videos, music, career

USHER ADMITS TO NOTHING

Author: Heather Adler
Source: The Gateway (url)
Date: November 6, 2003

David Usher
With guests
Saturday, 8 November
Red’s

David Usher may be a successful musician who’s so well primped that he hardly even needs airbrushing to look fit for TV, but even after over a decade in the limelight, Usher still doesn’t like making videos, talking about his music, or thinking about the future of his career. More than a little aloof, it seems Usher isn’t about to divulge what he’s really about, but instead just wants to leave all the judgment up to his fans.

"If I could choose not to do [music videos] then I wouldn’t, but I want people to hear the music and that’s one of the vehicles to get it out there," Usher states. "Generally, I find it to be a very fleeting medium; people listen to a record for a long time, but people don’t go back and watch a video very often." Besides the disposability of videos, Usher says the "millions of ridiculous treatments" he’s received have only added to his dislike of the form. "I’ve gotten just about everything you can think of: stupid vampires, multi-coloured coats and everything in between," he adds.

Instead of casting himself in some lame scenario featuring fangs and frocks, Usher says he’d rather stick to videos that are more artistic and leave it to the minds of the audience to interpret them. "When video tells too much of a story, it takes away too much of the imagination of the viewer," he explains.

Although he’s often accused of being just as nonsensical in his lyrical compositions as he is in videos, which generaly have little to do with the songs, Usher isn’t keen on the idea of explaining where the inspiration for his rock-pitched poetry comes from either. "There’s a whole bunch of different themes on Hallucinations, but I like to let people discover them for themselves," he remarks. "I think people take away different things from different songs and I that’s a good thing. I don’t talk about the specific meanings because, although each line is specific to me and the subject I’m writing about, it doesn’t necessarily mean that someone else can’t interpret it in a different way and that their idea isn’t valid as well."

Whatever interpretation people take away, Usher says he just hopes that the music he makes has an effect of some kind on his listeners. "Some music affects people in a very strong way, and for others, it’s just fun to dance to. I think the idea of the artist is to affect people and I hope that’s what my music does," he articulates.

After more than a decade in the music industry, five hit albums and going platinum several times over, Usher is just as mysterious as ever. It’s nearly impossible to corner him into divulging much of anything about his art.

With the success of his latest release and a string of live dates planned well into the new year, it looks as though he’ll continue his reign as the enigmatic poster boy of soft rock; but in true Usher style, he admits to nothing.

I don’t think that anybody really knows how their future is going to turn out, so I don’t think it’s any different in the music business," he concludes.

<< Previous Article   Articles Main   Next Article >>