One country, two Justin Biebers

The unexpected happened in Belgium with the uprising success of Canadian singer Justin Bieber. It happened after his haircut was imitated by basically all teens whipping their hair in a manly way (!) and adjusting their NY caps to look like true "brothers". This small country, which he probably doesn't know of (when asked about the German origin of his name, he said he didn't know what "German" was!), has given birth to two Bieberclones. And guess what... one is a Flemish and the other one is a Walloon! Fierce competition going on...

Flemish Bieber

The Flemish version of Justin Bieber is 16-year-old Ian Thomas. His father is a Flemish actor and his mother a Dutch choregrapher. The teenager decided one day to sing a Dutch version of the hitsong "Baby". This song was at first released as a Youtube video and then became full-shaped a single. Quickly, the song reached #1 of the Flemish charts. He then got also famous in the Netherlands as well and many girls were crazy about him.

Yet recently he published a music video called "Haters" in which he appeared more agressive and full of frustration. In the track, he rapped violently against his bullies, who he said called him names (e.g. "gay") and he often had the police escort him to school and cried in his bed at nights. Although the goal of the video was to stop all attacks against him, it resulted the opposite. Tons of negative comments were posted on his video, which led his mother to ask for the video to be removed from Youtube...

Walloon Bieber

On the other hand, you have Christopher Hagelstein, who is better known as Chris Bieber, the Walloon Justin Bieber. This huge "belieber", aged 20, adopted the complete look of his idol and decided to sing his own song alongside a couple of rapper friends. The music video was published on Youtube and got noticed by a Belgian youtubers, although he didn't get as famous as Ian Thomas, probably due to the quality of his lyrics and singing... Yet the story came to the French media's ears and he was interviewed a number of times and a documentary was made about him.

Recently, however, the young Walloon celebrity's life was plunged into sadness, as on April 4th he had a car crash with his 10-year-old brother. Both were transferred to a local hospital, but only Chris survived, which gave rise to a number of criticisms on the singer for being responsible of his younger brother's death.

All in all, both Justin Bieber look-alikes have in common not only their passion for the Canadian singer, but also a tragic history, with a lot of criticisms and attacks against them. Some people will say that it's because young girls love Justin Bieber so much that young boys hate him even more by pure jealousy... I personally... don't care about him, but I hope these two Belgian singers will have a peaceful life.