John Legend is finding post-election respite in the holiday season
The Upenn grad is bringing the 'A John Legend Christmas' tour to Allentown and Atlantic City. His first children's album, 'My Favorite Dream,' is up for two Grammys.
John Legend has nine Grammys to accompany the Oscar he won for “Glory” (Selma, 2014), a Tony for Jitney in 2017, and the EGOT-completing Emmy he took home for Jesus Christ Superstar in 2018.
Those trophies were on display behind him when the singer, born John Stephens, sat for a Zoom interview in his Los Angeles home in advance of his Christmas shows with a four-piece band at the PPL Center in Allentown on Dec. 19 and the Borgata in Atlantic City on Dec. 20.
After the Grammys on Feb. 2 next year, those shelves might be more crowded. Legend — who graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1999 — is up for three more golden gramophones. Two are for My Favorite Dream, his first foray into children’s music, produced by indie-folk auteur Sufjan Stevens.
Legend is currently taking a break from the NBC music competition show The Voice, but he’s hardly taking it easy.
This fall, he was busy campaigning for Kamala Harris. Now, he’s plotting a 20th anniversary tour next year for his debut album, Get Lifted, and is writing two Broadway-targeted musicals. One with playwright Lynn Nottage and director Liesl Tommy, which adapts Fannie Hurst’s 1933 Atlantic City-set novel, Imitation of Life. The other is a secret.
We caught up with the singer right before his “A John Legend Christmas” brings him close to his old stomping grounds.
This conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Your wife, Chrissy Teigen, and kids (two boys and two girls, ages 8 to 1 1/2) sing on your children’s album, which could win a Grammy or two. How cool is that?
It’s pretty cool. It’s new territory for me. The voters in the children’s music category are people who make it or care about it a lot. So I feel particularly honored that they’ve welcomed me.
How did it happen?
I’m right in the thick of fatherhood. I looked at it as a songwriting challenge. I sat right here in this room with this piano. And over here is the kitchen, where the kids have their breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
So the energy of the house was with me as I was writing. It’s the first album I ever wrote at home, the first I ever wrote by myself with no cowriters. I just sat in this room and did it.
How did you connect with Sufjan Stevens?
I knew his music from the Illinois album. And I just fell in love with his work then. So one time I was listening, and I was like: You know what? Sufjan should produce this album.
I had never met him. Didn’t know if he liked my music, or hated it. And so we just had a call where I talked about my vision for it. I said, I just want you to hear the songs and see if you’re inspired. And he loved them.
He works in the Catskills, and plays a lot of instruments himself, but also has a group of musicians there he calls upon. I told him, I want this to sound like John Legend meets Sufjan Stevens, for your musical voice to be all over it. He did that, and it sounded even better than I dreamed.
You worked hard for Kamala Harris and Bob Casey in Pennsylvania. I’m sure you’re disappointed. Were you surprised?
I wasn’t shocked. 2016 was shocking. But once you’ve seen America and how really evenly divided it is … This is who we are. This is the nation that we live in.
I think the default explanation is the most sensible explanation: Incumbents were in trouble around the world and inflation hit people’s pocketbooks just enough to where they were looking for change. Trump didn’t offer any solutions that would actually fix inflation. … But it was enough that he was offering a kind of gut-level change.
Do you think racism and misogyny had anything to do with it?
I think it’s always going to be a challenge for a woman to run for commander in chief in this country. We’ve never done it before. I believe we’re going to do it, but a lot of people have a hard time imagining a woman being president. I hope we get beyond that.
And then imagining a Black woman being president is probably even more challenging for some people. I hope we get beyond that as well, but clearly not yet.
You played a rally at the Liacouras Center with Bruce Springsteen. He said he likes your rendition of ‘Dancing in the Dark’ better than his own.
My wife and I got emotional when he shouted me out. I loved watching him do it. It’s so cool. It’s such a beautiful song. It’s one of his poppier songs, but the songwriting is still so astute. I was just so thrilled to be there and watch that happen.
Your hometown, Springfield, Ohio, is where President-elect Trump made the baseless claim that Haitian immigrants were eating dog and cats. How’d you cope with that?
I used the moment as an opportunity to speak up for my city.
I did an Instagram video trying to explain that this was a growth story. A positive story of a city making a comeback. Springfield had been hemorrhaging population. We had peaked at 80,000, and were down to 58,000. A typical Rust Belt story that could have been a tragedy got turned around. We started attracting more manufacturing jobs and packaging plants that created more opportunity for people.
We needed folks to come and work, so the Haitian migrants came legally, looking for a better life. This is literally the same American dream that every immigrant community has lived over centuries in this country, and so I wanted to celebrate that and also defend these folks who were being falsely maligned and used as political pawns.
You recorded a song called ‘Safe’ with Haitian artists Michael Brun and Rutshelle Guillaume.
Yeah, just to show the power of music to build bridges for people to see and understand each other. We met in Springfield and went to a really good Haitian restaurant that only opened a year ago. Growing up there, we didn’t have that. I want people to see the value of America as a welcoming place for people who are having a tough time in their countries. America is renewed every time we welcome them in, and it makes us stronger and better. And our food tastes better!
Are you going to do any ‘My Favorite Dream’ songs in this Christmas show?
There are two songs that work really well for the Christmas show. And a few non-Christmas songs that people will want to hear. The majority will be from The Legendary Christmas Album I released in 2018.
Does playing this music feel like a balm after the election?
Yes, it feels good. After a kind of tumultuous, divisive season of campaigning — but also feeling like the whole nation was in an argument. I feel like this show will be a nice respite from that, where people just get to be nostalgic and embrace that holiday cheer and tradition.
What’s your favorite Christmas song?
“This Christmas” by Donny Hathaway. It’s my favorite and my family’s favorite. We always sing it together. Growing up in southwest Ohio, we would gather at my Granny Stephens’ house, my dad’s mom, and would sing around the piano.
I wanted to incorporate stories from my Christmases past into this show. I have written quite a few little anecdotes. So in addition to the music, people will get to know my [current] family, but also my family that I grew up in, a little bit more. And I think, hearing that from me, they’ll see the commonalities that we all have.
“A John Legend Christmas” at the PPL Center, 701 Hamilton St., Allentown at 8 p.m. Dec. 19, pplcenter.com and at the Borgata Event Center, One Borgata Way, Atlantic City, at 8 p.m. Dec. 20, borgata.mgmresorts.com.