CSPC: Usher Popularity Analysis

Original Album Sales – Comments

1994 Usher – 500,000
1997 My Way – 7,450,000
2001 8701 – 7,400,000
2004 Confessions – 15,500,000
2008 Here I Stand – 2,200,000
2010 Raymond v. Raymond – 2,100,000
2012 Looking 4 Myself – 850,000
2016 Hard II Love – 160,000

Born in late 1978, at the age of 25 Usher was already the lucky owner of three smash albums. His self-titled album from his teenage years wasn’t successful, but My Way, 8701 and Confessions all smashed, especially considering they were R&B albums which are always difficult to sell outside of the US plus a few favorable countries like the Netherlands.

Those series of hits came to an abrupt end when Here I Stand sold less than 15% of its predecessor. Raymond v. Raymond hasn’t recover but at least it was able to maintain the same level of success. The last two albums, especially the 2016 effort Hard II Love, failed to sell well, starting slowly and dropping fast.

All in all, Usher sold more than 36 million albums with the help of eight records. They contributed very distinctively though. Obviously, album sales were still great by 2004 while the market collapsed during the following years. It raises the question about the origin of that decrease of sales from Usher‘s albums, was his popularity dropping or is it only due to a transfer of sales into other formats like digital singles?