Songfacts®:

• In this song, Usher makes his confessions, telling his girl he's been cheating on her and that he got the other girl pregnant. He's hoping that by coming clean, she'll give him another chance because he still loves her.
• There were rumors that this song, and much of the Confessions album, was about Usher's breakup with Rozonda "Chilli" Thomas from TLC, whom he dated from 2001-2003. Usher's label, Arista Records, fed this beast by claiming the album would contain some shocking revelations by the singer. This promotional tactic built a huge buzz and created a long-lasting talking point, but it was deceptive.
  
  When questioned more thoroughly about the song, Usher said it wasn't specifically about Chilli and was inspired by friends' similar experiences. Later, co-writer and producer Jermaine Dupri told MTV News that Usher's album was about his own "cheating on my steady girlfriend, having a baby with that other woman and having to confess to everything that happened to my main girl."
  
  In an email to MTV News, Usher wrote: "I didn't have a baby with another woman although a lot of people thought that was the case when they listened to the album for the first time. That song was not personally about me."
• There is a "Confessions Part I," which leads into this song. On original copies of the album, it was an interlude running 1:15; later, it was replaced with the full song, where Usher admits to having a "chick on the side" and tells her, "Everything that I've been doing is all bad." This song is titled "Confessions."
  
  In "Confessions, Pt. 2," Usher breaks the news that this girl is pregnant. The music video begins with the interlude version of "Confessions."
• "Confessions, Pt. 2" was one of the biggest songs of the summer of 2004, which was really the summer of Usher. The first single from the Confessions album was the club-banger "Yeah!," an unrelenting hit that went to #1 in February and stayed until May, when Usher's next single, "Burn," replaced it. "Confessions, Pt. 2" was already on the chart by then and climbed to #1 in July. For all of June and the first two weeks of July, Usher had all three songs in the Top 10, a feat previously accomplished only by The Beatles (in 1964) and The Bee Gees (in 1978).
  
  And he wasn't done: The next single, his Alicia Keys collaboration "My Boo," went to #1 in October.
• Understandably, Rozonda "Chili" Thomas didn't appreciate Usher's confessions and the rumors they were addressed to her. She is seven years older than Usher, who had a huge crush on her from watching TLC videos growing up. They ended up on the same label in 1993 when Usher signed to LaFace Records at 14. By the time they started dating in 2001, TLC was on the wane due to internal strife and changing musical tastes. Usher, though, was red hot.
  
  Chilli played Usher's love interest in two videos from his 2001 album 8701: "U Remind Me" and "U Got It Bad," both #1 hits.
  
  Chilli said of Confessions on VH1's Behind The Music: Usher program: "I hated the album. You know, because I just, I hated what it stood for. I hated that it was blowing up because people were thinking that 'Oh my God, this is all about their relationship,' it was just too much. It was too much for me to handle."
  
  She added to US Weekly: "We were together when he recorded that album. All of those songs on Confessions, that was about Jermaine Dupri's situation. Usher was just singing it. But people kind of bought into it, it was just the timing of our breakup when the album came out."
  
  "I'll always love him, forever, because he was my first adult love," she continued. "A real love."
• The Confessions album sold 1.1 million copies in America in its first week - the biggest first-week sale for an R&B act. It was the biggest selling album in America in 2004, selling over 5 million copies. Confessions eventually became the second biggest selling album in the States by a male solo act after Garth Brooks' Ropin' The Wind. Confessions also spent nine weeks on top of the Billboard albums chart in 2004, making it the longest-running #1 album of the 21st century.
• Usher directed the music video with Chris Robinson, who had done the Alicia Keys video for "Fallin'" and "'03 Bonnie And Clyde" for Jay-Z and Beyoncé. It's a stylistic dramatization as we see Usher confess to his girl, who isn't buying it. He finds himself alone, staring at a mirror that shatters in front of him.
• After Confessions, Usher took a break from music and tried his hand at film. In 2005, he starred in a movie called In The Mix. In 2007 he married Tameka Foster. They had two children before divorcing in 2009. Usher's 2010 is called Raymond v. Raymond and is imbued with the drama from their divorce.
• Usher sang this during his halftime performance at Super Bowl LVIII in 2024, when the Kansas City Chiefs beat the San Francisco 49ers in overtime. Jermaine Dupri showed up to introduce the song and point out that it was the 20th anniversary of the Confessions album.