How Old Was Justin Bieber in 'Beauty And A Beat'? 18, and No. 1 Worldwide at 32

Justin Bieber was 18 when 'Beauty And A Beat' came out. He was born on 1 March 1994, the album Believe reached American shops on 19 June 2012, and the video went up on YouTube on 12 October that year. Nicki Minaj, who raps the verse, was born on 8 December 1982, so she was 29. When the song peaked at No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100, on the chart dated 5 January 2013, he was still 18 and she had just turned 30.

People are asking now because the song came back this year, when Bieber was 32. On 14 April 2026 'Beauty And A Beat' topped Spotify's worldwide daily ranking for the first time in its life, nearly 13 years and 10 months after Believe. Since 12 April it has not spent a single day outside the top 50 there.

How old Justin Bieber and Nicki Minaj were in 'Beauty And A Beat', then and now

• Album out (Believe, US, 19 June 2012): Bieber 18, Minaj 29
• Video posted (12 October 2012): Bieber 18, Minaj 29
• Hot 100 peak, No. 5 (chart dated 5 January 2013): Bieber 18, Minaj 30
• Coachella set (11 April 2026): Bieber 32, Minaj 43
• First Spotify global No. 1 (14 April 2026): Bieber 32, Minaj 43

The song was written by Max Martin, Zedd, Savan Kotecha and Minaj, and produced by Martin and Zedd, with Kuk Harrell also credited as a producer. Zedd was 22 when Believe came out. Bieber does not have a writing credit on it.

Why 'Beauty And A Beat' is popular again: one Coachella weekend

Bieber headlined Coachella on two Saturdays, 11 and 18 April 2026. 'Beauty And A Beat' was the 21st of 34 songs on the first night, in a run of early hits between 'That Should Be Me' and 'Never Say Never', and it was not on the second night's list of 29. We found no report that Minaj joined him on either weekend.

It returned to Spotify's chart before he sang it. The global list for Friday 10 April, the day before his set, already had it back at No. 149, after at least three weeks off the chart. It rose again on the day of the set, to No. 86 on the 11th, and then fast: No. 18 on the 12th, No. 3 on the 13th, No. 1 on the 14th. Its biggest day came on 17 April, with 10,021,323 streams, and even that was a No. 2, behind the debut of Olivia Rodrigo's 'drop dead'. In all it spent 31 days at No. 1 there, the last of them on 27 May.

Other charts followed. It was No. 1 for two weeks on the Billboard Global 200, on the charts dated 9 and 16 May, and climbed to No. 3 on the UK singles chart, against a 2012 best of No. 16. On the Hot 100 it came back at No. 26 and rose to No. 11, then vanished after the chart dated 2 May. The likeliest reason is Billboard's rule, in force since October 2025, that drops a song below No. 25 once it has 26 weeks on the chart; 'Beauty And A Beat' had 26 by then, counting its weeks in 2012 and 2013. That is our reading, not Billboard's statement.

37 countries and no stronghold: 'Beauty And A Beat' in October

Six months on, it is slipping slowly. On Sunday 27 September it was No. 8 on Spotify's global chart with 2,811,828 streams; on Sunday 25 October it was No. 11 with 2,363,597, and by Monday 26 October it had dropped to 15th. On Spotify's weekly chart its four most recent weeks added up to 10% fewer streams than the four before them.

Its support is wide and thin. On 26 October it was on the daily chart in 37 countries, and its best place anywhere was No. 15, in Taiwan, the same as its global rank. Austria (20), Singapore (21), Germany (22), the United Arab Emirates (33) and Malaysia (36) came next. All six were already near the top on 1 May, when it was No. 1 in Taiwan, Austria, the Emirates and Malaysia, No. 2 in Germany and No. 3 in Singapore. The countries that let it go are the Nordics, the Netherlands and Canada: Sweden has gone from No. 2 to No. 68 and Canada from No. 3 to No. 59. By raw numbers the United States still streams it most, 339,783 times on 26 October, and Indonesia second.

In the US it behaves like a party record. On the four Saturdays of October it sat between No. 51 and No. 57 on the American chart, and from Monday to Thursday between No. 67 and No. 106.

The revival has changed its standing on both artists' pages. Its lifetime Spotify count was 1,517,077,599 on 12 April and 2,408,876,697 on 27 October, so 37% of all its plays since 2012 came in the last six and a half months. It is now the most-streamed song on Spotify that Minaj appears on, ahead of 'Side To Side' (2,021,793,849).

Nicki Minaj's verse is the loudest part of 'Beauty And A Beat'

In the official video the music starts 34 seconds in; before that our sound classifier hears outdoor noise, a skateboard, screams and laughter. From there it is labelled electronic dance music or house almost all the way. An instrumental section our software finds repeated, first heard at 0:34 with hardly a word sung, returns at 1:53, 2:14 and 3:39. Our tempo reading is 129 beats a minute, about the pace of a house track.

Its loudest passage, at 0.75 on our software's scale, runs from 3:12 to 3:39, and the classifier tags it as dubstep and rapping: that is Minaj's verse. It is also the part commenters single out. The most-liked comment we read under the video, with 124,000 likes, is about her rap, and five more of the top 40 mention her or her line that she has to keep watch for Selena, Bieber's girlfriend at the time. The chorus supplies the title, “'Cause all I need is a beauty and a beat”, and the song asks for no more than that: a night out, a girl and a song to dance to.

This year has had other old songs back on the charts with nothing new behind them; we tracked P!nk's 'Just Give Me a Reason', which went from one Spotify country chart to 28 without a remix or a tour. 'Beauty And A Beat' had Coachella behind it.

Will 'Beauty And A Beat' pass 'Ghost'?

Kworb.net, which keeps a running count of Spotify plays, had 'Beauty And A Beat' at 2,408,876,697 on 27 October and Bieber's 2021 song 'Ghost' at 2,416,654,795. The 2012 song was closing the gap by roughly 1.73 million plays every day.

At that rate the crossing is days away, and we predict it happens in kworb's count by 3 November 2026: 'Beauty And A Beat' passes 'Ghost' and becomes the third-most-streamed song Bieber leads on Spotify, after 'Love Yourself' and 'Sorry'. We also expect it to be inside Spotify's global top 50 on 31 December 2026, which would be day 264 of the run that began on 12 April.