John Legend

Presenter0:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio Podcasts. Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne, and this is the Desert Island Discs Podcast. Every week, I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book, and luxury they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. And, for rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:45

My castaway this week is the singer-songwriter John Legend. Born John Stevens in Springfield, Ohio, he grew up surrounded by music. His father played drums at the local Pentecostal church whilst his mother directed the choir and his grandmother played the organ. John sang in the choir from the age of just seven. Music wasn't his first career path, though. He was a management consultant in his early 20s while trying to find his way as an artist in the evenings. The name Legend was bestowed on him for his ability to channel the greats of soul music, and he's become one of the most powerful voices in American entertainment as a musician and a campaigner. He's one of just 16 living artists to earn the ultimate acronym EGOT, with two Emmys, 12 Grammys, an Oscar and a Tony Award all under his belt. At the age of just 15, he won an essay competition sponsored by a global fast food chain, in which he wrote, I plan to impact society by developing my own character and being a leader in the community by example. I plan to use my social skills and my musical talents to be a positive role model for my fellow African Americans. John Legend, welcome to Desert Island Discs.

John Legend1:56

Thank you for having me.

Presenter1:57

You have created some absolute classic tracks. All of Me, the song that you wrote for your wife, has got more than two billion views on YouTube.

John Legend2:07

Yeah, I'm grateful, honestly. You write songs and the process for me is almost always the same.

John Legend2:14

You're just sitting in a room maybe with another person and maybe a couple of people in the room and you try to create something beautiful and you don't know what's going to happen with it when you create it. But sometimes you stumble on something that is life changing. And All of Me is one of those songs for me.

Presenter2:31

And do you know in the moment, like when you've got lightning in a bowl, you're you're holding it there, you don't?

John Legend2:33

You've got lightning in a bottle?

John Legend2:36

You don't know one because I'm excited whenever I finish a song, so uh.

John Legend2:43

It's kind of like a similar level of excitement. Okay. And it's hard for me in the moment to know if this one is way more special than the other hundreds of songs that I've written. So in that moment, I'm not sure. You know, it felt good. I was happy with it. I thought it was a well-written song. I changed a few lines in the subsequent days, and we had started with a version that had drums and

Speaker 42:45

Okay.

Presenter2:58

Uh

Speaker 42:58

Uh

John Legend3:07

A four on the floor, drum pattern, and

Speaker 43:09

Mm-hmm.

John Legend3:11

We just decided to keep it simple and strip back and uh it worked. When I first sang it for Chrissy.

Presenter3:18

That your wife, the model Chrissy Teigen.

John Legend3:20

She cried, so that was a good sign. And the more I played it for people, I just was getting the sense that this one wasn't just another good song, it was special. And it turned out to be just that.

Presenter3:33

We're going to ask you to choose eight discs today. For someone whose life has featured music from the very beginning, how has it been narrowing down your choices?

John Legend3:36

Some money

John Legend3:40

Uh

John Legend3:43

You know, it's hard to say these are the eight songs that I would want to listen to forever, but these are definitely eight songs that I love, and several of them have real sentimental meaning for me and were part of really important moments in my life. And of course, they're artists that are incredible and influential to me.

Presenter4:03

Well, I think we've got both, two of those things at least with the first track. So let's get started. Disc number one, what have you chosen and why?

John Legend4:06

Tracking.

John Legend4:09

I've chosen Here Comes a Sun, the Nina Simone version. Of course, it's a great Beatles song, and it's been covered by many, including myself. But Nina Simone's version is very special to me. I named my daughter Luna Simone after her. And I feel like if I'm on a deserted island and I wake up every morning to this song, every day is going to start beautifully.

Speaker 44:35

It's been a no

Speaker 44:37

Cold and lonely winter, little darling, it feels like years since you've been here Here comes the sun, little darling Here comes the sun, I say it's all mine

Speaker 45:02

Get the phone now.

Presenter5:06

Nina Simone and Here Comes the Sun. Joan Legend, as you said, an important artist to you as well as a wonderful track. You actually covered her track, Feeling Good, at the Presidential inauguration, right, Joe Biden's inauguration?

John Legend5:17

Yes. So January twenty twenty one, a lot of us were very pleased that the former President was the former President, and we were feeling good, feeling optimistic.

John Legend5:29

And I wanted to sing a song to capture that feeling.

