The global star reflects on his journey to success and offers advice to the artists following in his footsteps in our educational Song Start series.
Not every artist will hold a Grammy Award in their hands, earn a No. 1 hit, or watch their record go Diamond. John Legend has done all three – and then some. As part of our educational Song Start series, we sat down with the wildly accomplished singer-songwriter (also the first Black man and one of only 16 people in history to earn the coveted EGOT – an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony award) to talk about how he came up as an artist, his approach to songwriting, and how it really feels to stand atop the music industry.
Legend was raised in the Pentecostal Church, an experience that imbued his life with music “from the womb.” He first asked for piano lessons at four, and started writing his own jingles and melodies soon after. “I loved the feeling of creating something,” he explained. “I loved the feeling of singing in front of an audience and connecting with them and feeling their energy and their approval and their excitement.”
He started thinking about music more seriously in his teens, when he began to develop his skills as a songwriter and began to set goals for himself. “When I was 15, I wrote an essay for Black History Month, and the prompt was: How do you plan to make Black History?” he recalled. “I said then, at age 15, that I wanted to become a successful musician and use my success to give back to my community and speak out for more justice and make people’s lives better.”
To get there, Legend had a unique way of finding himself creatively – by treating music like a job. “My process for going from an idea to completion is almost identical every time,” he said. “A 3-5 hour process of me sitting in a room, coming up with a musical motif and a lyrical theme and a hook, and then building a song around that.”
He developed this working cadence over the years, noting that while it doesn’t always produce something amazing, it forces him to keep drawing from a well of creativity. “Those songs are the magical ones, the ones that stand out, but I feel like I have to keep writing the okay ones, the fine ones, the good ones, so that I can get to those amazing ones,” he continued.
He views 2004’s “Ordinary People” as one such song. The track, originally written for the Black Eyed Peas, proved to be a breakout moment for him after first gaining buzz thanks to his early work with Kanye West. The song peaked at No. 24 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and eventually went Gold. While Legend would eventually surpass these figures, “Ordinary People” was a pivotal moment in his career.
“It sounded so different than anything else that was on the radio because it was a straight, stripped-down piano ballad and me singing about love and real life,” he said. “That really just launched my career. That was the reason I won Best New Artist [at the Grammys]. That was the reason Get Lifted was R&B Album of the Year.”
Little did Legend know, he would go on to write songs that would resonate across the globe. 2013’s “All of Me,” written for his wife Chrissy Teigan, topped the Hot 100 chart and would go on to sell more than ten million copies. To Legend, it all made sense.
“Another piano ballad variation on how we think about love and how we think about our partner, and it was inspired of course by my then-future wife,” he said. “That became one of the biggest songs in history and elevated my career to a place that it had never been before. I got my first No. 1 song on the Hot 100 and it was a song that just became a global standard.”
Along the way, Legend has watched the industry change dramatically. In the early years of his career, he was pushing CDs and chasing label deals and radio play.
“[Now] there’s so many ways to independently release your music, there’s such an instant global market because of streaming,” he said. “You have all this music available, you have all this access as a new artist to the world to listen to your music, but people are competing for the share of people’s ears and the share of people’s time. How do you cut through that? I think as artists, the most important thing for us to focus on is still creating that content that will make us stand out, that will make people pay attention.”
He’s strived to keep his writing fresh and exciting in part by collaborating with others. “I think that’s part of how I fight writer’s block,” he mused. “Just by bringing in new energy and bringing in new people. Alone, we wouldn’t have come up with the things that we’ve come up with, but together, the chemistry, the energy in the room creates something special and new.”
Legend has also used his global platform to enact change, starting his Free America initiative to push for criminal justice reform. It’s an issue that’s close to his heart, and one that his position as an artist has afforded him the ability to make a difference.
In his nearly two-decade career, one thing he hasn’t lost is his passion. “I love it, and I don’t feel like I’m competing with any other artist. I feel like I’m competing with a standard that I set for myself that I’m trying to be the best artist I can be,” he said. “Hopefully I’ll continue to have that drive for the rest of my life.”
He encouraged artists, no matter what stage of their careers, to guard this sense of wonder and creativity. “The wild thing about songwriting is that in every single session, you could be writing that song. You could be writing the tone that changes everything for you,” he said. “Some days you’ll write things you won’t put out and then other days you’ll write ‘All of Me.’ You never know, you just have to keep trying. I believe there are infinite numbers of songs out there to be written. There’s always another story to tell.”
To learn more about John Legend’s journey and his advice for other artists, watch his Song Start episode below: