Songfacts®:

• In this song, Usher bites the bullet and breaks up with his girl even though he knows it's going to hurt. They could stay together and try to work it out, but he knows it's no use. Best to deal with it and let it burn.
• Usher was coming off a two-year relationship with Chilli from TLC when this song was released, leading to speculation that the song was about their split. Usher used this as a marketing ploy, hinting that the Confessions album was full of actual confessions, especially the "title track, which deals with infidelity.
  
  After the album was released, he claimed the songs weren't as personal as they seem and simply play out different scenarios he made up. "Burn" doesn't find Usher admitting to any wrongdoing but could certainly relate to his breakup with Chilli.
• Usher wrote the song with the track's producers, Jermaine Dupri and Bryan Michael Cox. Dupri is a key figure in Usher's development. He produced most of Usher's second album, My Way, and convinced him that he was a songwriter as well as a performer. On Usher's next album, 8701, other producers came on board along with Dupri, resulting in hits with a mix of styles. They did the same thing with the Confessions album, which also had contributions from the producers Just Blaze, Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis, Lil Jon, and Dre & Vidal.
• "Burn" was the follow-up to "Yeah!," the first single from Confessions. Usher was on fire: "Yeah!" stayed at #1 for 12 weeks to become the top song of 2004; "Burn" knocked it off the top spot and stayed another eight weeks. The next two singles also topped the chart: "Confessions, Pt. 2" and "My Boo."
• Jake Nava directed the video, which shows Usher wandering an estate, still thinking about his ex. The girl in the video is Jessica Clark, who later had roles on the shows Chemistry and True Blood.
• When "Burn" supplanted "Yeah!" at #1, it marked the first time a song with a four-letter title supplanted another with a four-letter title atop the Billboard Hot 100.
• Usher broke the record for most consecutive weeks at #1 on Billboard's Hot 100 when "Burn" reached its fifth week in the pole position, following directly on the heels of the 12-week chart-topper "Yeah!" He eventually logged 19 consecutive weeks on top (Fantasia's "I Believe" went to #1 for a week before "Burn" came back for another week). Prior to Usher's feat, the record was 16 weeks by Boyz II Men with "I'll Make Love To You" and "On Bended Knee" in 1994.
  
  Usher's record was overtaken by The Black Eyed Peas' 26-week chart-topping run in 2009 with "Boom Boom Pow" and "I Gotta Feeling."
• Usher included part of "Burn" during his halftime show at the 2024 Super Bowl in Las Vegas. Fitting the city's aesthetic, it was a grand spectacle, with a huge set that projected flames during the song.