Usher Raymond, better-known just by his first name, is one of the biggest stars in R&B. His 1997 album ‘My Way’ transformed him into a global phenomenon thanks to the success of ‘You Make Me Wanna…’. Since then, he’s notched up hit-after-hit during a career that has spanned more than 30 years. Outside of music Usher has also tried his hand at acting but it’s on stage that he’s found his biggest success. Incredibly, the star hasn’t been to the UK since his ‘The UR Experience Tour’ in 2015 and to make up for it, he’s doing an incredible 10 nights at The O2 in London as part of his ‘Usher: Past Present Future’ tour. I went along to his seventh show at the venue last night, which was packed out with enthusiastic and passionate fans.
A DJ set blasting out mostly R&B hits from the 90s and 00s preceded Usher taking to the stage. At 7.30pm a video screen announced ‘1 hour until activation’ but in reality, Usher didn’t appear on stage until nearer to 9.10pm. The audience didn’t seem to mind as they topped up their drinks and partied to the hits blasting out from the speakers. When show time finally arrived, a robotic voice announced itself as an ‘AI Usher’, that would be guiding us through the evening. A nice idea in theory, this narrative gimmick quickly became unstuck and didn’t really add anything to the show, jumping all over Usher’s career rather than delivering the linear and sequential experience it suggested at the beginning.
Usher opened his set with a shortened version of ‘Coming Home’, the title track from his latest album. That quickly turned into ‘Hey Daddy (Daddy’s Home)’ and then ‘BIG’, one of the highlights from the ‘Coming Home’ record. Usher looked every inch the superstar, effortlessly moving around the spectacular stage, flanked by male and female dancers for much of the night. After a brief 10 minutes, Usher handed things over to the video screen for a throwback to the start of his career, returning around 5 minutes later to perform a shortened version of ‘My Way’, the title track from his debut album. It wasn’t until ‘You Make Me Wanna…’ that Usher performed a full song and despite the impressive dance routines, he let his backing vocals do a lot of the heavy lifting.
Clocking in at almost 2 hours, Usher’s show tried to do a lot but it didn’t always succeed. In a bid to perform as many songs as possible, he opted for shortened versions of many of them, which made the night feel quite stop-start. This is a trend that was started by Janet Jackson and has been adopted by plenty of big names since. Many of the shortened songs would have been better omitted from the set list and replaced with full renditions of the classics and fan favourites that Usher has in his catalogue. A lengthy segment saw the singer wandering around the arena feeding cherries to female fans in the audience, culminating in Usher taking to the B-stage at the back of the arena to throw around fake money while dancers turned the arena into a makeshift strip club. While it fit Usher’s playboy aesthetic, it delayed what fans had come to see – live music.
The other notable thing is that Usher dodged a good portion of the singing for the night. During songs such as ‘U Don’t Have To Call’, dancing took precedent with Usher performing ad-libs and small parts of the song. The sound levels in The O2 pumped out the bass so loud that at times it was hard to even hear what was coming out of Usher’s microphone. When he did deliver vocals on hits such as ‘Climax’ and ‘Bad Girl’, he sounded great, even if the key was lowered frequently throughout the night. It seemed that plenty of the audience was distracted by Usher’s physique, which was on show throughout most of the show, so they didn’t seem to notice.
There were spectacular moments though in amidst the unevenness. A roller-skating segment was impressive, during which Usher delivered his monster smash ‘Love In This Club’. The slow-jam segment that saw him perform ‘Nice & Slow’, ‘U Got It Bad’, ‘Climax’, ‘Burn’ and ‘Confessions Part II’ was the best part of the night. Usher delivered killer vocals, and I wish we’d heard more of them throughout the set. He’s in his element on the slower songs, and he has the kind of voice that’s rich with soul and emotion. ‘Yeah’, the penultimate song of the night, lifted the energy to a whole other level, providing the perfect platform for Usher to perform his David Guetta collaboration ‘Without You’ as his final song.
I’ve been a huge fan of Usher since he broke through in the 90s and while it was incredible to see him back on stage in London, I couldn’t help but feel slightly disappointed. The set list was sprawling and unfocused, there was a little too much filler throughout the night, and I didn’t feel Usher showed what he’s capable of as a vocalist. He’s one of the defining R&B stars of our generation and I’d much rather have seen him sing his heart out, than prioritise the performance aspect of what he does. As a performer he’s unparalleled, and as an artist he’s got more hits than most, but his latest tour doesn’t manage to do him justice.
Set list: 1. Coming Home 2. Hey Daddy (Daddy’s Home) 3. BIG 4. Call Me a Mack / Think Of You / Can U Get Wit It (video segment) 5. My Way 6. You Make Me Wanna… 7. U Remind Me 8. U Don’t Have to Call 9. Caught Up 10. Don’t Waste My Time 11. Love In This Club 12. Tell Me 13. New Flame 14. Margiela 15. Party 16. Lil’ Freak 17. Lovers & Friends 18. Nice & Slow 18. U Got It Bad 19. Climax 20. Burn 21. Confessions (interlude) 22. Confessions Part II 23. OMG 24. DJ Got Us Fallin’ in Love 25. Superstar 26. There Goes My Baby 27. Pop Ya Collar 28. Bad Girl 29. Good Kisser 30. Seduction 31. Yeah 32. Without You Venue: The O2, London Performance date: 9th April 2025
Usher's ‘Past Present Future' tour continues at London’s O2 Arena for selected dates in April and May, Paris on 15th and 16th April, selected dates in Amsterdam on 22nd April to 28th April, and selected dates in Berlin from 1st to 4th May.
