Justin Bieber cancels ‘Late Show’ and Thanksgiving Day Parade appearances amid bumpy comeback

Justin Bieber might be having a heck of a comeback — but life is already coming at the pop star too fast.

In the midst of his promo run for his latest chart topper “Purpose,” the often embattled singer has pulled out of not one but two major appearances at the 11th hour.

Bieber was set to appear on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” on Tuesday and pretape a performance for CBS’ “The Thanksgiving Day Parade.”

Late Monday the star announced on Twitter that he would not be traveling to New York City, pulling out of the appearances for undisclosed personal reasons.

He offered an apology to “The Late Show,” and promised to make it up to the show before separately tweeting Colbert, writing: “thank you for the understanding as sometimes life kicks our .... and we need to deal with it. I will see u soon. Thank you.”

Bieber’s new album took the crown in the big chart showdown with One Direction’s competing album.

“Purpose” sold 522,000 copies in its first week, a sales record that Adele crushed a few days later with behemoth sales of her own comeback record. Bieber’s album, which critics have widely lauded, also shattered Spotify’s global record for most streams in the first week of an album’s release after logging 205 million streams across the globe, according to Nielsen Music.

Bieber broke another record with his comeback record, one that’s a bit more difficult to usurp: having the most songs in the Hot 100 in a single week. He notched 17 tracks, topping the record of 14 songs previously held by the Beatles back in 1964 and Drake, who did it twice this year.

Still, his road to a big comeback hasn’t been bump-free.

Bieber broke the Internet in the most embarrassing way when fully nude photos of the star on vacation snapped by a pap were widely circulated and analyzed.

He bailed on an awkward radio interview with a Spanish station after being asked silly questions such as whether or not he dressed himself. A show in Oslo got cut short after he stormed off the stage, frustrated that eager fans were getting in the way of his efforts to clean a spill.

After rabid fans got overly excited upon his arrival in a Melbourne airport, he took to Snapchat to ask them to be more respectful and laid out his rules of engagement when it came to asking for selfies (“If you start screaming louder that’s not going to make me want to take a photo more,” he offered).

And he even halted one performance to scold fans that they were clapping off-beat before demonstrating the correct way to clap to his music. “If you’re going to clap, at least clap on-beat.”

“I don’t always handle things the right way but I’m human and I’m working on getting better at responding not reacting,” Bieber wrote in a lengthy mea culpa after the Oslo incident.

But as he’s continued to prove onstage — including most recently at the American Music Awards, where he closed the show with a spectacular medley — music speaks louder than words.

For more music news, follow me on Twitter: @gerrickkennedy