On April 18, 2016, Dutch broadcaster FunX placed a recording called “Stay With Me Forever” at the top of its daily “Nandoleaks” roundup. The headline promised a leaked, sexually charged Justin Bieber song. The item was real as a piece of contemporary coverage; the conclusions attached to the audio were far less secure.
“Stay With Me Forever” has never appeared on an official Justin Bieber album, single or soundtrack. No authorized release announcement, label page or official Bieber upload establishes its writers, producers, recording date or intended project. It is best described as an unreleased recording attributed to Bieber that circulated publicly in April 2016—not as a forgotten official single.
What appeared in April 2016
The surviving FunX article was published at 7:40 a.m. on April 18. It identified its first selection as “Justin Bieber - Stay With Me Forever,” followed by Ariana Grande and Lil Wayne’s officially released “Let Me Love You.” That juxtaposition is revealing: the “Nandoleaks” format mixed leaks with newly released tracks and videos, so inclusion under its banner did not itself prove unauthorized provenance.
Fan-posted versions dated April 17 described the track as unfinished and newly leaked. Those uploads are not rights-holder media and should not be treated as official evidence or listening destinations. They do, however, establish that the recording was circulating one day before FunX published its roundup. April 17 is therefore the most defensible date for the track’s defining public emergence.
French entertainment site Public reported on April 18 that fans had revealed the song and suggested Bieber had privately shared it with a group of them earlier. Its contemporary account framed the recording almost as a gift subsequently unveiled by fans. A Spanish-language report instead said it had surfaced without Bieber’s consent. Neither outlet supplied documentation from Bieber, his management or Def Jam.
Those claims cannot all be upgraded to fact. A private playback, a deliberately shared file and a stolen studio recording are materially different events. With no primary statement resolving them, “leak” describes how the public encountered the track, not a proven chain of custody.
Not part of the released Purpose album
The timing encouraged reporters to connect “Stay With Me Forever” to Purpose. Bieber’s fourth studio album had arrived on November 13, 2015, and his supporting tour began in March 2016. Yet the official catalog provides a simple corrective: the song is absent from every authorized edition represented on Apple Music’s album listing. It is also missing from the contemporary track list NME published before the album’s arrival in its report on the announced record.
That does not prove it was never considered for Purpose. Pop albums generate many demos, alternate versions and discarded sessions. It proves only that “Stay With Me Forever” was not released on Purpose. Describing it as a Purpose outtake requires session evidence that has not become public.
The mistake is understandable. Sonically, the circulated recording belongs near Bieber’s transition from the R&B emphasis of Journals to the streamlined electronic pop of Purpose. Soft keyboard or synth textures support a processed lead vocal; the refrain relies on repetition; the production leaves enough space for a more adult romantic scenario. Those are musical observations, not evidence of a particular session date.
The tour context also amplified any unfamiliar Bieber recording. CBS had announced a 58-city Purpose tour, and contemporary concert reports described a show alternating dance spectacle with acoustic and intimate passages. In that atmosphere, an unrecognized track could easily be reported as a tour-era preview even without confirmation.
The title problem and missing credits
“Stay With Me Forever” appears to derive from its repeated refrain, but no label metadata has established that phrase as an official registered title. Fan communities have also connected the recording with “What You Wanna Do,” reflecting another phrase heard near the opening. Without a label filing, session sheet or artist statement, both names should be treated as circulating titles rather than definitive studio documentation.
The credits are even less certain. Vagalume’s page lists the composer as unknown while identifying Bieber as performer and noting a later ECAD-verified phonogram entry. That database presentation is evidence that the recording acquired a catalog-like footprint; it does not supply the missing songwriter or producer names, nor does it transform the track into an authorized commercial release.
This is where metadata can mislead. Lyrics sites routinely create pages from fan-submitted or circulating audio. Rights and recognition systems may ingest recordings for monitoring purposes. An entry can therefore verify that a recording is being identified under a name without proving who uploaded it, whether the artist approved distribution or what final title was intended.
No songwriter should be guessed from stylistic similarity. Bieber worked extensively with Jason “Poo Bear” Boyd and numerous other writers around this period, but proximity is not authorship. Unless a credible rights registration or official credit surfaces, the responsible byline remains unknown.
Hearing an unfinished adult-pop sketch
The circulated audio presents an overtly physical romantic scenario, but its central hook promises continuity rather than a casual encounter. That tension gives the song its limited dramatic shape: sensual verses resolve into a refrain about remaining together indefinitely.
As interpretation, the record sounds more like a polished sketch than a master ready for release. The vocal processing is prominent, some lines are difficult to decipher, and the arrangement leans heavily on the refrain instead of developing through sharply differentiated sections. These qualities may reflect an early mix, a low-quality source file or deliberate production choices. Without access to an authenticated master, it is impossible to say which.
The track nevertheless fits an important transformation in Bieber’s public music. By Purpose, he was no longer presented primarily as a teenage romantic lead. Records such as “What Do You Mean?,” “Sorry” and “Company” placed adult ambiguity, physical proximity and emotionally evasive behavior inside highly efficient pop production. “Stay With Me Forever” pursues similar adulthood more bluntly and with less compositional finesse.
That may explain both its initial appeal and its continued cult status. An unreleased song lets listeners imagine an alternate album: darker, more R&B-oriented, less filtered by the demands of a global campaign. But the imaginative album should not be confused with an actual shelved project.
Why it remains unreleased
There is no documented explanation for why “Stay With Me Forever” stayed outside Bieber’s official catalog. It may have been a demo that failed to progress, a song recorded for an unidentified session, or a rough work never intended for public consumption. Claims that it was rejected from Purpose, written in a specific year or dedicated to a particular person remain unverified.
This uncertainty separates it from another sensual Bieber recording, “Oh Girl,” which circulated in February 2016 and was covered by outlets including Nylon and Refinery29. The two titles are sometimes pulled into the same vague story about “a sexy leaked Bieber song,” but FunX explicitly named “Stay With Me Forever” in April. They are different recordings and should not be conflated.
No directly relevant official video exists, so an unofficial upload would be inappropriate here. The absence is part of the story. “Stay With Me Forever” survives through secondary reports, fan memory and incomplete metadata rather than a rights-holder release.
Its historical value lies precisely in that unstable status. It captures the speed with which an unattributed audio file could cross languages and markets during the peak of Bieber’s Purpose revival. Within a day, a fan-circulated recording became entertainment news. A decade later, its hook is familiar to dedicated listeners, while the people who made it, the date they made it and the artist’s intentions remain outside the public record.