Usher spends the entire song telling a girl that he can’t get involved with her. “U Remind Me” is structured as one long breakup letter - a breakup that happens before a relationship even really begins. Usher didn’t have a role in writing “U Remind Me,” but the song couldn’t be any more perfect for his whole sensitive-player persona. So we had to make a nice guy but not too nice.” “U Remind Me,” the lead single from Usher’s 2001 album 8701, is nowhere near Usher’s best song, but it might be the track where Usher walked that line most expertly. Writing about 1998’s “ Nice & Slow,” Usher’s first #1 hit, I noted something that the songwriter Manuel Seal said about Usher’s whole positioning strategy: “We didn’t want too good a guy like Michael Jackson, and we didn’t want too bad a guy like Bobby Brown. In his early years, Usher perfected the art of melancholy flirting. I’m pretty sure Usher Raymond IV has had more success with the sensitive-player archetype than any other artist in the long history of American popular music. The sensitive player has to convince you that he means what he says. The sensitive player is a role, a pose, but it’s a pose that can’t be halfassed. If he leans too hard into the player side, nobody will buy his sensitivity. If he’s too sensitive, he can’t be a player anymore. But then, when the sensitive player gets that love, he has to backpedal right away, to remove himself from any messy feelings-based entanglements. He has to make himself hugely desirable to any women in the immediate vicinity, but he can’t make himself emotionally available to those women. The sensitive player is soft and wounded and approachable, but he can’t be locked down. If you’re going to be a sensitive player, you need to walk a very thin line. In The Number Ones, I’m reviewing every single #1 single in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, starting with the chart’s beginning, in 1958, and working my way up into the present.
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