Justin Bieber recently put all his cards on the table during a raw and wide-ranging interview with Apple Music's Zane Lowe.
During the 45-minute conversation, the 25-year-old pop superstar opened up about everything from his past self-destructive behavior to his blossoming new life with wife Hailey Baldwin.
Bieber's interview with Lowe, which airs Saturday (Feb. 15), arrives a day after the release of the singer's long awaited new studio album, Changes. The release is out now through Def Jam/Universal Music Group.
Read the top 10 highlights from Bieber's interview with Lowe, and watch the full interview below.
Bieber on his 2017 tour cancellation
"I was really tired emotionally, physically, and I was sick and I didn't realize I was sick. So I had Epstein-Barr, which is like, it's called Mono. And then I have Lyme disease. So it was that, it was just the exhaustion of just being on tour, and then it was just everything compounded I think, to be honest."
Bieber on living with Lyme disease
"I think just making sure that I am just doing the right treatments for it, doing the right IVs and all that sort of stuff. Taking the necessary precautions, necessary to not get any worse, I guess. Listen to Hailey when she says she feels that I'm run down, and it's good to have her as checks and balances. She can let me know when I'm like, 'All right, you're looking depleted right now.'"
Bieber on his relationship with God
"The way I look at my relationship with God and with Jesus is, I'm not trying to earn God's love by doing good things. God has already loved me for who I am before I did anything to earn and deserve it. It's a free gift by accepting Jesus, and just giving your life to Him. And what he did is the gift, the forgiveness is the thing that we look at and, 'I'm going to worship you, God, because you gave me something so good.' And so you live that life of like, 'I don't want to cheat on my wife, not because it's the right thing to do, but because I don't want to hurt her,' see the difference there?"
Bieber on his past self-destructive behavior
"I don't know if I'd be alive, for sure. It was dark, really dark. So I'm very, very grateful to have influences in my life that have played a huge part in me seeing their relationship with Jesus and their relationship with their wives, and their relationship with their kids, and saying, 'That's what I want,' and I'm striving after that. So I was thinking too, obviously when we want to be successful in certain things, there's things we have to work hard at. But striving for God's love, or God's approval, or people's approval, it's like God's told me, He said, I mean I don't hear from God audibly. But I feel like God's, when he sees us, he's not this God that a lot of people think, that like judgmental, and he's a God that accepts us for who we are, and loves us through our pain and through our dirt."
Bieber on knowing Hailey Baldwin was "The One"
"I'd seen her at an event. I'd seen her with a baby and something just clicked. It was like, 'Wow, she's the one.' I'd kind of decluttered some of my past and I was able to see really clearly. I just seen her across the room. She was holding a baby. I'd just seen the nurturing look in her eyes toward this baby. I was like, 'I want the mother of my children to look at a baby the way that she was,' and the way she was carrying it. I just seen something so special. I just was like, 'I want that.' I knew that she could offer that to me."
Bieber on his marriage to Hailey Baldwin
“I'm freaking married now. I got the best wife in the world. She supports me through so much. I'm really honored to be her husband and I just… Yes. There's more to come. I mean, I want to continue to write about what it looks like to be… This is an album I wrote in the first year of our marriage, so it's so fresh. There's so much more to learn about commitment, and building trust, and foundation. I'm looking forward to continuing to build and make music that's going to reflect that.
I think I'm excited about this, but I'm just like, there's so much more. There's so much deeper levels I'm excited to go to, which is fun. It gives me something to look forward to. I think in the past, I was so caught up in all of the bad things in my life that I wasn't able to really take a second and really appreciate all the little things. Yes, I'm excited. It's going to be good.”
Bieber on making new music
"I think, again, I was dealing with a lot of fear, a lot of just… was afraid of, at that point, just even the process. What am I going to talk about again? Is it going to be received? I'm starting to compare with other artists. I think when I went on stage with Ariana Grande, I seen the reaction of how people reacted when I went on the stage. It was like, 'Okay.' He gave me kind of a boost of confidence and reminded me because it'd been so long since I'd been on stage. Just kind of reminded me what… Oh, this is what I do. This is what I'm good at. And I don't need to run away from it. I was… I was running away. I think a lot of us need to take that when something's hard. It's almost like we need to run towards the pain and run towards the hurt rather than run away from it. I think you get kind of healing when it comes to that.”
Bieber on feeling protective over Billie Eilish
"Yes, I definitely feel protective of her. It was hard for me being that young, and being in the industry, and not knowing where to turn, and everyone telling me they love me, and just turn their back on you in a second. It's hard because I want her to know that she can count on me, but at the end of the day, I don't want to… I'm never going to force myself to be in relationship with her. It has to be natural, right? I just kind of let her do her thing. If she ever needs me, I'm going to be here for her. Just protecting those moments because people take for granted, encounters. I just want to protect her. I don't want her to lose it. I don't want her to go through anything I went through. I don't wish that upon anybody. If she ever needs me, I'm just a call away."
Bieber on starting a family with Hailey Baldwin
"I want to start my own family in due time. I want to enjoy being married for a little bit, go on tour, be married, enjoy traveling with just us, build more of our relationship. And I think, yeah, that is definitely the next step for sure."
Bieber on where he sees himself in 10 years
"Control back, yeah. I just feel like there's so much to look forward to. I'm really excited. I'm emotional thinking about it. I'm just excited to have babies with you Hailey]. I'm excited to just enjoy and just celebrate all the amazing things that we've been given, because we are blessed, babe. We talk about it all the time. We just have a thing where we just say, 'We're so blessed.' We are, man. There's so much pain in the world and we don't understand why. And there's so much things that are so unexplainable, but what is the reality? We are blessed, you know? It's hard, that dichotomy of like, how can we mourn the loss of someone and accept that we are still blessed? I think that's a really hard thing to discover, but I think when you get there, it's a beautiful place to be. Beautiful place to be."
