John Legend discusses the taboo subjects behind his new album Bigger Love
John Legend’s new music is loaded with sexually-charged lyrics — but the US star also says it also reveals his love for his wife Chrissy Teigen and their kids.
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“And now we get to the baby-making section of the album.”
John Legend has been enthusiastically chair-dancing and lipsyncing along to the songs of his new album Bigger Love during a Zoom playback and chat from his Los Angeles home.
Most of the songs already previewed possess those particular mood-enhancing qualities.
There’s Legend’s evocative voice, which immediately conjures soul masters Marvin Gaye and Curtis Mayfield.
The songs’ arrangements recall the swelling strings and uplifting horns of the Motown sound.
Song titles including Ooh La, I Do, Wild and U Move, I Move underline the album’s sexy-time narrative.
After a few more listens it may become easier to slide them onto a date-night playlist without thinking about his muse, wife Chrissy Teigen.
“We just kept writing sexy songs early on when I started this album; they felt like they represented where my inspiration is right now,” he says.
Legend laughs when asked if writing sexually-charged lyrics – and there are a LOT on this record – gets awkward in the studio. Wild works the making-out in a car metaphor to the max, and you’re going to think very differently about your next lamb shank braise after listening to the supercharged Slow Cooker.
“Even if you’re with a co-writer you don’t have sex with, it isn’t awkward; you just try to imagine your partner, a scene in your life that makes it work for you,” he says.
The album also reflects the “bigger love” of family and the two babies Legend and Teigen have made – four-year-old Luna and two-year-old Miles.
He says the children’s favourite song is I Do because of the repetitive chorus and groove; the Legends are, well, legendary for loving a family jam and post videos of them dancing around together.
Teigen loves the album’s first single Conversations In The Dark, which she feels is a companion to the tender piano ballad All of Me which he wrote for their 2013 wedding and topped the charts worldwide.
The album closes on Never Break, written in tribute to his commitment to his bond with Teigen; the loved-up pair often share public declarations of their affections for each other, when his model, cookbook author and television personality wife isn’t serving delicious burns to her husband online.
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“When I wrote Bigger Love and Never Break, I was thinking about my own family and my commitment to our relationship and the strength of our relationship,” he says.
“But I also felt Never Break could be a song about the larger topic of the resilience of human beings.
“We need that message even more now because of the crises the world is facing.
“Back then, when I wrote it last year, I was also thinking about climate change and we need resilience to deal with that crisis, and now with COVID-19 and the (Black Lives Matter) protests, we all need to come together and not buckle under the pressure of these crises.”
Legend, whose creative endeavours also include his regular gig as a coach for The Voice in America, said he didn’t contemplate postponing the release of the album, as other artists and their labels have, because of the optics that launching new music could be considered a distraction from the big issues.
To the contrary, he believes music is a vital voice in these times to soothe a savaged soul.
“All of these songs were created prior to the world being rocked by a pandemic, prior to the latest police killings in the U.S. that sent so many to the streets in protest,” he wrote to fans.
“During these painful times, some of us may wonder if it’s OK to laugh or dance or be romantic.
“Lately, the images of black people in the media have been showing us with knees on our necks, in mourning, or expressing our collective outrage. We feel all those emotions.
“But it’s important for us to continue to show the world the fullness of what it is to be black and human. Through our art, we are able to do that. This album is a celebration of love, joy, sensuality, hope, and resilience, the things that make our culture so beautiful and influential.”
Before he emphatically launched his own artist career with the debut album Get Lifted in 2004, Legend was already a sought-after collaborator who shared his skills as a writer, musician and vocalist with Kanye West, Jay-Z, Alicia Keys and Lauryn Hill.
Since then, his name is everywhere on the credits of pop, hip hop, soul and rock hits and acclaimed albums from Stevie Wonder and Herbie Hancock to DJ Khaled and Barbra Streisand.
For Bigger Love, Legend sought an eclectic crew of respected female rappers and artists to work with including Jhene Aiko, Rapsody and Koffee, who became the youngest artist to win a Grammy this year.
He made it his mission to cross paths with Rapsody at Jay-Z’s annual Roc Nation pre-Grammys party earlier this year, keen to get her to contribute verses to his song Remember Us.
Her rap, which references his friends who have passed including basketball legend Kobe Bryant and rapper Nipsey Hussle, brings tears every time he listens to it.
“That song is so nostalgic for me. I think about Kobe and that day of the Grammys when we found out his helicopter had crashed into the hillside, how broken up we were that day, the rest of the week and still now, randomly crying at random times,” he says.
“When I listen to Rapsody talk about Kobe in the song, I feel it every time.”
Legend would love nothing more than to have a Bigger Love world tour planned but is adamant he will not perform a concert until he can guarantee his audiences will be safe from potential COVID-19 infection.
“I think every live gathering is going to be impacted until we have a vaccine,” he says.
“I know the President is trying to do a rally this weekend in an enclosed arena and hasn’t been encouraging people to wear masks. That’s dangerous and I am committed to doing what’s safe for my audience.”
Bigger Love is out now.