Usher Tiny Desk concert premieres today! Usher has Vedo and Eric Bellinger as backup during his Tiny Desk! Usher has a new song, “Good Love,” with the City Girls dropping tomorrow and today is the last day of Black Music Month, so this Tiny Desk was PERFECT timing! It’s also the 25th anniversary of My WAY! Here are the songs he performed live!
Usher Tiny Desk Tracks
- You Make Me Wanna
- Superstar
- You Don’t Have To Call
- Nice & Slow
- Confessions Part 2
- My Way
If you need an incentive to watch Usher’s tiny desk, here’s a clip of him singing “Superstar”
Usher performs Superstar at his NPR Tiny Desk https://t.co/yOgD6otEqO pic.twitter.com/Xu8aml15OE
— philip lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) June 30, 2022
Fans were so excited about Usher’s tiny desk!
It’s Usher Day ✨ https://t.co/9utWb5Osa3
— Comorienne 🇰🇲 (@_ShamGod) June 30, 2022
Good morning to Usher’s Tiny Desk and his Tiny Desk only. Y’all ready to get y’all souls fed today? pic.twitter.com/pGXfgTPb1I
— IAMNJERA (@IAMNJERA) June 30, 2022
Usher “forever fine” Raymond gotta new tiny desk out. We running that back several times today.
— bO-Dy bO-Dy! (@natelege_) June 30, 2022
Usher’s Tiny Desk Concert premieres at NOON! This is Mr Raymond with NO MIC baby! 🎙 pic.twitter.com/t9y8fzcz7d
— MBali 💫 (@TheJessieWoo) June 30, 2022
Usher’s NPR Tiny Desk concert drops today at noon. Mrs. Ketanji Brown Jackson officially becomes JUSTICE Ketanji Brown Jackson today at noon. TODAY is going to be a good day. I won’t accept anything less ✨
— Summer Ready Kirbs 💃🏾 (@Kirb_UrAppetite) June 30, 2022
If Superstar ain’t on Usher’s Tiny Desk set list…
— AGD, MSEd (@TheLexGabrielle) June 30, 2022
Usher is doing a Tiny Desk concert at noon today will be a AMAZING
— Ms. Black Dynamite (@_curtissa_) June 30, 2022
I love how Tiny Desk performances are celebrations. And this is really a celebration of one of the truly great careers of my lifetime. That boy Usher has an endless bag of hits. If he just wanted to focus on 1997-2004, that’d be enough.
What a catalog, bruh. Damn.
— Justin Tinsley (@JustinTinsley) June 30, 2022
Usher Raymond IV knooooows he can work a camera AND an audience at the same time. #TinyDesk
How are the even standing up?!
Me the whole time: pic.twitter.com/ulOHtL7YuD
— Melissa Kimble (she/her) 🏁 (@Melissa_Kimble) June 30, 2022
Whenever Usher performs Superstar, I feel vindicated for the fight I got into over this song.
— Jasmyn (@JasmynBeKnowing) June 30, 2022
Usher has NO IN EARS and is staying tf on key.
— Coolness941 ♏ (@Coolness941) June 30, 2022
History of Black Music Month
Black Music Month has been a thing since 1979 but wasn’t officially recognized until 2000. According to Vibe,
[President Jimmy] Carter declared June Black Music Month with the event in 1979, and black music institutions celebrated every June thereafter, Black Music Month didn’t become an official observation until 2000. Dyana Williams discovered in the late ‘90s that President Carter didn’t issue an official decree, so she worked with her local congresswoman to draft House Resolution 509, better known as The African-American Music Bill. In its official form, the bill — signed by former president Bill Clinton — called for a formal acknowledgment and celebration of black music’s contribution to and impact on American life and culture. This is the spirit in which we observe Black Music Month today.
History of NPR Tiny Desk
NPR’s Tiny desk started in 2008 after Bob Boilen and Stephen Thompson of NPR went to hear an upcoming artist, Laura Gibson, at a South by Southwest concert but couldn’t hear her. According to Vox, ”
“Stephen jokingly said [to Gibson], ‘You should just come play in our office,’” says Boilen. “I just lit up. I thought that would be so cool.” Three weeks later, Gibson showed up at NPR’s DC office. Boilen and some colleagues cleared some space off a desk, grabbed a couple of microphones and a camera, filmed a completely unadulterated, raw performance, and put it online.”
“There was something that happened there I never would’ve imagined,” says Boilen. “It was the intimacy, as I’ve come to understand it. There was nothing between you and artist. There was no silly music video of someone running through a field. It wasn’t lip-synced. No reverb, studio niceties, just Laura’s voice coming through a beautiful microphone. Humble. It just worked.”
Since Usher’s tiny desk was less than 30 minutes, you can catch him in Vegas for his residency entitled, Usher: The Vegas Experience.
Did you catch Usher’s tiny desk performance? What did you think? Comment below.
