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Billboard’s Greatest Pop Star of 2004: Usher
Usher is Billboard's Greatest Pop Star of 2004 for how he owned the year front-to-back with his 'Confessions' album.
The Nov. 6, 2003 release date for Usher ’s fourth album, Confessions, was fast approaching, and though the Atlanta R&B star — a mononymous icon since his pop breakthrough six years earlier — had turned in 40-plus tracks, featuring A1 production from the Neptunes, Jermaine Dupri, and Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, L.A. Reid only heard the lack. And though Beyoncé spoke about Thriller as the touchstone for her career-defining self-titled release in 2013, the way the lyrics tease revelations about her personal life with her husband, both good and bad, feels more indebted to Confessions than anything Michael Jackson wrote. Green Day, coming off a four-year hiatus — the Oakland band’s longest gap yet — channeled the frustration and despair of the Bush years into American Idiot, an ambitious rock opera, with nine-minute suites and supporting characters.
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