Usher

Usher sings R&B built for movement: clipped, precise vocal lines riding tempos designed to be danced to, and slow songs delivered with a confiding closeness. He is a singer and a dancer in equal measure, trained from childhood in both, and almost everything in the music serves one or the other.

The catalogue swings between two poles. On one side are uptempo club records with sharp, percussive hooks and vocal lines chopped into rhythm parts; on the other are ballads that strip the arrangement back and leave the voice exposed. The subject is nearly always relationships, handled directly rather than obliquely: desire, betrayal, apology and the aftermath of all three. Layered harmonies and a light, agile upper register are the signatures.

Born in 1978, Usher began singing in church and was performing on television while still a teenager, releasing his first album in 1994. My Way, 8701, Confessions, Here I Stand, Raymond v. Raymond and Coming Home track a career that has moved with each successive era of R&B production rather than staying put in one of them, and the work has been recognised with multiple Grammy Awards.

On stage the emphasis falls on the body as much as the voice. The choreography is exact and worked out in detail rather than improvised, and the performance moves between full-throttle dance sequences and quieter stretches where a single held note carries the room. Both get the same reaction.

This is R&B performed as craft: singing, dancing and pacing handled by someone who has been doing all three since childhood, and who still treats an audience as something to be won rather than assumed.