Arts & Entertainment, Music

Final Thoughts

Usher

Lesson time 04:40 min

Usher leaves you with the most important takeaways from his MasterClass. He's given you his teachings. Now it's time to put them to work.

Students give MasterClass an average rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars

Topics include: Setting goals • Measuring your success • How to keep fighting

Preview

Having a great work ethic is the most important part of being successful. Practice makes perfect. You try, you try, you try until you get it. And for me, I've always been eager to learn, harder on myself than anyone else, always working to perfect and make the most of the moment. It's important for you to set benchmarks for yourself so that you know you're on the right track. The goal should always be to be creative. The goal is the journey. The journey along the way will take you many places if you allow it to. That's been my story. I'm a kid from Chattanooga, Tennessee who just wanted to get the audience's attention. You have that opportunity plus some, to not only use what I'm teaching you in this master class as a practice to prepare for the moment. But then, to be able to share it with the world and it take you far, far, than you could ever imagine. [MUSIC PLAYING] It's always important to be very careful of what your measures of success is, because if it's record sales and you get that, then what do you do? Now you're stuck trying to figure out to top that record sale again. No different than some of the stories that I'd heard about Michael Jackson, selling 40 million albums with Thriller and then coming back right behind it with Bad and selling 20 million albums and not feeling like he was adequate enough. I understand because I went through it, you know? Just the reality of selling that many albums. 10 million albums, selling a diamond album. In the time, it was very difficult to do that, selling 1.1 million units in one week. That doesn't happen. It hadn't happened in such a long time. There was a few artists who've had that-- who were lucky enough to have that. Here is the disadvantage, that every album afterwards is compared to that. For me, my measure of success has always been the journey. The journey has been the destination, not landing at any specific place, be it record sales, recognition, idea, or expansion. For me to do it has always been a pleasure and has always been the reason why I consider myself an artist, because an artist is always growing, he's always evolving. [MUSIC PLAYING] When you get into the space of feeling as though you have nothing to prove, and you are completely living in your creative space, then you're where you need to be. It may take 10 times. It may take 10 years, who knows. You maybe 50 years old and still trying to find that spark. And it's just this one moment that happens and then, boom, it's all there. But your ability to fight through it and continued to fight for that yes and fight for this creativity to be perceived the right way is worth it. It's why you are blessed with the talent that you have. It's why you're hear. I really spent years and years gathering all this information so I could you give it back to you in hopes that you'll be able to use it to creat...

About the Instructor

Usher, winner of 8 Grammy Awards, reveals the technical skills, career lessons and breakthrough advice that he has used to captivate audiences for over 25 years. For the first time ever, learn how Usher approaches performance and wins over audiences from the studio to the stage. There has never been a class like this before.

Featured MasterClass Instructor

Usher

In his first ever online class, Usher teaches you his personal techniques to captivate audiences across 16 video lessons.

Explore the Class
Sign Up