Audible released Usher‘s episode of Words + Music Thursday. In The Last Showman, Usher delves into his life and career, discussing how he developed his onstage presence when he was 12 years old.
“I was a defiant artist, man. You know? My mother, she signed me up for talent shows around town and I would try my hardest to push the envelope every chance I got on stage,” he said, noting he learned from James Brown, Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley, Prince, Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly.
“I never wanted people to say, ‘Oh, he’s just a singer’ or ‘Oh, yeah he’s good, but he’s just a dancer.’ I wanted them to walk away saying, ‘Now, that? That’s entertainment and he’s a showman,'” he later says. “So, I zeroed in on just that—being a showman from the beginning.”
Elsewhere in Usher’s episode, he discusses how his 2004 album, Confessions, came to life. “It started exactly like that, sitting around with my guys and confessing the things that we were going through. The studio was a safe place for us to just lay out, you know, the s*** that we were doing or going through or experiencing; no pretense, no judgment, just real talk,” he said, adding there was no intention to record an album that day.
Usher tells Billboard he “put my heart into this opportunity.”
“I’ve been very fortunate to have had a life and a whole host of experiences that have helped me be the artist I am,” he says. “I’m just trying to offer that back to the people who care to listen.”
The full episode of Usher’s Words + Music is now available on Audible.
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