This year marks the tenth anniversary of Usher’s fourth album, Confessions, the kind of certified blockbuster that the music industry hardly ever produces anymore. A collaboration with many of the best songwriters and producers of its era, it spurred hit single after hit single, earned Usher a Grammy and went on to become the second best-selling album of the 2000s, cementing the young singer as a superstar. It is, by any standard, one of the most successful R&B albums of all time.
That’s a tough act for any artist to follow, especially in a music industry that has downsized significantly over the last 10 years, but if Usher’s follow-up albums haven’t achieved the same extraordinary reach, they’ve all been certified hits, easily topping the Billboard charts upon their release. The singer’s resilience is particularly impressive given that his brand of smooth R&B has fallen significantly out of commercial favor over the last decade. He’s adapted by embracing electronic pop, reaching new audiences with dancefloor fodder like “OMG” and “DJ Got Us Fallin’ in Love,” yet he’s still at his best when the tempos slow to a crawl, as he proved on his glorious 2012 electro-soul fusion “Climax.”
Usher won’t be playing any concerts in the U.S. this summer, with one lucky exception: this headlining show at the Marcus Amphitheater.