Presenter5:33

And what's it like playing a show like that? I mean, it's not your average gig. How do you prepare?

John Legend5:37

Well, it's cold, first of all, extremely cold. So it was still in the height of pandemic precautions, so there was no audience there. We're just there with the marine band and me on the piano in the freezing cold.

Presenter5:50

I mean your fingers must have been seizing up.

John Legend5:53

They were freezing.

Presenter5:56

Let's go back to the beginning of your story, John, then. You were born into a very musical family in nineteen seventy eight, the second of four children to Ronald and Phyllis. So growing up in Ohio, what are your earliest musical memories of the family?

John Legend6:03

See Ronald.

John Legend6:09

I grew up singing and playing in church, but even before that I grew up around my mother directing the choir and my grandmother playing the organ at church and I was at choir rehearsal in the womb, I like to say. We just were raised in a house full of music. We had a piano there, drum kit there. I started taking piano lessons when I was three or four years old and um started singing in the church choir when I was seven and I've always loved being in front of people singing.

Presenter6:20

Yeah.

Presenter6:25

But yeah.

Presenter6:39

Yeah. And I wonder about the context of the music. You know, you're in a Pentecostal service church. What function is it serving there? It's celebratory. It's celebrating. It's very celebratory.

John Legend6:47

It's very celebratory. It's very charismatic in the Pentecostal church. The music is the soundtrack that kind of moves the service along, so it has to match the energy or even bring up the energy. That's the kind of music I was raised around.

Presenter7:02

Yeah, the original soul music, I suppose.

John Legend7:04

It was indeed, you know, and so many of our great soul artists come from that kind of tradition and uh I'm no exception.

Presenter7:13

And you had your first piano lesson when you were babe in arms really, four years old, which is incredibly young to start. This is the most gorgeous photo of you deep in concentration on the piano stool. When was your first piano teacher?

John Legend7:23

Yeah.

John Legend7:25

Yeah.

John Legend7:27

Her name was Gloria Smith and she was at a uh local music store in our uh neighborhood. And then my grandmother, on my mother's side, she was our church organist. And so on Sundays after church, I would go to her house and we would have a meal and

John Legend7:42

Sometimes she would show me how to play some of the songs she was playing at church, so I was getting a combination of

John Legend7:48

Classical training from Mrs. Smith and gospel training from my grandmother.

Presenter7:53

So we're gonna hear some more music now, John. It's time for your second disc.

John Legend7:56

Well, this song is Pete Rock and CL Smooth, They Reminisce Over You. I have a special place in my heart for early 90s hip-hop. This song, They Reminisce Over You. It's a perfect song, I think, if you're on a desert island because you're probably missing a lot of people. The song craft is just beautiful, and this song never gets old to me. I could listen to it all the time.

Speaker 28:20

Still he rolls down you would tear out your hide On your side while the baby make a slide But mama got wise to the game The youngest of five kids hun here it is After ten years without no spouse Mama's getting married in the house Listen, positive over negative for the woman the master Mother queens rise in the chapter Deja vu, tell you what I'm gonna do When they reminisce over you, my God

Presenter8:39

Uh

Speaker 28:49

So

Presenter8:51

Pete Rock and C L Smooth. They reminisce over you. So, John Legend, I'd love to know a little bit more about your parents, Phyllis and Ronald. Your dad was an assembly line worker by day, but very creative too. Still is, I think. What did he used to make and and do when you were growing up?

John Legend9:07

So my father made everything. He was so good with his hands and he was Mr. Fixit around the house. So anything that was broken, he would try to fix it himself rather than call someone in. But he also made clothes and he painted and did portraits and pencil.

Presenter9:13

So anyway

Speaker 49:23

Mm.

John Legend9:23

And he would find

John Legend9:26

Anything he could build or create or carve around the house, he would do it.

Presenter9:30

You must have grown up surrounded by his creations and maybe wearing them.

John Legend9:32

Keep grabbing them.

Presenter9:33

Uh

John Legend9:33

Yes. So I would wear clothes that he made and my mother was a tailor as well, so both of them would make clothes for us and uh we would wear them to church. But we have old pictures of us wearing the same thing. Siblings matching. Yes. Classic, yeah. That my parents made. They were very handy and and crafty around the house.

Presenter9:44

Apple siblings matching. Classic, yeah.

