Early on during the first show of Usher’s London residency, the audience is treated to the sight of the teenaged singer fantasising about playing London and “thousands of people shouting my name”. It’s presumably been flammed together for the occasion via the miracle of AI, but the point it’s making about succeeding beyond one’s wildest dreams is clear. More than 30 years into his career, Usher has sold out a staggering 10 nights at the O2: the crowd seems to be equally split between people old enough to remember his late 90s rise to fame and those you suspect may have first encountered his music through their parents playing it. As he skips between old-fashioned slow jams and the kind of EDM-influenced pop-R&B that temporarily held sway around 2010, you’re struck by the sense that his longevity might be down to his ability to neatly assimilate whatever’s currently vogueish into his own sound.
His current world tour follows on the heels of two Las Vegas residencies, and a distinct hint of Vegas lurks around the show, both in its desire to cram as many songs as possible in – there are well over 40 tracks, or at least parts of them – and in its penchant for glitzy spectacle. Like Vegas itself, it’s not really at home to subtlety. This is an evening in which Usher deploys his impassioned falsetto while rollerskating around the stage wearing a union jack suit; in which he underlines his loverman credentials by feeding ladies in the audience cocktail cherries; in which a pair of high-waisted trousers that appear to be made entirely out of studded belts teamed with a bare chest and a selection of chains and medallions Isaac Hayes might have considered a little de trop constitutes one of his more understated outfits. He wears it to perform one of the aforementioned old-school slow jams, Nice and Slow. “I’ve got plans to put my hands in places I’ve never seen,” he sings: lest anyone mistakenly believe that means he’s thinking of sticking them down the back of the radiator, he lubriciously caresses his privates, then pretends to have sex with his microphone stand.
You have to say that he’s wearing middle age incredibly well. The impassioned falsetto is fully intact and the bare chest draws appreciative female murmurs when it appears: at 46, and four children in, there’s no hint of a dad bod. Moreover, it’s a show that strikes a perfect balance: it’s both completely preposterous – at one point, the big screens puzzlingly seem to suggest that Usher actually retired in his early 20s and what we’re watching is some kind of computer-generated Usher replicant – and preposterously entertaining. You’re certainly never bored: rather, you’re left in little doubt he’s at the top of his game, even as wonder what on earth he thinks he’s playing at.
• Usher is the O2, London, until 7 May
