Sorry

Story of Song

Speculations from the fans that this song is an apology from Bieber to his ex girlfriend Selena Gomez, with regretful, lovesick lyrics asking for a second chance and wanting to “redeem” himself. But Justin and the co-writers explained that it’s simply about making difficult apologies. Justin Tranter (co-writer) said: “Truly saying sorry is never easy to do, and when you are you just hope it’s not too late.” Julia Michaels (co-writer) wrote in an annotation on the Genius site: “We were just trying to capture that moment in a relationship or a particular moment in your life where you realize you made a mistake and you’re finally ready to admit it and apologize.”  At the MTV EMAs Justin Bieber  spoke to Nova’s Kent `Smallzy’ Small, he said: “It’s kinda the stamp in the end of the apologies I’m giving to people, to the media. There needs to come a time where they’re just like `we get it’, you know? And I think putting out a song saying I’m sorry kinda puts the finishing icing on the cake and I’m ready to just move on.”

Release date

Released on October 23, 2015

Songwriter/s

Justin Bieber – Julia Michaels – Justin Tranter – Sonny Moore – Michael Tucker

Label

Def Jam

Chart Rankings

US – 2

UK – 1

GERMANY  – 3

With almost 500 million views on YouTube, Bieber broke a lot of records with this song and other songs from the same album ‘Purpose’. While ‘Sorry’ peaked at number 1 in the UK, his other single from the same album ‘Love Yourself’ was at number 2, breaking a 30 year old record previously achieved by Madonna. He also became the first artist ever to log four weeks at Numbers 1 and 2 consecutively, beating the record previously held by The Beatles. Bieber had three singles in the Official Charts at the same time, a record previously achieved by John Lennon 34 years ago. Another record achieved by Bieber is having eight songs in the Top 40 charts at the same time surpassing Elvis Presley’s record of seven songs. ‘Sorry’ became Justin’s second chart-topping song in the UK with 104 thousand combined chart sales and 5.35 million streams in its first week. The song peaked at number 1 in Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Ireland, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Scotland, Slovakia, Spain and Sweden. It was in the top ten charts in 10 countries around the world. In the US, the song became Bieber’s first number 1 single on the Streaming Songs chart with 23.1 million streams and 277 thousand downloads in its first week and his eighth top 10 Billboard single. Bieber became the third artist to have three singles inside the chart’s top five. It was Certified Double Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) with sales over 2 million copies as well as Canada, New Zealand and Sweden. ‘Sorry’ was certified Platinum in Australia, Denmark, Italy, and Spain as well as the UK selling over 600.00 copies.

Artist’s age on release date

Justin Bieber was 21 years old.

Cover Versions

Tayler Buono and amateur artists covered ‘Sorry’ on YouTube.

Video