Yahoo! Music Review

Gig played on 22/05/08

Things just aren't what they used to be and - like the Labour party - the music industry seems powerless to do anything about it, with sales slipping and ingrate artists abandoning them at an alarming rate. But there's one currency everyone still has faith in and that's superstardom. Usher Raymond has been a brash and blatant star for more than a decade now, and if he's never quite had the same cultural clout in the UK as in the US, nobody seems to have told the rabid crowd in this ultra-glitzy adjunct to the O2 proper. Certainly, the two mobile phone giants sponsoring tonight's 1,500 capacity album showcase have faith in Usher's ability to generate some marketing shock and awe. They are in safe hands.

Perhaps because Usher himself is such a brand behemoth and corporate creature, with his clothes businesses, record company and shares in the Cleveland Cavaliers, but mostly because he is that rare creature, the consummate all-round performer. He might look like one of the Village People when he takes the stage in his shiny leather and ludicrous wraparound shades, but by the end of "This Aint Sex", a new song which fuses Stevie Wonder shimmer with Michael Jackson glitz, his ten tonne charisma is in full effect.

To a background of constant screaming, Usher teases the crowd expertly, grinning and spinning around the stage with a truly gobsmacking confidence. He's surrounded by backing dancers and pyrotechnics - for "Burn", the New York backdrop suddenly erupts into flame - but it's hard to keep your eye on anything but him. During the slick, sweet "You Remind Me", he back-flips and hand-stands, the choreography tight, lithe and right. And he's capable of spontaneity, too, whether swapping put-downs with a tricky customer in the crowd or talking genuinely movingly about the death of his father and birth of his son.

None of which can quite conceal how samey and meagre his back catalogue is in comparison to his heroes Michael Jackson and Prince. His best song remains his breakthrough "You Make Me Wanna", one of the few moments tonight where vulnerability peeks through the mega-fame armour, helped by an indelibly beautiful melody beautifully delivered. It's certainly better than his current hit, "Love In This Club", a moronic slice of machismo, or the horribly over-egged ballad "Moving Mountains", which also reveals that - for this song at least - his vocals are not 100 per cent live.

But all of these rather major problems are swept aside for tonight by the scale of his charisma and the commitment of his performance. He'll leave this new-fangled creativity and edginess to the Timberlakes and Timbalands: Usher is in old fashioned showbusiness and in his hands it is almost art.

by Jaime Gill