Presenter9:52

So you're born into this church-going family, John. Your mum was the choir director, as you mentioned. Your grandma was the the church organist, your dad playing drums. I wonder about the influence of growing up watching that group and someone taking charge of the musicians and how that influenced your career, because you do always seem to have had a bird's eye view, a kind of producer's eye, an arranger's eye for the music that you've been making.

John Legend10:17

Well, I've been arranging music since I was very young. So I think probably by the time I was 10 or 11, I was arranging for our church choir. And I had numerous vocal groups I was a part of when I was in middle school and high school. And so I've been understanding harmonies and arranging them for other vocalists for such a long time. I think that's helped me throughout my career. I've always had a sense for thinking about the whole picture, thinking about how the whole thing is supposed to sound.

John Legend10:50

what the drums need to do, what the guitar needs to do, what the strings need to do, what the vocalists need to do. All of uh the the things I did as a kid were preparation for where I am now.

Presenter11:00

You were home schooled, John, until you were eleven. Why did your parents decide to educate you that way?

John Legend11:05

They were very religious and they wanted religious education for us and one that was kind of sheltered from the secular world. And for a time, they sent us to a private Christian school that was based at a local church, but it got a little too pricey for them to afford. And so they decided rather than send us to public school, they would just bring us home and teach us from the curriculum of the Christian school. But my mom would teach us herself. And she was a stay-at-home mother and quite a good teacher, even though she didn't have any formal training as a teacher. In some ways, it was a pretty conservative curriculum. It taught creationism. And so I think I've got the least amount of good teaching in science. And I had to make up for that later in life on my own, going to the library and independent study. But yeah, it kind of had a conservative bent to it.

Speaker 411:34

Mm.

Presenter12:04

It's time for your next piece of music, John. Number three, what are you going for?

John Legend12:08

Aretha Franklin. Now, Aretha Franklin is one of the greatest artists of all time, one of the greatest vocalists of all time, and someone I've had a chance to be around and work with. And this is one of my favorite songs of hers. It's called Daydreaming. It just takes you to a magical place. It's ethereal, gorgeous. Her voice just floats on the track. It's truly one of my favorite listens in the world.

Speaker 412:37

When it's lonesome and feeling love starved, I'll be there to feed it.

Speaker 412:42

Loving him a little bit for each day Turns me right on when I hear him say

Speaker 412:52

Hey, baby, let's get away. Let's go somewhere else. Baby, can we won't care? Yeah.

Presenter13:05

Aretha Franklin and Daydreaming. John Legend Aretha Franklin, who, as you mentioned, you worked with and spent time with. What was that like?

John Legend13:14

I'm given the daunting task of being told to

John Legend13:19

Produce an Aretha Franklin vocal, which of course is an honor, but I'm like, what am I going to tell Aretha Franklin about how to sing this song?

Presenter13:25

Read the frame

Presenter13:29

And what was it like being in the studio?

John Legend13:30

Well, she likes the studio very warm. She was later in her years, but she still was amazing. She didn't require much coaching from me.

Presenter13:40

Funnily enough, it all worked out okay.

John Legend13:42

Yes, it worked out okay. And you know, she honestly reminded me of my maternal grandmother a lot. My grandmother played in a very similar style as her. My grandmother was also the daughter of a major preacher. And when I was with Aretha, I always felt like I was with a family member.

Presenter14:00

Tell me more about your family story. Your mum, Phyllis, specifically, as you mentioned, you know, she was home schooling you when you were young. She was church choir director and worked as a seamstress. But you guys went through a very difficult time as a family. There was a ten year period of estrangement, and it was after her mother died. She

John Legend14:06

When you

Speaker 214:07

Yeah.

John Legend14:14

Yeah.

John Legend14:18

Yeah, so this same maternal grandmother I've been talking about that was so influential for me and reminded me uh of Aretha or Aretha reminded me of her.

John Legend14:28

She passed away at a very young age. She was in her late fifties. It was pretty shocking and devastating for the whole family.

Speaker 414:34

Mm.

John Legend14:35

And my mother took it particularly hard. They were so close. They worked on the choir together and spent a lot of time together. And she became depressed, and eventually.

John Legend14:46

fell out of love with my father, but also just disconnected from the family for a while. And when she left, she fell into drug abuse and

Speaker 414:52

Hmm.

