Released at the very beginning of the new millennium (aka, when illegally downloading music was experiencing its first real boom) Usher’s 2001 album 8701 was written and rewritten a number of times in an effort to circumvent music piracy. As musicians suffered through the Napster era, my friends and I were sharing around copies and mixes of our new discoveries and Usher, an artist who I actually had very vivid, fond memories of prior to that, never made an appearance. Usher won two Grammys and began working on a more self-assured, confident sound. I, having started high school and dropped dance classes, rejected R&B in favour of pop-punk, indie-pop/rock and The Cure almost exclusively while remaining totally ignorant to the fact that music of every genre was suffering due to something we considered harmless and small: piracy. The time between 2001’s 8701 (which featured the singles U-Turn and U Remind Me ) and Confessions was no doubt formative.

In 2004, Usher was making the considered transition from teen heartthrob to mature crooner finally honing the potential he’d had all along.

Moreover, the influence of the 2004 release can be heard across the genre to this very day.

Still, twelve years after it broke records, selling 1.1 million copies in its first first week alone, it remains one of those albums I put on when I have no idea what else to listen to.įor the better part of a decade, it has remained on high rotation, the physical copy so well loved that the case needs to be replaced, the digital versions seemingly permanently in my Top 25 and Recently Played lists, it makes up almost every road-trip and pre-game playlist.

Which is something I find interesting considering the fact that for the three years or so following its release, I remained stubbornly opposed to the mere idea of liking it in any capacity. If there is one album that I will defend to the death as one of the greatest R&B releases of recent memory, it is Usher’s fourth full length offering, Confessions.

Usher confessions album pt 2