Did Confessions stagnate Usher's career with albums?

Tommy Gibbs

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NO, I'm not asking if Confessions ended or even hurt Usher's career because he's still touring putting on great shows and releasing dope tunes to this day. I'm just saying was Confessions so goddamn great that he made it impossible to even do an album half as good as it going forward. First album was dope. It was released when I was still in high school. I actually used "can you get with it" for a couple months in my cd alarm. My Way was an instant classic. 8701 was better than My Way and it was another instant classic. Then 3 years later Confessions dropped and I feel like he's been chasing that album ever since cuz it was too good..

The same happened to Public Enemy. After Fear of a Black Planet, there was no way they could top that shyt and sample laws changed everything as well.
 
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If I remember correctly

It was his marriage to his first wife who interrupted his flow of being at the peak of his creativity

Because he got married and I remember on like a Vh1 behind the music or something, that him marrying the woman caused a riff between him and his mom(who was his manager) because his mom didn’t like her and didn’t think Usher should have married her

I think she also thought it wasn’t the right time for Usher to get married because his career was in full swing

Then I remember he was sorta flipping out on MTV and was like “y’all need to stop, my wife is a beautiful lady” or something like that

I think that first marriage and his mom’s reaction and his fans’ reaction to it, sorta threw him off his game creativity and he was just distracted from marriage and reaction to it

So the music suffered because his heart wasn’t in it
 
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I love Latina women said:
If I remember correctly

It was his marriage to his first wife who interrupted his flow of being at the peak of his creativity

Because he got married and I remember on like a Vh1 behind the music or something, that him marrying the woman caused a riff between him and his mom(who was his manager) because his mom didn’t like her and didn’t think Usher should have married her

I think she also thought it wasn’t the right time for Usher to get married because his career was in full swing

Then I remember he was sorta flipping out on MTV and was like “y’all need to stop, my wife is a beautiful lady” or something like that

I think that first marriage and his mom’s reaction and his fans’ reaction to it, sorta threw him off his game creativity and he was just distracted from marriage and reaction to it

So the music suffered because his heart wasn’t in it
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Yea pretty much this.

Plus there were rumors that his wife was a jealous, insecure, bytch behind the scenes.

He still had classic songs and a lot of success though. Here I Stand and the Raymond Vs Raymond albums were very successful. And he had hits like OMG which went number 1.

An album like Confessions only comes along once per a popular artist’s career and the stars have to align perfectly. Confessions sold prime N’Sync numbers. Thats ASTOUNDING for a black artist, let alone a black R&B artist. Confessions is the Thriller of our generation (Millennials) before streaming, before digital downloads, that muthafukka sold 1 Million PURE copies in a week. There was no way he was ever going to replicate that.


So no, Confessions didn’t “stagnate” Usher’s career album wise. If you look at the numbers for his two albums after Confessions (Here I Stand/Raymond Vs Raymond) vs the two albums before Confessions, Here I Stand and Raymond Vs Raymond actually had better first week numbers, owing to his expanded audience from Confessions. Every artist wishes for a Confessions type album because it gives you a crossover (white) audience and a bigger international audience who will check for your subsequent follow-up work.

Think of this, Usher got to perform at the Superbowl, mostly because of CONFESSIONS, and then he released the Coming Home album, which was his highest debuting album in 8 years. Confessions is the gift that keeps on giving. It doesn’t hurt his albums, it helps.
 
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Regular_P said:
Here I Stand was a good album but wasn't a mega-hit. He started chasing trends after that.
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Here I Stand sold 433k in its first week with Love In This Club being number 1 on Billboard for three consecutive weeks. By ANY other artist in the mid to late 2000’s thats a mega hit album.

Thats why I say albums like Confessions are outliers and cannot be used as measuring sticks for an artist’s follow up work. NO artist ever gets the perfectly aligned genre defining stratospheric success of a Confessions twice.

For context, Beyonce sold 482k first week later that year with I Am…Sasha Fierce and that was a DOUBLE album so sales counted twice. Mariah Carey sold 463k first week of E=MC2. Kanye West sold 450k first week of 808’s & Heartbreak. So Usher was right there with his superstar cohorts in black music spaces during the time period.
 
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Ziggiy said:
Here I Stand sold 433k in its first week with Love In This Club being number 1 on Billboard for three consecutive weeks. By ANY other artist in the mid to late 2000’s thats a mega hit album.

Thats why I say albums like Confessions are outliers and cannot be used as measuring sticks for an artist’s follow up work. NO artist ever gets the perfectly aligned genre defining stratospheric success of a Confessions twice.

For context, Beyonce sold 482k first week later that year with I Am…Sasha Fierce and that was a DOUBLE album so sales counted twice. Mariah Carey sold 463k first week of E=MC2. Kanye West sold 450k first week of 808’s & Heartbreak. So Usher was right there with his superstar cohorts in black music spaces during the time period.
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Here I Stand sold 1.25 million. Sasha Fierce nearly went diamond; Wayne sold over 8 million; Kanye sold over 3 million; T.I. sold over 2 million. :childplease:

Ne'Yo sold more than him. :mjlol:

Big artists were still selling real albums in 2008.
 
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Didn't something happen where he didn't want to work with JD after confessions?
After an album or two they were supposed to be back in the studio.

But not following up tmwith JD to me is a god damn crime because JD went out and made Emancipation of Mimi which was basically Confessions pt 2 and we never got more Usher JD magic.
 
Tommy Gibbs

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Ziggiy said:
Here I Stand sold 433k in its first week with Love In This Club being number 1 on Billboard for three consecutive weeks. By ANY other artist in the mid to late 2000’s thats a mega hit album.

Thats why I say albums like Confessions are outliers and cannot be used as measuring sticks for an artist’s follow up work. NO artist ever gets the perfectly aligned genre defining stratospheric success of a Confessions twice.

For context, Beyonce sold 482k first week later that year with I Am…Sasha Fierce and that was a DOUBLE album so sales counted twice. Mariah Carey sold 463k first week of E=MC2. Kanye West sold 450k first week of 808’s & Heartbreak. So Usher was right there with his superstar cohorts in black music spaces during the time period.
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first week numbers mean nothing in the long run. lol. I don't even know when it became important. Look up Ready to Die's first week numbers. Also, when Fergie dropped her solo, the first week wasn't that good, but with each hot single, it stayed doing thousands each week for over a year.
 
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