John Legend14:56

And just kind of disappeared from our lives for about a decade, honestly. And um

John Legend15:03

She's doing great now. She's a great grandmother. She's a great mother. And she's healthy now. But during that decade, you know, she was gone from our lives. And this was, you know, a pretty important decade in our lives. This is basically my entire adolescence into my early adulthood. And we had to kind of figure things out. We lived with our dad.

John Legend15:26

Yeah, yeah.

Presenter15:27

For him, I mean, you know.

John Legend15:28

cook and do the chores and all the things that we needed to do to kind of make up for her absence. It's still emotional when I talk to my mother about it because she feels such regret for being

Presenter15:38

Ring

John Legend15:40

gone during that time.

Presenter15:41

John, let's uh take a break for some more music. Your fourth choice today. What is it and why have you chosen it?

John Legend15:47

This song is by Jay-Z. It's part of the American Gangster album, which is one of my favorite albums and one of Jay-Z's best albums, though I think it's underrated and undercovered. And I just feel like he was in his bag in this album. He was just fully at his best telling the stories of him as a drug dealer growing up in Brooklyn. And this particular song, Rock Boys, and the winner is... I love the horn section on this song. It just rouses you and gets you ready for whatever you're about to do. And so I use it a lot of times as my get ready for my show kind of song to get me going and feeling good and like, you know, I'm ready to take on the world.

Speaker 416:32

Mama.

Speaker 416:34

Speech, first of all wanna thank my connect The most important person with all due respect Thanks to the duffel bag, the brown paper bag The Nike shoe wipes for holding all this cash Boys in blue who agreed before the badge The first pusher who ever made the stash The rock boys in the building tonight Oh what a feeling I'm feeling life Thanks to the lanes, bad name Thanks to a little change, I tore you out the cane Bullet wounds will stop

Presenter17:03

Jay-Z and Rock Boys and the winner is. So John Ledger, despite what you were going through as a family, you excelled academically. You were offered a place at Harvard but chose to go to the University of Pennsylvania to study English. You were just 16 because when you went into the formal schooling system, having been home schooled, you were a couple of grades ahead and you maintained that lead.

John Legend17:22

You meant

Presenter17:24

How did you fit in with everybody else at college? Two years younger than them, from a different place.

John Legend17:27

Yeah.

John Legend17:29

I didn't fit in. You didn't. It took a while because I came from a small Midwestern town, which was rare. Most of the kids were either from big cities or from suburbs of big cities. And then I was materially less wealthy than most of my classmates, growing up in a working-class family with a factory worker as a dad. And then I was 16.

Presenter17:52

I mean, that two years at that age, you're laughing about it, but it's it's a l when you're that age.

John Legend17:54

Yeah, do you know?

John Legend17:56

It's a big difference.

Presenter17:57

It's a big difference.

John Legend17:58

It's a big difference, and literally, the first time I ever got on a plane was at age 16 to visit Penn's campus. So I get there, and it's a culture shock for me. But I think music was always my way of connecting with people because I knew I could sing, and I knew I could play. And if I just was able to show people.

Presenter17:59

Yeah.

John Legend18:21

What I could do there, it kind of broke the ice for every other conversation.

Presenter18:25

And that's exactly what you did. I mean, you you joined in the college a cappella group, the counterparts, and eventually became president and musical director thereof. For those of us who've seen the Pitch Perfect film series, was it a competitive environment as it is in in the movies?

John Legend18:40

Well, they hype it up in the movie, but the person who made the book that inspired the film series, Pitch Perfect, actually interviewed some of my friends that were in a cappella group with me. And so it's loosely based on the real life.

Presenter18:48

Yeah.

Presenter18:49

A group with me.

Presenter18:52

Based on, yeah.

John Legend18:55

And I was in charge after a while. The last two years in in college I led the group and arranged a lot of the vocals for the group. So again, all that arranging experience as a kid was paying off there and continued to pay off into my later life.

Presenter19:11

That idea of singing in a group, being voice among voices, is very powerful. Do you miss it? Do you miss singing in choirs?

John Legend19:15

And this

John Legend19:19

No. I like being in front.

Presenter19:24

After university, John, you spent three years with the prestigious Boston Consulting Group as a management consultant in New York. What was in your intro, I wonder?

John Legend19:33

I worked with a financial services client, uh with a big media and entertainment conglomerate. We did all kinds of different projects. The kids they take straight out of college, they kind of make them generalists and they get involved in all sorts of things.

Presenter19:49

You don't sound massively enthused by it. Were you in the middle of the morning?

