Usher opens up on pole dancers, preparing for his Super Bowl show and what 1980s rock legend inspired him

HE has sold 100million records, landed eight Grammy Awards and is worth a reported £180million – so there’s little that sends R&B superstar Usher into a panic.

Until Jay-Z called and offered him the chance to play the biggest gig of his life, when Usher headlines next year’s Super Bowl in Las Vegas — a performance likely to be seen by up to a billion people globally.

4

4

As the US chart-topper relaxes in a hotel room in Paris, where he is performing a residency likely to act as a practice run for the February 11 event, he quips: “Are you kidding me? This is the bucket list of all bucket-list performances — whoever you are.

“You want to win a Grammy, you would like to win an Oscar, you’d love to win a Brit Award. But not many get to play the Super Bowl.

“Outside of the Olympics, it’s the most internationally watched show. So if there is an opportunity to speak to an entire world, that may or may not necessarily know about what I do as an entertainer, they get a snapshot.

“I’m still savouring that call from (show curator) Jay-Z, who said, ‘You got the Super Bowl’. I’m trying to savour it because everything else after that is about the work.

And if it is anything like his live show here in Paris, the interval in American football’s big game will be sexed up with pole dancers.

Usher adds: “Once I leave Paris I can really get into the choreography and the technical side of it, because it’s a huge space to play. The next step is to figure out what music, because it’s 13 minutes. I need to figure out what songs create an arc of a story, which is what this residency has been about trying to do too.

“It’s a show based on temptations and guilty pleasures, things you desire, rendezvous and intimate moments between two people. They can be there for a moment, then they’re gone, but in that moment it’s everything.”

Usher is relaxing at his five-star hotel in the French capital the night after his latest performance, a reimagining of the acclaimed Las Vegas residency which cemented him as a complete entertainer to rival some of Sin City’s greats.

Immaculately rehearsed dance routines, intimate interactions with excited audience members, A-list guests, rollerskating and at times X-rated choreography with lingerie-clad pole dancers and shirtless hunks combine for a show which at times has more in common with Broadway or London’s West End than a music concert.

It was rocker Bruce Springsteen who first inspired Usher’s showmanship.

He explains: “It’s all about our guilty pleasures. I want it to be intimate but on a big scale and to take people to places maybe they wouldn’t normally go to, both emotionally and physically.

“So it’s like being taken to a strip club in Atlanta. We normally see Cirque Du Soleil and we celebrate it. But I’ve always looked at the culture of moving in that way, with a pole, artistically.

“I’ve never looked at a pole dancer as ‘she’s just a pole dancer, she’s a stripper’. It’s athletic. And here’s what’s great about the show — all shapes and sizes and colours and creed is what makes it attractive.

“You have different shapes of pole dancers or different shapes of dancers.”

It’s clear from his performances — and the after-party at the venue, which features free-flowing drinks and even more pole-dancing — that sexuality and intimacy are at the heart of all he does.

Fitness regime

So for a man who talks enthusiastically about guilty pleasures, do these scantily clad women represent his own? Laughing, he adds:

“Well no, not just strippers. But we don’t call them strippers, we call them pole dancers.

“It’s the guilty pleasure of finding something you felt was great, and the temptation that goes with that.

“In my show, at the opening, when each of the pairs of dancers come together, they have that chemistry but are obviously with someone else, so end up having this illicit rendezvous. Then they part and it’s over, but in that moment it was really powerful.”

Away from the stage, dad-of-four Usher admits relationships bring challenges, owing to his fame and performance style.

But he insists he tries to stay on good terms with everyone he has been linked with romantically.

Read Related Also: Robert Downey Jr. Revealed He Made a Mistake Jumping Into This Film After His Marvel Run

4

4

He says: “It’s not always easy, but I try to keep everything cool.”

Watching a female fan clamour to get near him, it’s not hard to see why holding down relationships is diffi­cult.

He has two kids with music industry boss Jenn Goicoechea.

He was previously married twice, from 2007 to 2009 to fashion stylist Tameka Foster, with whom he has two kids, and from 2015 to 2018 to his ex-manager Grace Miguel.

Playing to the crowd in his show, Usher jokes he’s looking for a “girl-friend” for the evening.

He struts through the audience and stops to slow-dance with glamorous fans including British Victoria’s Secret model Leomie Anderson, one of many stars enjoying the show.

And despite heading into his mid-forties, he has no plan to slow down or adapt his shows. He says: “It’s a real R&B thing to do, to get down into the audience and serenade a woman, make her feel comfortable, dance with her.

“But when you see people like The Boss do it, when (Springsteen) goes into the audience and gives you that energy and takes a beer and chugs the beer and drops it down then goes into the next song, it’s like, ‘Oh my God’. Seeing Springsteen do that was exciting. I was like, ‘Oh man, that’s cool, I want some of that’.

“Then the rollerskating, that’s something I’ve been doing since I was maybe five, it’s the one thing in my culture where I come from which keeps us young. No matter what age you are, you go to a rink and go back to your childhood instantly. All anyone is concerned about is not falling down.”

Still strikingly youthful, Usher puts this down to an intensive fitness regime which he insists is “the single most important piece of advice I can give any guy of our age” — mildly wounding, given he’s eight years older than me, but perhaps I should take notes.

He adds: “Every day I’m working out on my days off. Today I went running because I wanted to get out and smell the fresh air, but I try to be as consistent as I can and physically keep myself ready and prepared for whatever is coming.

“As a performer, I’m dancing and singing, I’m skating. It’s totally different, because I’m singing and skating and remembering choreography — and trying not to fall.

“I love fitness. I love the fact I can do something that keeps me young, and if I have any advice it would be to take care of your body, because you don’t get it back. It’s very important, man. That’s been key to being able to sustain as long as I have.”

USHER: CAUGHT LIVE

★★★★★

I’VE seen hundreds of pop concerts, cabaret, and an all-singing, all-dancing musical – but I’d never seen them all rolled into one.

Usher’s Paris residency had it all, a huge ensemble cast of dancers and performers combining with an ultra-tight band to showcase the very best of the R&B superstar’s extensive catalogue. Yet the main man still stood out.

This is a performer at the height of his powers, and the attention to detail in a show that focused as much on story-telling as it did on songs proved he’s much more than a conventional pop star.

Think Fred Astaire, Frank Sinatra or Sammy Davis Jr as much as any of today’s chart-toppers and you’re in the right area.

The man can sing – and God, can he dance. But more than anything, he can entertain.

Two hours saw him balanced on rising stages, suspended from poles and glamorous sets and even rollerskating. All in an extravagant performance which sets a new bench-mark for what a show can and perhaps should be.

Not to be missed.