Review: Thanks to Usher’s Charlotte concert, I’ll never look at cherries the same way again
Of all the hypersexualized moments that were sprinkled throughout the first of Usher’s two sold-out concerts in Charlotte, perhaps the hyper-est — and, arguably, the cringe-iest — involved a bowl of cherries.
It started innocuously enough:
As the 46-year-old R&B superstar crooned his soulful 2010 hit “There Goes My Baby,” he descended from the main stage to high-five and hug his way along the lower-level railing to stage right. He eventually made it back to a makeshift bar near the rear of the floor section. There, he scooped up a conveniently placed bowl piled with those small, round, red stone fruits, and asked how many lovers were in attendance.
“How many married couples we got in the house tonight? How many single lovers we got in the house tonight? How many people are actually married, but acting single tonight?”
He mixed some cognac with some soda from the bar in a glass, topping the ice cubes with a-one, a-two, a-three cherries.
Then things got a little stranger and raunchier (or more entertaining, depending on your perspective).
For the next six minutes on Monday night inside Spectrum Center, Usher proceeded to lower cherry after cherry after cherry into the mouths of women who often waggled their tongues in anticipation, sometimes so feverishly that they knocked the piece of fruit out of his hand.
It would get stranger and raunchier still (or more entertaining yet — again, depending on your perspective): The singer also encouraged husbands to take cherries from him and feed them to their wives, sometimes in mouth-to-mouth fashion. Which is not necessarily the strange/raunchy part. While one couple was mid-cherry kiss, apparently a female fan in the “bar” section started groping Usher too high up on his leg, to which he exclaimed: “Those are my cherries! Those are my testicles! Stop!”
But the, ahem, cherry on top, so to speak, came when Usher simultaneously lowered two cherries into the waiting mouths of two women who told Usher they were sisters.
“It ain’t right,” he told his fans, pointing the blame for encouraging these siblings to behave this way at ... well, at us, apparently. “I’m only doing this,” he added, “because we’re here in Charlotte tonight.”
Now, if it seems like I’m hating on Usher, let me assure you that that’s not the goal here. In fact, the truth is that I have always had an impression of him as being a prince of a guy, in large part thanks to the charming persona he showcased on “The Voice”; that a peek at my Spotify metrics would almost certainly reveal that “DJ Got Us Fallin’ in Love” is one of my all-time most-listened-to songs; and that I think Usher’s Super Bowl performance last February was essentially perfect.
Monday night’s two-hour, opener-less Charlotte show was only slightly less so. Ninety-five percent of it, I was enthralled by. Maybe 96.
And with both the title of Usher’s tour and its overarching theme being “Past Present Future,” the sprawling setlist (39 songs in total, though many in snippet form) spanned his entire oeuvre — from the debut single “Call Me the Mack” he dropped in 1993 at age 15 to his most recent song, “Kissing Strangers,” off the “Coming Home” album he released three days after Super Bowl LVIII.
In between, a parade of slow jams and club bangers accounted for all nine of his No. 1 hits and at least a half-dozen different outfits, including:
- Easy, breezy “U Remind Me” (a chart-topper in 2001), which he performed in an electric-green silk shirt, black pants and chunky black boots while alternating between flirting with two backup dancers, one in a tracksuit and a newsboy hat and the other in skimpy/cheeky haute couture.
- Thumping anthem “Love in This Club” (2008), performed in a suit so completely and blindingly bedazzled that it seemed like it was created using a digital projection. Oh, and he roller-skated big, looping circles around the fans in the pit as he sang.
- Smooth, seductive “Nice & Slow” (1998), performed in ripped jeans loose enough for him to easily slide his hand down the front of them mid-song, and a white tank top stretchy enough for him to pull up over his head so he could show off his chest and abs to a sea of swooning women.