John Legend19:51

It was very sexy work.

Presenter19:53

You know, the E-got's all very well, but I believe you were known as king of the XL spreadsheet back.

John Legend19:57

I don't know if I was king, but I was pretty good at it and and better than most musicians, I would reckon.

Presenter20:02

It was never going to be a long term plan for you, though, was it?

John Legend20:04

I didn't want it to be and uh it was a really good job. It offered me quite a lot of money for me at that time. I was already making more than my dad made ever as a yearly salary from the first year. But at night I would just find ways to work on music.

Presenter20:19

Let's get back to the music then, John Legend. Number five, what are we going to hear?

John Legend20:20

John

John Legend20:23

This person is basically my musical godfather and a huge influence to me, a friend, and someone who I've gotten the chance to collaborate with and spend time with. And he was even at our wedding when we got married and sang an impromptu song on the piano. It's Stevie Wonder. This is not the song he sang at our wedding, but it's one of my favorite songs, and it's a great wedding song because it's about telling someone you'll love them forever. It's called As.

Speaker 420:53

Ever round the sun, the earth no seas revolving

Speaker 420:58

The rosebuds know the bloom in early May

Speaker 421:03

Hate knows love's the cure, you can rest your mind assure That I'll be loving you always

Speaker 421:13

Cause now can't reveal the mystery up to tomorrow.

Speaker 421:17

But in passing we'll grow older every day

Presenter21:24

Stevie Wonder and as not the song, John Legend, that he played at your wedding, so what was?

John Legend21:30

He got up there and decided to sing a song impromptu and it was ribbon in the sky. That was pretty beautiful.

Presenter21:36

When it came to the wedding, I mean how much say did you have in the music that was going to be?

John Legend21:40

Well, we had a DJ. We didn't have we didn't have a live band. I was going to only sing a couple of songs on the piano at the reception, so I sang Stay With You and All of Me. Uh that was the first time I played All of Me live in front of anyone. But then Kanye goes up to Stevie Wonder and was like, Come on, Stevie, why don't you sing a song?

Presenter21:41

We didn't have a

Presenter22:01

It took you about four and a half years, I think, after graduation before you finally broke through. You sang and played on Kanye West's debut studio album, and he was working on your tracks simultaneously. You know, you'd been making music together for a little while. And that led to an explosion of interest from major labels and to your debut album, Get Lifted. That was released not long later. You also changed your name back then from John Stevens, which you'd been working under quite happily, to John Legend, which is a bold move. So tell me about choosing the surname and deciding to go for it.

John Legend22:32

So

John Legend22:36

Well, I didn't choose the surname. It kind of chose me. But one of our friends, his name was Jay Ivey, and he's a great spoken word artist from Chicago. He started calling me the legend. My voice reminded him of those classic artists that we grew up listening to. And Kanye would often use me instead of using samples from that classic era. He would just use my voice instead. And I think Jay Ivey took that and started calling me the legend because of that. And then after a while of them playing with that nickname, they were like.

John Legend23:11

Man, you you should just call yourself John Legend.

John Legend23:16

But it's also, you know, quite presumptuous as well to call yourself a legend before you even have gotten a record deal.

John Legend23:25

And so I decided, you know what? Who knows what's going to happen with my career, but I'm going into it with the faith in myself and the belief in myself.

John Legend23:34

That is going to work out and I'm going to try to live up to this name.

John Legend23:38

And so that's what I tried to do.

Presenter23:39

As well as all of your music success, you've added numerous strings to your bow in more recent years, film production. Alongside your music career, you've done acting. You played a supporting role in La La Land, played Jesus and Jesus Christ Superstar. And I mentioned your acronym, that's elusive status. Just 16 people with EGOT status, two Emmys, twelve Grammys and Oscar Ottone.

Speaker 223:58

Yes.

Presenter24:04

All on your trophy shelf, mantelpiece. I don't know where you keep so many.

John Legend24:08

I didn't

Presenter24:09

What does that mean to you?

John Legend24:11

Well, I'm grateful. All of those were very collaborative projects where, you know, we produced Jesus Christ Superstar, and I was part of that show as Jesus Christ. We won an Emmy for it. We won it with Sir Andrew Lloyd Weber and Sir Tim Rice. So that was an honor to be with them when they won their egot as well. We won it the same day the same Emmy.

Presenter24:32

Oh, wow.

