Marilyn Manson’s acting awfully diplomatic these days. Just days after discussing patching things up with Trent Reznor in an interview with Consequence Of Sound, the Antichrist Superstar artist has quashed a growing beef with Justin “The Biebs” Bieber. The source of discord between Manson and the not-so-teenybopper was apparently a T-shirt design—Bieber used the Antichrist Superstar image on his own merch, and appeared to be biting Manson’s style. But it turns out there was no need to say sorry here, because Manson had allowed Bieber’s team to “reimagine” the image as they saw fit.
But trouble began brewing (or, in Bieber’s case, bro-ing) when the two bumped into each other somewhere, and Bieber told Manson he made him relevant again by selling T-shirts with Manson’s face on them. So Manson called him “a real piece of shit in the way he had the arrogance to say that,” which has apparently gotten back to Bieber, who sent a series of “u up?” texts that were intended to suss out any ill will between them. Manson says things are settled between them, but he still went on SiriusXM’s Octane show to share the texts with host Grant Random.
The host promptly started reading the texts off Manson’s phone, but the singer didn’t think he quite captured Bieber’s essence. So he read some of the texts in Bieber’s voice, and frankly, nailed the impression:
Manson needled Bieber some more from afar, pointing out that he had previously acknowledged that the Purpose singer is in fact an asshole. But he strung him along a bit by text, suggesting the media had blown things out of proportion, and that they could really stick it to them by collaborating. But Bieber probably shouldn’t head to the recording studio yet; when Random asked “You would not write something for him?,” Manson replied “I just did—those texts.”