Usher broke his silence on why his mentee and longtime collaborator Justin Bieber was not part of his star-studded halftime show at Super Bowl LVIII.
“You know what, it didn’t work out with Justin,” Usher, 45, told the nationally syndicated radio show The Breakfast Club, which posted the interview on Instagram. “I honor and recognize that my brother … I think it might’ve been the fact that he was just wanting to tell a different story right now and I understand that.”
Before the Super Bowl, there was buzz that Bieber would be a surprise guest during Usher’s halftime show since Usher helped to sign Bieber when he was a teenager, and the pair have collaborated before.
But it wasn’t to be, as Usher welcomed guests including H.E.R., Alicia Keys, Lil Jon, Ludacris, Jermaine Dupri and Will.i.am from the Black Eyed Peas — but no Bieber.
“We did have a brief conversation [and] we’re gonna do something in the future,” Usher told The Breakfast Club. “No love lost or anything like that.”
Usher, who’s got a new album, “Coming Home,” said that, while planning his halftime show, he did speak to Bieber, but also to many other people since it’s quite the undertaking to plan such an event.
“I think it’s a lot of pressure for the Super Bowl, obviously, for me to put together a show so I reached out to everybody,” he said. “Justin wasn’t the only person that I actually spoke to about doing the Super Bowl [halftime show].
“But the moment was maybe for later,” he added, before praising Bieber’s talents and making a bold prediction.
“He’s gonna play the Super Bowl,” Usher told The Breakfast Club. “I’ll go ahead and give you that in the future.
“I’ll profess that over his life,” he said. “He has a career that deserves it. It just didn’t happen, but that doesn’t mean it’s not going to.”
Lil Jon had a different spin on why Bieber did not participate in Usher’s halftime show.
“We wanted to put Justin in the show, so we had the idea of doing a version of the show with Justin in it,” he told TMZ. “But I think Justin just wasn’t really ready to have a lot of rehearsal, a lot of responsibility, a lot of time and a lot of eyeballs. I don’t know if he was ready to do all of that, you know?
“I mean, he definitely was there supporting Ush and they’re really good friends and he definitely was supporting him,” he added.
Super Bowl LVIII was watched by nearly 124 million people, the largest audience in television history in the US.
The Kansas City Chiefs defeated the San Francisco 49ers 25-22 in overtime, with Chiefs star Travis Kelce’s girlfriend, pop phenom Taylor Swift, rooting him on.
Usher married his longtime girlfriend, Jennifer Goicoechea, 40, after his performance on Super Bowl Sunday.
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