The Super Bowl half-time show is probably the biggest gig on the planet, with over 100 million tuning in each year to watch the performers, and then probably most of them turning straight off again once the ‘football’ starts again. OK, this year, perhaps some people who aren’t American will stick around for the Taylor Swift-cam, which will trace her reactions to the performance of her boyfriend Travis Kelce as his Kansas City Chiefs take on the San Francisco 49-ers. But most of us will be there purely to see Usher perform.
The Grammy-award winning, multi-million singing Usher Raymond IV, who, to us Brits at least, has suddenly made a comeback and is now everywhere. It’s not just the half-time show, he has a new album coming out on the same day – ‘Coming Home’ – and is all over Vogue this week for a new shoot in which he hardly seems to have aged at all in the years since he first hit the charts in 1994 aged 16. Time has not been kind to some of us but Usher has stealthily avoided the ravages to emerge preserved back into our consciousnesses.
OK, full disclosure: he has been pretty busy as an artist over the last few years. We over here haven’t seen much of it, but he’s been working his way back into true superstardom for a while. After some record company issues put him out of the game for a couple of years, he released a comeback single, GLU last March on his own label Mega, and then went into a couple of back-to-back residencies in Las Vegas. Oh, and he was also a judge on The Voice US.
But still, we love a comeback story and Usher’s appearance in the most prized showbiz spot on earth could indeed herald a year of greats returning to greats.
Last week saw the release of a new record by Liam Gallagher and John Squire, called imaginatively ‘Liam Gallagher & John Squire’. Squire was of course the guitarist in The Stone Roses, one of the very best English bands, who hasn’t released an album since 2004. Of course, he was supposed to have written one during The Stone Roses’ lucrative reunion, but that fell apart after a few (very good) singles. According Gallagher, Squire hadn’t picked up a guitar to write on for an age, but sent Liam some of the demos and away they went. Whether Squire can return to the glory days remains to be seen, but hell, Gallagher’s solo reinvention has seen him play Knebworth, so why not?
Then at Coachella in April, Gwen Stefani and crew will be back as No Doubt make a much-hyped return to the stage for the first time in nearly 10 years.
You could argue that in a music scene where festivals reign supreme, there will always be an allure (cash, a big crowd) for musicians who gave up on their careers years ago. Hell, Rick Astley is bigger than he ever was, even turning up doing Smiths covers with Blossom at Glastonbury. Blur and Pulp did it for huge shows last year, with none of the accusations of selling-out that there might have once been in the past – the Sex Pistols called their reunion in 1996, the ‘Filthy Lucre’ tour – they were met with nothing but goodwill.
This is perhaps indicative of the changes Spotify has made to the way we consume music. It, and similar streaming sites, condense all the history of music into the present, making seemingly every record available to anyone at the touch of a button. It means old artists don’t really move aside when they get old and naff. And indeed, those that were previously considered old and naff – we’re looking at you, Astley - can find themselves suddenly revived through a combination of TV and film soundtracks and streaming availability. Who’d have thought Sophie Ellis-Bextor would be the hottest thing this year, but after Murder on the Dancefloor soundtracked the naked dancing of Barry Keoghan in Saltburn, she kind of is.
That said, it’s not all good news. Daniel Bedingfield is back with his first tour in 19 years in 2024. Ah, that’s not fair, even he deserves his shot at life after music death. Altogether now, “we gotta get thru this…”
