The man they call U-S-H-E-R-R-A-Y-M-O-N-D will be bringing his decades of hits to the NFL’s biggest night this February. The league revealed on Sunday (Sept. 24) that Usher would be the headliner for halftime of Super Bowl XLIII, via a star-studded announcement video that played off the phone conversation intro to his classic “Confessions” clip.
The timing is right for Usher to be receiving such a spotlight moment: After a rocky mid-to-late 2010s, the pop/R&B great has been enjoying a long-overdue comeback over this past half-decade. It began at the turn of the decade with winning cameo appearances in the film Hustlers and on Summer Walker’s hit “Come Thru,” and has continued in the 2020s with a well-received (and meme-spawning) Tiny Desk concert, a sold-out Las Vegas residency, and additional hits alongside City Girls (2022’s “Good Love”) and Summer Walker again (this year’s still-growing “Good Good,” also with 21 Savage). The announcement of Usher’s Super Bowl gig also coincided with the announcement of his forthcoming Coming Home album, to be released Feb. 12, the same day as the big game.
Perhaps Usher will seize on the opportunity to promote songs from the new LP — but more likely, he’ll use the setlist to show off his bulletproof catalog of hits, which runs from his 1997 breakout album “My Way,” peaks in the mid-2000s with the RIAA Diamond-certified blockbuster Confessions, gets a second wind with the EDM era in the early 2010s, and continues right up to this year. Here’s how we’d like to see him show off that all-time discography on the world’s largest stage.
