Throw your certificates of divorce in the air, and wave 'em like you just don't care! 

Usher filed for divorce from his wife of two years, Tameka Foster, in June, and from the sounds of "Papers," the single he released today, the R&B superstar isn't having many second thoughts about the split. "For you I gave my heart and turned my back against the world/ 'Cause you were my girl, girl, girl/ I done damn near lost my mama/ I done been through so much drama/ I done turned into the man that I never thought I'd be/ I'm ready to sign them papers."

In the public eye, the relationship has always been pitched as a triangle between Usher, his bride, and his mother. But it's still startling to hear that interfamilial entanglement acknowledged so boldly in these lyrics. Mama said knock you out...!?

The song was actually written by Sean Garrett, but it's clearly intended to carry autobiographical overtones. Usher hasn't been this confessional since, well, Confessions, the 2004 release that was one of the last albums to be certified "diamond" (10 million in sales) by the RIAA. The 2008 followup, Here I Stand, fell short of double-platinum status, despite the massive success of "Love in This Club," which turned out to be the type of tune that makes fans want to buy an individual digital download more than the entire collection. By releasing "Papers" as a first single, Usher clearly intends to send a signal that this time, it's personal—and, presumably, you'll want to buy the entire album to get the rest of the story.

The star evokes some nasty times in the last days of a marriage, talking about an unhappy couple who "fight like dogs at 6 in the morning/I know there's gonna be some more s--- in the night." Not quite every feeling is negative: "I know it's you I love/But I also know it's you I don't like," he sings, putting an unhappy spin on "You Really Got a Hold on Me."

Things get a little loopy toward the end when Usher turns the ballad into a call-and-response anthem with the background singers, who presumably represent the unhappily-wed women in his audience. "All my ladies, if you're sick and tired and you're ready to sign/Say ready, ready, ready, ready..." I suspect if he engages the gals at his concerts in this kind of pro-divorce exchange, it could spoil a lot of date nights.

(No word yet on any response yet from Foster, who will not have iTunes and YouTube as forums to spread her own feelings about the split.) 

Usher isn't the only one to get so self-referential in regard to well-publicized personal problems lately. Chris Brown had his post-Rihanna-battering ballad "Changed Man," with its lines, "Everybody hates Chris/They can never understand..."

But you'd have to go back to Marvin Gaye's legendary Here, My Dear album from the early 1970s to hear a star of Usher's magnitude sing so blatantly about his own divorce. (Sample Gaye song titles from that project: "Hate," "When Did You Stop Loving Me, When Did I Stop Loving You" and "You Can Leave, But It's Going to Cost You." How was that last one not a single?)

On the pop side, Pink recently pulled it off, in her smash hit "So What?," with dismissive lines like: "I guess I just lost my husband/I don't know where he went/So I'm gonna drink my money/I'm not gonna pay his rent." (After that, ex-husband Carey Hart appeared in the video...! Could we hope for similar cameos by Tameka and Mama Usher in the "Papers" visualization?)

More often, singers and songwriters spare us the overtly legal and/or matrimonial references and invite us to read between the lines. If you need a soundtrack for your own impending split, here's a short list of what many fans consider the most memorable or emotional "divorce albums" ever made:

Fleetwood Mac's Rumours (Christine vs. John McVie; Lindsey Buckingham vs. Stevie Nicks), Abba's The Visitors and Super Trouper (two more warring couples), Richard and Linda Thompson's Shoot Out the Lights, the Mendoza Line's 30 Year Low (these last two also both by about-to-divorce couples), Bruce Springsteen's Tunnel of Love (even if Julianne Phillips didn't know if was a divorce album at the time), Nick Cave's The Boatman's Call (goodbye, Polly Harvey), Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely (but sings primarily for Ava Gardner), Elvis Costello's Blood & Chocolate (first wife) and North (second wife), Paul Simon's Hearts and Bones (re Carrie Fisher), Phil Collins' Face Value, Beck's Sea Change, Everclear's Songs from an American Movie, Bruce Cockburn's Humans, Richard Buckner's Devotion + Doubt, Willie Nelson's Phases and Stages... the list goes on. And let's not forget the songs about divorce's effect on the kids, from Tammy Wynette's "D-I-V-O-R-C-E" and "I Don't Want to Play House" to Depeche Mode's haunting "Precious."

If it's primarily rock and country that have dealt directly with the D-word, maybe it's because R&B has tended to resist the outright mope factor, or to quite age itself up into a lyrical subject matter more often associated with middle age than the hit parade. But maybe Usher can change all that.

If the audiences for his next tour are full of ladies chanting "ready, ready, ready, ready," and waving legal briefs in the air, maybe there'll be a ground swell of other singers wanting to record their own call-the-lawyers hits, too. They could forge a whole new subgenre: R&D.

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Meanwhile, if you want to enjoy your memories of Usher as a proper husband, here's a video he made last year for "Trading Places." If this is the kind of clip he did as a married man, we almost fear to see what he comes up with for his first album as a newly single guy (due to come out in December).