SerpApi.Org
Justin Bieber did not choose one of his biggest pop singles for the first FIFA World Cup Final halftime show. He chose "Everything Hallelujah," a gospel-soul ballad that had already climbed to No. 2 on Billboard's Hot Christian Songs chart and reached No. 1 on both Christian Streaming Songs and Christian Digital Song Sales.
That decision immediately divided viewers Sunday night.
Introduced by Jason Sudeikis and Brendan Hunt in character as Ted Lasso and Coach Beard, Bieber walked onto the field at New York New Jersey Stadium carrying an acoustic guitar. Positioned between BTS's high-energy performance and Shakira and Burna Boy's "Dai Dai," he delivered a stripped-down rendition of "Everything Hallelujah," changing the ending to "It's the World Cup, hallelujah."
Watch the video:
Justin Bieber I FIFA World Cup 2026™ Final Halftime Show Performance
Some viewers questioned why Bieber chose a slow, relatively recent album track over one of his stadium-ready pop hits, while others praised the performance's restraint as a deliberate counterweight to the production surrounding it. The argument about whether the song belonged there is the less interesting one. The more interesting question is why this song — out of a catalog filled with Billboard Hot 100 hits — was the one Bieber kept choosing for his biggest moments.
Released in September 2025 on Bieber's album Swag II, "Everything Hallelujah" is a gospel-soul track that layers his voice into a pseudo-choir over gently picked acoustic guitar and synths. Its lyrics name things he is grateful for, each followed by "hallelujah." It is not a crossover pop record built for radio saturation. It is, by design, something quieter — and it has found traction beyond the mainstream pop formats that have traditionally defined his career.
The song gained traction following his performances during both weekends of Coachella in April, with the repeated "hallelujah" line helping drive it across TikTok. The trend attracted participation from Lewis Capaldi, Kylie Jenner, and the White House. During its first charting week, the song generated 2.4 million streams and 1,000 digital sales in the United States. It debuted at No. 6 on Billboard's Hot Christian Songs — giving Bieber his first top 10 on the ranking — alongside No. 1 on Christian Digital Song Sales and No. 16 on Bubbling Under Hot 100. It also debuted at No. 1 on Christian Streaming Songs, the first time Bieber had ever appeared on that chart. The track subsequently climbed to a peak of No. 2 on Hot Christian Songs. By June, it had debuted at No. 26 on Billboard's Adult R&B Airplay chart — Bieber's first solo entry on that tally.
That full trajectory matters for understanding what happened Sunday. Bieber did not reach for an obscure album cut or a piece of niche fan-service material. He reached for the song that had already demonstrated a capacity to travel well beyond its natural genre home — a track that moved from a Swag II deep cut to a Coachella performance to a TikTok trend to No. 1 on Christian Streaming Songs to Adult R&B radio in the span of roughly nine months. The World Cup was the next stop on a trajectory already in motion.
What the performance also did, regardless of how viewers felt about the song choice, was place an explicitly faith-centered record inside one of the world's most-watched secular sporting events. The song had already secured a top 10 on Billboard's Hot Christian Songs chart and debuted at No. 1 on Christian Streaming Songs before Sunday. For that audience, the World Cup performance was not a puzzling artistic choice. It was a culmination.
The argument that Bieber chose the wrong song treats a World Cup halftime slot the same way the Super Bowl logic works — setlist depth as a measure of ambition, catalog hits as proof of relevance. Bieber operated on a different premise: one song, performed without dancers or elaborate choreography, built entirely around the idea that a track already proven to scale across genre lines might do something different on a stage this size than a hit from 2015 would. Whether the data supports that premise will become clearer in the coming chart cycles. What the data already supports is that "Everything Hallelujah" was not a sentimental or random choice. It was the song that had been building — and Sunday night was simply where the build got its largest room.
