Justin Bieber Just Did The Same Thing For The 2018 Billboard Music Awards As Last Year

Justin Bieber was nominated for eight Billboard Music Awards this year, including Top Social Artist, but the singer was nowhere to be found at the awards ceremony. Where is Justin Bieber during the 2018 Billboard Music Awards? Fans will know that he is sort of hit and miss when it comes to attending award shows. He also skipped the 2017 Billboard Music Awards and was even a no-show at the 2017 Grammys. Last year, he had the excuse of having conjunctivitis as his reason for not showing up. But, where’s Bieber this year?

Justin hasn’t revealed yet what he’s doing this year instead of attending the awards, but he recently shared a picture on Instagram of him spending quality time with his brother Jaxon, with a caption that read, “I absolutely adore every little thing about you my precious baby bro.”

The Instagram snap was shared almost a day before the ceremony, so it's not clear whether the photo was taken in the moment or if it is just a super sweet throwback. But, if Biebs is hanging with his fam instead of at the awards ceremony, that's a pretty good excuse to skip. Family should always come first, you know?

In an interview with TMZ earlier this year, Bieber said he wasn’t going to attend any awards shows until his upcoming album is done. Many fans were hoping Bieber would break his rule and perhaps even tease a song. But, nope, he held fast to that promise. I guess we'll all have to wait until the album drops to hear (and see) him again.

Even though Bieber didn’t attend the event, he won a fair few of the awards he was up for, including Streaming Song, Hot 100 Song, Latin Song, and Top Selling Song. The good thing is Bieber’s nominations were mostly for “Despacito,” so by skipping out on the awards ceremony this year, he’s letting his “Despacito” teammates have their moment to shine. His role on the song was not the main one, so it's cool to see the real stars of that song get their due.

Luis Fonsi spoke to Billboard on Sunday about the power of the song, saying:

"We’re super happy, it’s been an amazing year. Very grateful for all the support, everybody just kind of connected to the song and I’m just happy to celebrate it with everybody today ... I just love the fact that people are embracing Latin music and they’re a little bit more open-minded into trying to learn a song that’s in a different language and at the end of the day, it’s all about music and getting people to move and to dance, have a good time, so I‘m really grateful.”

As far as new music, Bieber hasn’t shared any of his solo stuff yet, but he did collaborate with producer Poo Bear and rapper Jay Electronica on a song called “Hard 2 Face Reality” that’s featured in Poo Bear’s recent debut album Poo Bear Presents Bearthday Music. It’s been three years since Bieber dropped his last album, Purpose, and fans are eagerly awaiting to see what he has up his sleeve next. It's possible that the album will contain some heartbreaking numbers since Bieber is rumored to have split again from his on-and-off girlfriend Selena Gomez.

Purpose's "Love Yourself" was rumored to have been about Gomez, and it will definitely be interesting to see what the new album contains. Although, since they were dating for a portion of the time he was working on it, maybe there will be some sweeter songs about her too. We'll just have to wait and see. But, in the meantime, we won't be seeing Bieber at any award shows — and fans just have to get through it to the other side where at least there will be new music.