Two decades after the release of his debut album, John Legend found himself in a place where children’s music was probably unavoidable.
The soft-spoken EGOT winner had already stepped away from his R&B label to make a Christmas record and his musical debut; he had already served several seasons as a coach on “The Voice” and landed a job playing the son of God in the live-action TV adaptation of “Jesus Christ Superstar.”
Plus: He and his wife, model and cookbook author Chrissy Teigen, have four children under the age of 9.
“It actually started,” she says with a laugh, “with me playing one of my daughter’s songs on the Fisher-Price play mat.”
While it’s easy to see how the convergence of Legend’s life and career led to “My Favorite Dream” — especially considering his family is focused on Teigen’s business as a lifestyle with 42 million Instagram followers — few would have predicted he would record an LP with Sufjon Stevens, a delicate indie-folk songwriter known for his delicate singing and elaborate concept albums about U.S. states.
“That’s what everyone says,” admits Legend, 45. “But I’ve been a fan of his for 20 years.”
The result of their unlikely partnership, scheduled for release Friday, is a lush, tender collection of songs rich with choral vocals and stunning chamber orchestral textures. The songs fall roughly into two groups: upbeat party tunes and bedtime-ready woodland songs; in addition to Legend’s originals, the album includes covers of Bob Marley’s “You Are My Sunshine” and “Three Little Birds.”
As unexpected as it may have been, Legend’s recruitment of Stevens was actually the latest in a series of interesting choices by the artist, who in the late ’90s and early ’00s scored records by Lauryn Hill and Kanye West and earned his first critical acclaim at No. 1 pop in 2014 with the piano ballad “All of Me” at a time when they were few and far between on the charts. He’s since collaborated with producers Blake Mills and Raphael Saadiq on albums that brought different frames to his beautiful coffee.
“He’s a shape-shifter,” Stevens says. “I sensed there was curiosity behind his work.”
For Legend, each new project is a “process of discovery,” he says, sitting on the couch in the West Hollywood home he and Teigen use as a creative hub. Upstairs is Legend’s recording studio; downstairs, a spacious kitchen where his wife whips up recipes. Standing inside the front door is one of those arcade games where you use a motorized claw to pick up a cute toy.
“It’s not always clear what the outcome is going to be,” Legend said of his approach. “I just want to feel different ways.”
“My Favorite Dream” was born from a video Teigen shared online in which Legend sings “Maybe,” a cheerful Fisher-Price song about a purple monkey in a gum tree, to his 1-year-old daughter, Esty.
“People would say, ‘John, why don’t you do more of these?’” he recalls. “He considered himself a performer, so he started writing his own songs” about “all the things we always talk about with kids: love, family, animals, nature. (The new album, he notes, is the first created without a single co-writer.)
After touring, Legend sought out Stevens, whose music he discovered when he was on the judging panel that gave an industry award to Stevens’ 2005 LP, “Illinois.” In some ways, the men’s careers have mirrored each other in the years since: In 2006, Stevens released the beloved Christmas album and was nominated for an Oscar in 2018 for an original song with Luca Guadagnino’s “Secret of Love Call Me by Your Name”; last spring, a musical based on “Illinois” even opened on Broadway.
“For me, Sufjan’s music is both calming and uplifting,” says Legend, whose real last name is Stevens. “And I wanted it to be dreamy, whimsical, adventurous and fun.”
Sufjan Stevens to perform at Hollywood Immortal Cemetery in 2017.
(Colin Young-Wolf/Invision/AP)
Legend sent the vocal and piano demos he recorded at home to Stevens, who lives and works in New York’s Catskill Mountains; Stevens says Legend gave him “complete creative freedom” to create song arrangements that led the producer to think of Sesame Street and the Muppets, but also Stevie Wonder, Henry Mancini, the Beatles and Serge Gainsbourg.
“I don’t have kids, so I’m not very familiar with all the kid-prep — the toys, the media, all that stuff,” Stevens tells The Times in a rare phone interview. Instead, he was inspired by music that naturally appeals to kids, including a younger version of himself.
“The 80s were one of the most colorful and cartoonish decades in pop history,” he says. “There was something very bright and primal about a lot of this stuff. I remember being like 5 years old and really into Michael Jackson.”
That mindset was fine with Legend, who says he wanted the music on “My Favorite Dream” to meet “the same standards I apply to my songwriting.” His goal was to achieve an “everlasting quality,” as he puts it, especially since he knows he can ensure the songs find new audiences as successive generations of kids drop off the album.
In fact, Legend’s eldest Luna, 8, stepped out of the children’s music scene and embraced pop star Tate McRae thanks to a recent visit from an older cousin. “One of their other cousins was teaching them about the Drake-Kendrick beef,” Legend adds with a laugh. “So now my kids are thinking about it.” (Luna wasn’t old enough to appear on the album’s bonus single, “LOVE,” alongside her mother and younger brother Miles.)
Still, Stevens identifies “emotional wisdom” in a song like “Safe,” in which Legend offers assurances of protection “from harm at my hands” that adults can respond to. Stevens himself: Last September, shortly after the death of his partner Evans Richardson, Stevens revealed that he had Guillain-Barré syndrome, an autoimmune disease that left him temporarily unable to walk.
“One of the main reasons I decided to do John’s album is because I couldn’t really work on anything outside of maintenance and restoration,” he says. “I eventually wanted to get back to work, but I didn’t really have the mental capacity to write my own music. This thing felt wholesome and clean and safe.”
“I think there’s also a general apocalyptic anxiety that permeates much of our current culture,” Stevens continues. “What I love about these songs is that they focus on the kinds of aphorisms that speak directly to our fears and anxieties. You don’t have to be a child to appreciate what he’s singing about.”
“My Favorite Dream” follows Legend’s forays into Christmas music and theater.
(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)
Legend understands Stevens’ cultural anxiety, especially in the run-up to a presidential election likely to be won by Donald Trump, whom he describes as “terrible for the country and terrible for the world.” But the veteran Democratic activist feels renewed now that Vice President Kamala Harris has replaced President Biden as the party’s nominee.
“Kamala just does it,” he says of the vice president, whom he and Teigen have known since Harris’ days in California politics. “She brings spirit and joy and humor, and it works everywhere.”
Is Legend confident in America’s willingness to put a black woman in the Oval Office?
“I have a feeling it’s going to happen,” he says. “Before, they were two really old guys, and even though the political differences between Biden and Trump couldn’t be more stark, I think it was hard for people to see the difference. Now, it’s very clear, and I think the comparison is very good for Kamala and it’s favorable.”
Legend performed Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy” at last week’s Democratic National Convention; next month he’ll hit the road for a series of concerts in which he’ll sing his hits with an orchestra. He’s also finishing up a second musical (he declined to reveal the subject matter, other than to say that he’s “a very influential person” and that the show will include rap) and is considering a tour for the 20th anniversary of his 2004 debut, “Get Lifted,” which earned him the first three of his 12 Grammys. After our conversation, he headed to Sadiq’s studio to begin work on his next R&B album.
“I’m at a point where I just respond to my life and let it happen,” he says, whether it’s music, politics, business or fatherhood. “And now I’m in the middle of fatherhood.”
