Justin Bieber releases Maple Leafs song, merging two great plagues into one

Look, I know you’re expecting a rant and a rave and perhaps for your laptop to start emitting smoke from this, but that would just be wasted emotion. Justin Bieber wrote a song about the Leafs, because of course he did.

The Maple Leafs are annoying. Or more to the point, everything surrounding the Maple Leafs is annoying. The actual team is good and entertaining and will be even more entertaining for everyone outside Toronto come the playoffs, when Freddie Andersen knifes their Cup chances in the ribs for the 37th straight year or whatever it is. And then we get to watch the Toronto media blame William Nylander instead.

Justin Bieber is annoying. So of course this song is annoying and bad. That’s not news. In fact, it sounds like a two-minute-long plea for the Leafs to sign Bieber at left wing. Biebs feels about his hockey abilities the way Ice Cube does about his basketball abilities, so don’t rule it out. If it’s not that, then it appears to be preparing the ground for whatever excuse the Leafs have this time for fucking up the runway they have this year to at least the NHL semifinals. “Everyone makes mistakes?” Try running that past Steve Simmons in June. I’m sure it’ll go over gangbusters.

But let’s be honest. Anytime some musician ends up writing a song for a team, it ends up being bad. Here in Chicago, I had to live through the hell of Eddie Vedder’s mumbled sea-shanty of 2007 and 2008, and it’s entirely and solely his fault that the Cubs didn’t win a playoff game in either year. The gods can be vengeful, but sometimes rightly so. If you needed confirmation of Pearl Jam’s uselessness since “Vitalogy,” here you go. And if you know anyone who played that song and thinks it’s cool or somehow captured what it meant to be a Cubs fan, you can remove them from your life now and be better off. I’m willing to bet they have their hat on backwards.

There was Scott Stapp’s Marlins song. Is it possible to be worse solo than with Creed? Apparently so!

Look, even good musicians fall. Al Jourgensen and Ministry helped create an entire genre of music, industrial, back in their day. There are few songs better to play at earbleed volume than Just One Fix. And Al is a genuine Hawks fan. But this effort... it’s like if you passed The Beautiful People through a carwash.

Considering that the Habs earlier this year were pumping Nickelback and now the Leafs have an official Bieber song, it’s clear that the worst thing to happen to hockey was Canadians.