October 18, 2025
Remember David Usher? He was the lead singer for Canadian alternative rock band Moist. He went solo in the late 90s and had a few top 40 hits, including "Black Black Heart" from 2001. Most recently he's been getting back into music, but he mostly works in the field of AI.
I discovered this because of a random search. I heard something on TV that sounded like opera, and it sounded like something I'd heard in a song before. For some reason I thought it was from The Tea Party, but after a long and not unpleasant revisiting of their music, I was at a loss. I somehow deduced that the piece I was hearing sampled was from the chorus of "The Flower Duet" from Léo Delibes' opera, Lakmé. From there I reversed search for all instances of this chorus being sampled, and located it in "Black Black Heart." The song reached #3 on the Canadian charts, and #1 (for 2 weeks) right here on Rock Rips when it came out. I became intrigued that it would be in something from a prominent alt-rock artist, so I dug deeper and - wow!
As I was saying, David is now 59 and has invested his fame and foprtunes wisely. He co-founded Reimagine AI, a company that uses its Lucy AI, named for Reimagine's late co-founder, Lucy Simic. The company developed Kids Care AI, which makes AI companions to help kids on their health journeys. Another branch makes AI companions for the elderly, memory and Alzheimer's patients. They've done so much more to support the medical field, even Reimagine Reception, AI voice receptionists. There's lots more, like Memry, and AI-powered animated series.
It doesn't end there. He's also been involved with Climate Clock which tracks climate change in real time. More recently he started a new project called SecondEcho. This is an AI tool that claims to be "the 21st century way to save and share your thoughts, feelings and memories, forever." It's a notion I've thought about for some time now, and he beat me to it! He's an author, recently reunited with his band Moist, and is also an author. He also released a aingle about a year ago, and the video features his voice and music, but the video is AI created. Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/3CLrnkm3jEU. Visit David's personal site here: https://www.davidusher.com/.