- Slow-burn ballad “U Got It Bad” (2001), which featured “couples” in “apartments,” one on top of the other — and by that I mean both the faux living spaces and the second-floor “couple,” which in silhouette managed to simulate some awfully risque behavior.
- The one-two punch of break-up song “Burn” (2004) and fess-up smash “Confessions Part II” (2004), which saw him quite literally sweating through his jeans as his pretend-girlfriend moves around the room looking at first forlorn, and then infuriated.
- Fun-focused “OMG” (2010), which had him singing the hook “Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh oh / Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh / Oh my gosh” while wearing a beige hooded vest, beige gloves so long they covered half his biceps, and ski-goggle-type sunglasses that were, yes, beige.
- Lovey-dovey “My Boo” (2004), performed as he made his way back to the main stage (following his fruit-tasting activity) while dressed in a red-fur trenchcoat, with red pants held up by a belt featuring a gold “U” buckle, and red sunglasses.
- Crunked-out hip-hop hit “Yeah!” (2004), the night’s penultimate song, which saw three of his backup dancers return on roller skates and him another sparkly outfit — an ocean-blue leather jacket embroidered with sequins spelling out “Future Present Past”; bedazzled black pants; a black-leather Atlanta Braves ballcap; and one blue glove, on his left hand.
Generally speaking, Usher demonstrated why he’s widely considered one of R&B’s greatest living showmen, with a theatrical performance and a lavish production no doubt fine-tuned during the two years he spent smoothing things out during his Las Vegas residency.
If there’s anything that felt rough around the edges about the show, it was perhaps the sometimes jarring shifts in tone.
One minute the video screens are displaying powerful moments from civil-rights-movement history — while a narrator intones, “embracing the lessons of the past ... empowers all to continue moving forward ... your voice matters” — punctuated by a pre-recorded cameo of presidential candidate Kamala Harris saying, “Thank you, Usher.”
The next minute ... cherries ... then backup dancers costumed like exotic dancers doing splits on stripper poles and twerking on the floor. They were, um, passionate about the work.
But so was Usher, predictably full of energy, bumping, grinding, stutter-stepping, criss-crossing and moonwalking through a seemingly endless series of dance breaks incorporated pretty much every muscle, joint and tendon in his body. He’s one of the few, perhaps the only mainstream headlining pop(-ish) artists who can dance as well as the members of his backup team.
The only time the singer seemed to run out of steam was in the final minutes, as the time neared 11 p.m.
After announcing “I got time for one more. Maybe two. But we gonna see how it goes,” he led the crowd through a sing-along of his very danceable David Guetta-produced song “Without You” ... without busting a single move of note. And then he left it at that.
Left it at just the one.
Then again, if you’re able to return for Wednesday night’s show, there’ll be plenty more Usher for you to enjoy.
Along with, I presume — for better or worse — a lot more cherries.
Usher’s setlist
1. “Coming Home”
2. “Hey Daddy (Daddy’s Home)“
3. “Big”
4. “Call Me a Mack”
5. “Think of You”
6. “Can U Get Wit It”
7. “My Way”
8. “You Make Me Wanna...”
9. “U Remind Me”
10. “U Don’t Have to Call”
11. “Caught Up”
12. “Don’t Waste My Time”
13. “Love in This Club”
14. “Tell Me”
15. “New Flame”
16. “Margiela”
17. “Party”
18. Lil Freak”
19. “Lovers and Friends”
20. “Nice & Slow”
21. “U Got It Bad”
22. “Climax”
23. “Burn”
24. “Confessions” / “Confessions Part II”
25. “OMG”
26. “DJ Got Us Fallin’ in Love”
27. “Superstar”
28. “I Am the Party”
29. “There Goes My Baby”
30. “Can You Handle It?”
31. “My Boo”
32. “Throwback”
34. “Bad Girl”
35. “Good Kisser”
36. “Seduction”
37. “Good Good”
38. “Yeah!”
39. “Without You”
This story was originally published October 23, 2024 at 4:00 AM.
