The 2010s File Feature
That Should Be Me
The Making and Chart History of "That Should Be Me" "That Should Be Me" is a recording by Justin Bieber that appeared on his debut studio album My World 2.0,…
01 The Story
The Making and Chart History of "That Should Be Me"
"That Should Be Me" is a recording by Justin Bieber that appeared on his debut studio album My World 2.0, released in March 2010, and on the associated extended play release. The song was written by Nasri Atweh and Adam Messinger, two Canadian songwriters who contributed multiple tracks to Bieber's early career recordings, and its production reflected the polished, radio-ready teen pop sound that characterized the album campaign as a whole. At the time of the recording, Bieber was approximately 15 years old and had been signed to RBMG Records under the mentorship of Usher and with the management of Scooter Braun, a combination of professional support that had given him one of the most carefully constructed launch platforms in the history of teen pop.
The album My World 2.0 itself represented a significant commercial achievement, debuting at number one on the Billboard 200 album chart and making Bieber the youngest male solo artist to debut at the top of that chart since Stevie Wonder in 1963. The commercial context for "That Should Be Me" was therefore one of extraordinary commercial momentum, in which nearly every release associated with the Bieber brand was being consumed with intense enthusiasm by a young, digitally engaged fanbase. The song's thematic content, dealing with the experience of watching a former romantic interest move on to a new partner, was well suited to the emotional landscape of the young demographic that constituted Bieber's core audience.
The song made a brief appearance on the Billboard Hot 100, debuting and peaking at position 92 on April 10, 2010, and spending a single week on the chart. This minimal Hot 100 presence reflected the dynamics of an album-oriented track rather than a dedicated single release, as the primary promotional focus of the My World 2.0 campaign was concentrated on other songs from the project. Despite the modest chart showing, the song accumulated substantial audience engagement through digital platforms and remained one of the more recognized tracks from the album among Bieber's fanbase.
The song received significant attention from Bieber's fanbase, known as "Beliebers," who found the emotional content of the song highly relatable and who championed it through social media sharing and digital download purchasing during a period when Bieber's online following was among the most active and organized of any artist in the industry. The intensity of this fanbase engagement meant that even tracks without dedicated single marketing could accumulate impressive streaming and download numbers, and "That Should Be Me" benefited from this dynamic.
A later version of the song was released as an official single with a remix featuring Rascal Flatts, the country music group, released in 2011 to coincide with the Never Say Never: The Remixes project. This version brought the song to country radio and introduced Bieber to country music listeners who had not engaged with his pop recordings, extending the song's commercial life and geographic reach. The Rascal Flatts collaboration reflected broader industry awareness of Bieber's cross-format appeal and the commercial opportunity presented by connecting his substantial mainstream pop audience with the large country music fanbase.
The inclusion of the song on My World 2.0 contributed to an album that was recognized as a pivotal moment in early 2010s teen pop, representing the emergence of a new model for artist development in the social media era. Bieber's path to stardom through YouTube, his early identification by Scooter Braun, and his rapid ascent through the major label system made his career a widely discussed case study in how digital platforms were transforming the music industry's approach to artist discovery and audience development. "That Should Be Me" exists as a component of that broader cultural narrative surrounding one of the most commercially significant artist launches of the decade.
In live performances during the My World Tour of 2010 and 2011, the song was a consistent presence in Bieber's set list, where it connected strongly with young audiences who identified with its romantic themes. The performances reinforced the song's association with the emotional authenticity that Bieber projected as a teenage artist genuinely experiencing many of the same emotional situations his music described, a quality that his management and label worked carefully to maintain as central to his commercial and personal brand identity during this early phase of his career.
02 Song Meaning
Themes and Meaning in "That Should Be Me"
"That Should Be Me" is a song about romantic displacement and the pain of watching a relationship slip away to someone else. The narrator describes the experience of seeing a former romantic partner in a new relationship, observing moments of affection and connection that the narrator feels should rightfully belong to them, and expressing the frustration and longing that accompanies this experience. The emotional content is direct and uncomplicated in its expression, which made it highly accessible to the young audience for whom the song was created.
The song occupies well-worn terrain in popular music: the feeling that a relationship ended too soon or for the wrong reasons, leaving the narrator to watch from the outside as a new partner enjoys what was once theirs. This theme of romantic regret and jealousy is one of the most enduring in the songwriting tradition, appearing across decades and genres, and the song's effectiveness lies in its ability to articulate the specific texture of this experience with emotional clarity. The simplicity of the emotional statement, the repeated insistence that the position now occupied by another person should rightfully belong to the narrator, captures something essential about the experience of romantic loss.
The age of the artist recording the song added a specific dimension to its reception. Justin Bieber's youth at the time of recording meant that the emotional content was understood by audiences as genuinely autobiographical, or at least as emotionally authentic to the experiences of teenagers navigating romantic relationships for the first time. The authenticity of the youth perspective in the lyrics, combined with Bieber's age and the carefully cultivated relatability of his public persona, made the song connect with a young demographic that found in it a credible articulation of feelings they were themselves experiencing.
The later remix featuring Rascal Flatts added a country dimension to the song that subtly shifted its thematic presentation. The country music genre has its own rich tradition of songs about romantic loss and displacement, and the Rascal Flatts contribution situated "That Should Be Me" within that tradition, connecting the song's emotional content to a set of cultural associations and musical conventions associated with heartbreak and stoic endurance. The cross-genre collaboration broadened the song's thematic reach without fundamentally altering its emotional core.
Culturally, the song is understood as part of a broader tradition of teen pop ballads that deal with romantic loss in emotionally direct, uncomplicated terms. The genre has produced many such songs over the decades, from earlier generations of teen idols through the Bieber era, and each generation's versions of this theme reflect something specific about the cultural moment in which they were created. "That Should Be Me" is a representative example from the early social media era, when teen pop artists were building unprecedented direct connections with their audiences through digital platforms and the emotional relatability of their material was central to sustaining those connections.
→ More from the 2010s File
View all 2010s hits →
Keep digging