Presenter24:34

It's time for your next piece of music, John Legend, number six.

John Legend24:37

This song was played at our wedding multiple times. Biz Markey was our DJ, and we just felt like this was the anthem for our wedding. It's about celebrating love and commitment to each other, and it's by one of the greatest artists on the planet, Beyoncé. And the song's called Love on Top.

Speaker 425:05

I can see you're the only one I can see.

Speaker 425:10

Come on, baby, it's you. You're the one that gets drunk all. You're the one I can always call. When I need to make everything small.

Speaker 425:19

Finally, before

Speaker 425:22

Oh

Speaker 425:23

Come on, baby, you put the love on top, top, top.

Presenter25:29

Beyoncé and love on top. John, I want to take a second just looking back at your 15-year-old self. I quoted that essay at the beginning of the programme, which I know you remember. You were John Stevens back then. You won the McDonald's Black History Makers of Tomorrow essay competition. Saying, I plan to use my social skills and my musical talents to be a positive role model for my fellow African American. I envisage a successful musical career that will allow me to obtain high visibility in the community.

Speaker 225:37

Think of the program.

Presenter25:56

This in turn will put me in a position of great influence which I will utilize in order to be an advocate for the advancement of blacks in America. Do you think you've lived up to your own teenage self expectations?

John Legend26:07

Self-awareness.

John Legend26:08

It's amazing reading that back. I hadn't read it for such a long time, and I almost forgot about it. My dad.

John Legend26:16

read it to me and brought it back up to me and we were just marveling at how much my life has taken that path. I was a kid in Ohio that hadn't even flown anywhere yet, so

Presenter26:24

Hmm.

John Legend26:29

Now I'm seeing the world. I'm just doing things that I would never have thought were possible. So, wow, what a journey it's been.

Presenter26:39

Your fans, of course, get to see glimpses of your family life on your social media feed and on Chrissy's too. But back in June twenty twenty, you shared some very different photographs, some very personal photographs. Your third child, Jack, was stillborn at twenty weeks.

Speaker 226:49

Graphs and fair

Presenter26:55

and you both decided to share black and white photos of your loss on Instagram. Now we don't often hear about these losses and this grief from a father's perspective. How did you cope? How did you get through it? And what was it like telling your story to the world in that way?

John Legend27:03

A father

John Legend27:09

Well, it was difficult and I I was hesitant to share it, but I think Chrissy was really right in encouraging us to share it because I think it really was powerful for a lot of people and way more people than anybody realizes go through this. And I think they feel alone a lot of times. They told us they felt alone a lot of times. And us sharing our experience helped people feel less alone and feel like there were other people going through it and that there was a community of people going through it. And I think

Speaker 227:26

Mm-hmm.

John Legend27:47

It was a really powerful, wise decision by Chrissy to share it because.

John Legend27:53

It helped a lot of people.

Presenter27:55

And for you, your your most recent record, your music has been an outlet for what you went through a little.

John Legend28:00

Yeah, and so some of the songs are about coping with loss, you know, and grief and when you feel broken. And um those experiences uh I was able to channel into the music.

Presenter28:15

Did you see your dads reaching out to you and telling their story? There was such a wonderful outpouring of love.

John Legend28:19

And we've you know, we've talked to dads that we've been friends with and that we know who've gone through it since, you know, and wanted to talk to someone and they knew they could talk to us about it.

Presenter28:26

You know, I wanted to talk.

John Legend28:31

It's hard, it's hard to try to comfort anyone that's going through it because there's no real comfort and you're always going to feel that loss. It kind of spreads over time so it doesn't feel as heavy over time, but you'll never forget it.

Presenter28:48

Let's have some more music, John. It's your seventh choice today. What have you gone for?

John Legend28:50

Mm-hmm.

John Legend28:53

Well, my dad used to play Nat King Cole around the house quite a lot and I would say Nat King Cole is one of my biggest vocal influences. And he was just such an interesting person in his life. He did so much. He hosted a television show when black men were not on television at all in America.

John Legend29:13

He was just a phenomenal human being and uh

John Legend29:18

My wife and I love singing this song to each other. It's called L-O-V-E.

Speaker 429:25

L is for the way you look at me, oh.

Speaker 429:32

Is for the only one I see

Speaker 429:37

V

Speaker 429:38

It's very very

Speaker 429:41

Extraordinary.

Speaker 429:44

Is even more than any one that you adore can love.

