Usher confessions album tracklist how to#
Usher confessions album tracklist license#

Usher thrived between two very different eras of pop-the contemporary R&B rush of 2001 and the hybrid R&B of the 2010s, when Drake unleashed his inner lothario and assumed his role as the chartsвЂ™ new lover boy. Confessions sold a million copies in its first week at a time when illegal file-sharing had labels frantic over the fate of the industry. 1 hits and reaping the benefits of binding his love life to his music. Usher spent much of 2004 dethroning himself on the pop chart, earning four No. On Confessions, the stars align in UsherвЂ™s favor: He had a breakup to cope with and an album to make, and the dramatic backdrop gave him the most compelling work of his career.ДЄnd so the truth hardly mattered. ItвЂ™s a craft to turn reality into convenient truth, and itвЂ™s special when the material transcends the machine.

Usher confessions album tracklist how to#

The ability to draft a persuasive narrative around a project is a skill music fans both scrutinize and take for granted, but the greatest pop stars-Janet Jackson, Taylor Swift, Drake-know how to master the art of packaging. He played up the cheating angle and the rumors and was seemingly forthright about the subject of his ex and because it worked, he copied that storytelling formula for his subsequent album releases, albeit with less moving results: For 2008вЂ™s Here I Stand, he milked his marriage to Tameka Foster for material, and then he made their divorce fodder for his 2010 album Raymond v.

But to be worthy of the Michael Jackson-level prestige he coveted, Usher needed a man-in-the-mirror moment. Everyone in America knew the term вЂњYeah!вЂќ not just as an everyday affirmation but as a club smash. He had the catalog, choreography, angelic falsetto, and winning grin necessary to be a star. Usher understood that much of a great pop album is simply telling a good story. вЂњNobody knows who the fuck Billie Jean is.

Usher confessions album tracklist license#

вЂњWe wanted the media to ask us questions,вЂќ the producer told Vibe in 2014, comparing their artistic license to that of Michael Jackson. II,вЂќ a saga about creeping and getting another woman pregnant, was based on DupriвЂ™s life, not UsherвЂ™s. The albumвЂ™s most salacious track, вЂњConfessions Pt. A decade later, executive producer Jermaine Dupri said the song was indeed about her but admitted Confessions wasnвЂ™t just UsherвЂ™s experience, rather a compilation of its male creatorsвЂ™ infractions, promoted as one manвЂ™s expunging of sins. He said he co-wrote the albumвЂ™s core breakup ballad, вЂњBurn,вЂќ while he and Chilli were still together. While it was true that he wasnвЂ™t entirely sold on marriage, he told Rolling Stone in 2004 that he did once buy Chilli a 10-karat diamond ring and proposed to her in the most R&B way: in the middle of sex. In constructing the narrative around Confessions, Usher omitted certain facts.

But the deception worked on multiple levels.