Coming Home is the 9th studio album by singer-songwriter Usher and has 20 tracks for an approximately 66-minute runtime. The album features a mix of pop and r&b complimented by Usher’s characteristic smooth vocals. The project covers many of the themes ubiquitous to Usher’s music with an emphasis on love ballads. The production on the album is high-quality and varied with a nice mix of electronic synths and acoustic sounds, trap drums and dance beats. In this album, Usher does not explore much out of his comfort zone, but he brings a quality of performance to each song indicative of at least a modicum of effort which elevates the project overall. At the end of the day, a person would enjoy this album if they enjoy anything else from Usher as it can be seen as a continuation of his previous discography.
The album starts with the titular track “Coming Home”, which features Burna Boy, and has Usher crooning a whole lot of nothing but it doesn’t matter due to the cool beat and Usher’s ability to sell a tune. It must be said that the bridge melody is a nice touch. Next comes “Good Good”, a poppy track with an undeniably catchy chorus. The song sees Usher returning to his familiar messaging as he describes a mutually beneficial breakup. 21 Savage’s feature is mediocre at best and unnecessarily adds a minute to the song. The project continues with “A-Town Girl” which takes a risk by using a sample from one of the titans of pop, Billy Joel’s “Uptown Girl”. While the song unsurprisingly does not surpass its sample, it is not an offense to the original and the chorus is ridiculously catchy. While the pre-chorus is criminally underutilized and Latto’s feature doesn’t do too much for the piece, “A-Town Girl” still is one of the better songs on the album. The next track, “Cold Blooded”, is a dramatic change of mood. It is turbulent and darker with the backing vocals and strings giving the song an almost orchestral quality. The fact that this song is somewhat outside of Usher’s usual comfort zone makes it a standout on the album, especially since it features some of the best vocals from the artist. When I first heard “Kissing Strangers”, it sounded immediately like an Ed Sheeran song. The track is entirely pop which means that it has a memorable hook that gets stuck in the listeners head immediately, but it doesn’t really vibe with the rest of the project. However, for most this can be forgiven on the strength of the melody. “Keep on Dancin’” is a perfectly good song but does not stand out in any particular way aside from the layered vocals on the tail end of the chorus. Next comes “Risk It All” featuring H.E.R. A slow piece with minimal production allows the vocals of both artists to shine through and it will be a welcome entry for those who are fans of slow piano ballads. The next song “Bop”, is rather forgettable with lyrics that are downright hilarious when taken seriously. The energy of the next track “Stone Kold Freak” is needed at this point in the album. While the melody is nothing special, the production with the upbeat tempo is refreshing in the tracklist. The soft understated-ness of “Ruin” combined with the heartfelt lyrics and gentle beat make it surprisingly endearing. Once again, the melody isn’t amazing but is fitting for the subject matter and Usher’s inflection make it even better. With “BIG”, Usher brings out some truly baffling lyrics as he apparently orders his McDonald’s drink and fries in, not small, but size big (I was under the impression it was large). In all seriousness, the brass backing and vibrating baseline are not enough to save this song from falling into forgettability in the middle of the album which probably a good thing given the cringe worthy lyrics. Next comes “On the Side”, which comes across as more boring than anything with a melody that can only be described as mundane and no redeeming production. “I Am the Party” is a slow r&b track, one of Usher’s mainstays. Unfortunately, neither “I Love U” or “Please U” standout on the album. However, “Luckiest Man” brings back some pop charm with a strong melody that is much needed at this point. The next song “Margiela” has some interesting production with minimal drums although there is almost no melody to follow which makes the song become tiring fairly quickly (a bad thing as it is a whole 3:44 long). “Room In A Room” is a standard adequately executed track and “One Of Them Ones” does its best to close the album (as it is the last Usher song on the album) however, the melody is a little weak to make the song great. Weirdly, the album concludes with a remix of a Jung Kook song called “Standing Next to You”. While the song is pretty good, it has a dance pop vibe which doesn’t really fit with Coming Home at all making it a weird decision to include on the album.