Presenter29:46

And he

Speaker 429:51

Is all that I can give to you.

Presenter29:55

Nat King Cole, spelling it out, L O V E. Well, John, I have to say the time is almost upon us. You're about to be cast away to the desert island. It's time to to think about how you'll get on there.

Speaker 430:02

You're about

Speaker 230:05

It's time to

Presenter30:08

How are your practical skills? Obviously, as a piano player, those hands are worth a fortune, but could you knock up a shelter when stranded?

John Legend30:14

Would you like to go?

John Legend30:16

I wish I had my dad. I told you he was such a good handyman. He could put anything together, and I'm the opposite.

Presenter30:18

Yeah.

John Legend30:23

I have devoted no energy to learning how to uh be a handyman.

Presenter30:28

What sort of island are you hoping for then? What do you imagine?

John Legend30:31

Uh one with uh some amenities perhaps?

Presenter30:35

Wow. Okay, this is going to be a rude awakening.

Presenter30:39

And obviously, you'll be away from all of it, from the work schedule, from your family, your fans, complete solitude. How do you feel about that idea?

John Legend30:50

I don't feel good about it. Maybe I'll write some beautiful songs. I guess I'll have plenty of time to figure it out.

Presenter30:56

And plenty of inspiration. Curtsy of your discs. One more to go before I send you away, of course. Your final choice today. What's it going to be?

John Legend31:04

This song was playing when my daughter was born, so our firstborn.

John Legend31:09

Luna Simone, named after Nina Simone. So to bookend this playlist, this is the song that was playing when she literally came out of the womb and I was in charge of DJing the soundtrack to my wife's pushing and this was the song that happened to be playing when delivery process culminated. It was Curtis Mayfield, Superfly, and in honor of my wife and all she's gone through to give us children. And my daughter, Luna Simone. Here's Superfly by one of the greatest artists of all time.

Speaker 431:56

Focus of night, with the moon shining bright There's a set going strong, lot of things going on

Speaker 432:04

The man of the awkward has an air of great power.

Speaker 432:08

The dudes have envied him for so long

Speaker 432:11

Oh, super fat.

Speaker 432:14

You're gonna make your fortune by and by

Speaker 432:18

But if you lose, don't ask no questions.

Speaker 432:22

The only game, you always do it.

Presenter32:26

Curtis Mayfield and Superfly. So, John Legend, it's time to cast you away to the island. I'm giving you the books, the Bible, and the complete works of Shakespeare to take with you. You can have another book as well, though. What would you like?

John Legend32:36

You can

John Legend32:40

Well, I decided to pick a book that I haven't finished reading yet, but I just started, and I I feel like this deserted island is going to give me time to finish it. It's a pretty thick book. It's called The Dawn of Everything, and it's by David Graeber and David Wingro. This book explores human history, and it kind of puts a new lens on human history, and says some of our assumptions about what our ancestors were like have been wrong all this time. And so I want to learn more about that. And I feel like in this time of solitude, it'd be interesting to learn more about

Presenter32:48

Uh

John Legend33:14

History and and how we came to be where we are.

Presenter33:18

You can also have a luxury item, what will that be?

John Legend33:21

I've decided I want to bring my piano. I feel like it's a quite a m uh a large, extravagant luxury item, but I mean, for obvious reasons it could be quite useful.

Presenter33:31

you'd be playing it, obviously, but obvious reasons, I mean

John Legend33:33

Yeah.

John Legend33:35

I would write songs. I yeah, I I figure I could write a lot of songs during that time.

Presenter33:36

Yeah.

Presenter33:38

It's yours. And finally, which track of the eight that you've shared with us today would you rush to save from the waves if you had to?

John Legend33:47

Ugh.

John Legend33:49

How do I decide?

John Legend33:51

I'm going to go with Nina Simone. Here comes the Sun. I need to start every morning with it, and uh it will instantly lift my mood.

Presenter34:02

John Legend, thank you very much for letting us see your desert island is. Thank you.

Presenter34:28

Hello, we've cast away many musicians to our island and there are more than 2,000 programmes in our archive that you can listen to if you search through BBC Sounds or on our own Desert Island Disc's website. You can find Louis Armstrong there, along with Paul McCartney, Keith Richards, Stephen Sondheim and Adele. The studio manager for today's programme was John Boland, the assistant producer was Christine Pavlovsky and the producer was Sarah Taylor.