music Festival between August 22-23.

Welcome back, Biebs.

[Images via Getty Images]

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