Review: Usher is throwing 3-day party in Dallas, but inspirational messages run deep
For most of the night, Usher was the self-appointed center of an R&B party at the American Airlines Center.
But underneath all of irreverent, sexualized dancing and playful winks, the multi-talented pop star, who has been in the public eye since his first self-titled album was released three decades ago, was also offering a deeper look into his life.
He was here Oct. 3 to celebrate his 30-year career over three consecutive nights at the AAC as part of his 25-city, 58-show Usher: Past Present Future Tour of North America.
Usher, who turns 46 on Oct. 14, has famously been famous since he was a teenager, and the two-hour show attempts to examine not only the different phases of his musical career, but also how his upbringing and his life in the stage lights affected him in all sorts of ways, both good and bad.
He took us through various moments in his career, not unlike other pop star tours over the past few years, including Madonna, Nicki Minaj, and Bad Bunny, but he did it with a glean in his eye and a smile on his face. He’s still having a blast after all these years, dancing, singing (most of the time, I think), and leading the packed arena to sing-along after sing-along.
The nearly 30-song set included tracks from most of his nine studio albums, including seven songs from “Confessions,” his 2004 Grammy-winning, 15 million-selling album.
The staging consisted of a main stage at one end of the arena with catwalks on either side circling fans in the pit with a B-stage in the middle. At one point during the show, Usher performed at a third stage on the opposite end of the floor near the soundboard, all the while feeding selected female fans maraschino cherries from a makeshift bar set up.
Throughout the night, his team of dancers came and went, as he deftly transitioned to a solo dancing singer into a larger choreographed ensemble. He made at least five wardrobe changes to reflect different themes of the show. During “Nice & Slow,” his slow jam ode to getting freaky with a lover, he was wearing a white tank top with jeans before he pulled the tank top over his head, doused his body with water and revealed the cut, six-pack torso of a man half his age.
The final 30 minutes, the intensity of the party increased as he ran through a riotous batch of some of his most well-known hits with roller skating dancers racing around the stage as colored lights bounced around the arena. He closed out the set with “Bad Girl,” “My Boo” and “Yeah!” from “Confessions,” and “Good Good,” one of three songs from his latest release, “Coming Home,” which dropped in February.
Before closing with the soaring anthem “Without You,” which echoes the sentiment of Coldplay and the anthemic qualities of U2, Usher stood at the tip of the B-stage, and spoke openly about the show we had just watched while also urging everyone to register to vote.
He joked with some fans who were ostensibly heading for the exit, to stop and listen to him. Hopefully, they did, because it was one of the more moving moments of the night, if not from any local concert in recent memory.
Usher wanted to make sure the meaning and depth behind much of the symbolism and video interludes during his show were not entirely lost on his audience. For Usher, Dallas performances have always been especially important to him because he was born in Dallas.
“I grew up in Chattanooga, Tennessee, but the D is where I actually landed on planet earth, right? And what’s important about the story, just so you understand, there’s beauty in all tragic starts,” he said to a captivated arena.
He was referring to his father, Usher Raymond III, leaving the family and the hole the absence left in him as a child.
“The only thing that he actually gave me was a name,” Usher said. “This entire show, as I’ve opened up and given you my story, and this narrative may not have been clear. I don’t know if you really were paying attention to the deeper messaging in this entire show, but it really is about creating purpose sometimes when you don’t necessarily have guidance, and I managed to have the guidance that was needed by all the people who rallied, supported and loved me.”
Suddenly, Usher, the life of the party, was opening up to the crowd, letting them know that all he ever wanted was to earn his father’s attention, but never got it.
It was a moving, heartfelt communication between a performer and his fans that seemed shockingly free of stagecraft or scripted stage banter.
“Every time I ever came to Dallas, I always had a different energy, because I was just hoping that maybe he will walk through the door, and I will look over to the right, and I will see the man who gave me his name to see me for what it is and what I made of it.”
Although father and son never made proper amends, Usher told the hushed AAC crowd, “I was willing to meet, accept, and be graceful and allow him to die in peace.”
“But what I want to share with you is that if I didn’t have the tenacity and the love for self and a mother that really appreciated me, I probably would have given up,” he said. “I probably would have just got lost into things that didn’t matter, I would have found my way into a negative place. But I found joy in music. I found joy in being able to believe in what I believed about myself.”
As he was finishing his uplifting message, the pulsating opening of the David Guetta-penned “Without You” began to soar.
“I can’t win, I can’t reign, I will never win this game
Without you, without you
I am lost, I am vain, I will never be the same
Without you, without you.”
Usher asked the crowd to sing along with him, which seemed appropriate, because he was also singing about them.
Usher setlist from Oakland on Sept. 28:
BIGCall Me a Mack
My Way
U Make Me Wanna
U Remind Me
U Don’t Have to Call
Caught Up
Love in This Club
New Flame
Margiela
Party
Lil’ Freak
Lovers and Friends
Nice & SlowU Got It Bad
Climax
Burn
Confessions Part II
OMG
DJ Got Us Fallin’ in Love
Superstar
There Goes My Baby
I Don’t Mind
My Boo
Bad Girl
Good Kisser
Good Good
Yeah!
Without You
This story was originally published October 4, 2024 at 9:01 AM.