A rare, almost shockingly quiet moment occurred a few minutes into Usher’s clever and energetic Super Bowl LVIII halftime show performance on Sunday night at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas.
Alicia Keys had just made her appearance, looking stunning in a red costume and matching gown covered in sequins. She opened her popular piano ballad “If I Ain’t Got You” with a fairly careless note.
The camera moved back, resting on the two of them at opposite sides of Keys’s piano, as she recovered and neared the conclusion of the chorus. You could hear Usher singing in hushed harmony. Usher sang the chorus’s last word by herself, confidently and smoothly, almost whispering it, before Keys came back to sing the song’s last note.
There were just two people in Allegiant Stadium at that moment, despite its capacity of almost 65,000. One of the most subdued halftime scenes in memory, it was a stunning showcase for Usher’s talents as a meticulous, detail-oriented artist who is best appreciated when seen with intense focus.
The majority of the remaining portion of the show, spanning over twelve songs, had a larger scope and was intended to occupy a whole football field. An explosive celebration replaced a small-bore, granular-gestured display. But this set did a fantastic job of demonstrating how Usher’s attention to detail and his sense of grandeur come from the same place. When the stage is full of people, he can handle it all by himself.
Usher, 45, is a showman not just with his voice after thirty years in the business, but maybe even more so with his body and feet. The broadcaster was cautious not to squander any of his motions right from the start, keeping the camera fixed on him while he performed body-bending and deft footwork routines. It was particularly amazing that he was doing several of these movements on grass, particularly in the opening segments “Caught Up” and “You Don’t Have to Call.”
He started out with dance-oriented tunes that had memorable beginning lines, gave a little spoken introduction thanking God and his mother, sprinkled in a little bit of the ballad “Superstar,” and then dramatically welcomed a marching band for “Love in This Club.” Keys’s next performance piece concluded with the two singers sultryly sashaying as they sang “My Boo.”
Then it was party mode all over again. Before Usher performed “Confessions Part II,” one of the most cheerful songs about sexual infidelity in musical history, Atlanta producer Jermaine Dupri warmed up the audience. He made a little detour through the saucily urgent “Burn” and “Nice & Slow,” acknowledging the song’s recent reincarnation as a meme, before arriving at “U Got It Bad,” where he performed a lengthy dance routine with a lovable microphone stand.
From a white fur coat to a cropped white jacket to a massively sequined sleeveless T-shirt, Usher has been a constant parade of dishabille up until this moment. Here he wrapped up the adventure, taking off everything save his trademark U-diamond pendant and a tank top. To be fair, there was a lighthearted preshow notice stating that the performance may result in “possible relationship issues.”
His best singing and most intricate dance came together in this, the show’s high point. Ten minutes up the road at the Park MGM Hotel & Casino, it was an impossibly magnificent performance held down by a small-stage Usher, not too unlike the one who performed a residency there for the whole of the previous year.
Everything was free-form, carefree joy after that. After some pushing guitar work, H.E.R. transitioned into “Bad Girl’s” smooth groove. Before long, the platform was crowded with skateboarding dancers, a celebration of black roller rink culture in Atlanta. Usher was also on skates, and very nimbly at that, dressed as a sparkling black-and-blue motorcycle rider.
A party in Atlanta has begun. He briefly performed “OMG,” a song he co-wrote with Will.I.am. mostly emphasized the similarities between pop-EDM and the almost ten-year-old Atlanta crunk sound that came before it. When Lil Jon came, he started with some inspirational yelling before switching to “Yeah!” That 2004 partnership turned some of hip-hop’s most jagged textures into unavoidable pop. On this most sterile of platforms, Ludacris was there too, managing to slip in a couple of his sexiest lines.
A 20-year-old song that still seems like it belongs in the future, a wild celebration with hundreds of people, and a connection between black college marching bands and the hip-hop and R&B that they often interpret on the field made up this halftime performance extravaganza. Everyone on stage performed the muscle, Rockaway, thunderclap, and A-town stomp. Reminding everyone that, in his hands, the global and the local are the same, Usher sang, “I took the world to the A.”
NEWS COLLECTED: THE NEW YORK TIMES
