2004: the year in which Britain really went wild for a slushy R&B ballad…
Burn, by Usher (his 3rd of four #1s)
2 weeks, 4th – 18th July 2004
Barely two weeks after Mario Winans was mourning his unfaithful lover, and a couple of months on from Eamon’s whining, Usher ponders an age old dilemma. Man I don’t know what I’m gonna do, Without my boo…
Ballads like this had been the sound of the Billboard Hot 100 since the nineties, usually staying at number one for months on end (‘Burn’ itself was the US #1 for eight weeks, and knocked Usher’s earlier single ‘Yeah!’ from top spot). And while they often charted well in Britain, it feels like 2004 was the year that they belatedly broke through and dominated.
Why? I’m not sure. Slumping sales? A lack of British pop talent? More break-ups than usual? Was the insidious internet forcing American slush into the homes of impressionable British kids…? However it happened, it made for some fairly dull number ones. Usher’s vocals are impressive (though his tendency towards a falsetto is grating), yet the production is slow and treacly. While ‘Yeah!’ was certainly dumb; it was at least cutting edge and upbeat.
Another potential symptom of slumping sales seems to be that acts are scoring multiple chart-toppers, closer together. In 2003 only Busted managed multiple #1s, but we’ve now had three repeaters in a row – Britney, McFly and now Usher. A long time ago I described this phenomenon – lesser follow-ups making number one thanks to a huge smash hit – as ‘shadow number ones’. But I don’t think that’s what’s happening here, and it’s going to keep happening over the next few years, until sales start to pick up.
What’s also going to happen over the next few years is more and more syrupy R&B ballads like this making number one in Britain, beyond their natural habitat of the Hot 100. Think Akon, think Ne-Yo. Even normally upbeat females like Beyonce and Rihanna will try their hand at it. And here am I, scanning the horizon for any sign of a guitar…
The UK Number Ones Blog 
Fanbase and marketing have more sway over chart-toppers in periods of low sales, and they dont get much lower than 2004 really, so that’s how I explain this topping the chart. In any normal year it would be a top 10 forgettable r’n’b as opposed to any of the great genre hits of the 90’s. I played this last year to review 2004 and had forgotten it, like it had never existed in the first place. A year later I’m getting the same vibes. It’s not bad as such, it’s just nothing much, no memorable tune, production, vocal performance, anything. It plods along a few minutes and returns to absolute forgettability.
You definitely have a point, looking at the McFly, Busted, Britney repeats on top of the charts in 2004, though Usher isn’t someone I associate with having a particular fanbase, especially in the UK. He had hits, but then plenty of misses over the years.
LOL, I like how you spent like one small paragraph talking about the actual song and spent most of the time talking about the chart environment surrounding it, haha. I totally get it. I’ve never found this song that interesting. Here in Australia, it went #2 here and I do remember hearing it as a little kid on the radio and in the playground and on music television, but it was nowhere near as omnipresent as “Yeah” and it didn’t endure as much as “Yeah” did. It’s not a bad song though. It’s okay. Usher’s vocals are easily the best part of about it – I’ve never really realised until recently how good of a singer Usher is and how much character he has in his voice. And it’s interesting the lyrics being about his breakup with TLC’s Chilli, it’s quite cathartic I guess.
Yeah while I do enjoy this 90s/2000s R&B sound, it thankfully wasn’t dominating the UK charts like they did in the US – in the 90s by a certain point I’m pretty sure half of the Hot 100 was all R&B ballads – though a lot of these R&B ballads still did chart high in the UK even if they didn’t get to No. 1 as often. In the US, it’s partly because R&B and urban audiences still bought physical singles so urban music – while still very, very popular – got overpresented on the Hot 100 in the 90s since you still needed a physical single to chart until December 1998 – and then in the early-to-mid-2000s iHeartRadio programmers went all in on urban music and it pretty much completely dominated the Hot 100 outside of some alternative/post-grunge/emo pop and country pop.
At least the 2000s we’ll get some more chart-toppers with guitar. Treasure those moments because they become few and far between in the 2010s.
Do and boo is a terrible rhyme…
It’s pretty boring.