Justin Bieber Promises ‘Something Different’ For Battle Royale At Billboard Music Awards
Justin Bieber will have a tough fight on his hands at this year’s Billboard Music Awards.
The nominations are in and it’s as tight as a tight thing.
Bieber, who has been in the headlines recently for everything but his music, is nominated for Top Artist, Top Male Artist, Top Billboard 200 Artist, Top Social Artist, Top Pop Artist, Top Pop Album and the Milestone Award.
The 19-year-old will be performing at the event and has promised Billboard via Twitter that he has “something different” planned for the show.
In the Top Artist category, Bieber will face off against Maroon 5, Taylor Swift, Rihanna and One Direction.
Votes for the awards will be decided on album and digital single sales, airplay, touring, streaming and social media interactions between fans and artists on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Vevo and Spotify.
To wit, Swift has sold 26 million albums and 75 million song downloads around the world. Bieber has sold 18 million albums worldwide.
Bieber may have an easier run in the Top Male artist award category. In this, the Canadian is up against Bruno Mars (53 million song downloads worldwide with 1 billion YouTube views), rapper and producer Flo Rida, country’s Jason Aldean and Canadian rapper Drake.
Skipping over to the Billboard 200 Artist category, a standing room only line-up sees multi-million selling Adele up for a win here with her second album 21, two years after its release in February 2011.
That mighty effort will contend with Bieber’s 2012 Believe album which topped Billboard’s chart on its release last year, Mumford and Sons Babel, Swift’s Red, and One Direction’s Take Me Home and Up All Night.
The Top Social Artist Award covers much the same ground, but replaces Adele and Mumford and Sons with Rihanna and Katy Perry. Competition here will be fierce as each artist has a sizable, active fan base.
Going by numbers alone, Bieber leads 38+ million Twitter followers (despite a recent claim by metrics analysts site Socialbakers that nearly half of these were fake false, Twitter has not seen fit to amend the singer’s account so the figures stand at present), and over 52 million Facebook likes.
Top Pop Artist assembles another contentious gallery with Adele, Bieber and One Direction jousting with Maroon 5’s Overexposed and Mars’ Unorthodox Jukebox.
Top Pop album sees the above pitted against each other, minus mars.
Bieber also goes head to head with Swift and Mars for the Chevrolet sponsored Milestone award.
Leading with most nominations are Swift, Maroon 5 and Fun in 11 categories.
Rihanna scored 10 nods, while Carly Rae Jepsen — recent Juno Awards winner — has nine.
Noting the sign of the times, this year Billboard have added several electronic dance categories, paving the way for huge dance titans like David Guetta, Baauer, Skrillex and Calvin Harris to get a look in.
Billboard’s Music Awards will take place at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas on May 19 with host Tracy Morgan. The show airs at 8 pm. ET on ABC.
And if you still need one more reason to watch, Prince is this year’s recipient of Billboard’s Icon Award.
It should be a night to remember.
[Images via s_bukley / Shutterstock.com via Featureflash / Shutterstock.com viaFeatureflash /Shutterstock.com via s_bukley / Shutterstock.com]
