Top 233 Quotes & Sayings by John Legend
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American musician John Legend.
Last updated on November 22, 2024.
Musicians are in-season all the time.
In America we have big issues with education - in impoverished communities especially. I work with Teach For All, and so we're encouraging more people to get into teaching.
I was homeschooled for several years.
There are autobiographical elements to the albums, and when I write, I always reference my own life as well as other things, so I'm just like any novelist or any fiction writer who tells stories.
Well, I was always a bit of a political junkie. Even as a kid I would read biographies of presidents and of civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King and Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington.
My style is pretty clean, classic, and elegant, with some elements to make it a little funkier. If you see me on a normal day, I'm usually in a T-shirt and jeans, maybe with some cool sneakers, but I'm pretty basic.
In New York especially, I always want to wear a nice overcoat to get through the winter: you can wear them so many times, and they make every outfit better.
To have the chance to see your music be elevated and to have almost universally positive response to that music, makes me feel better every day. I feel more confident and inspired, and that's fun.
I think I'm happier, not just because of winning Grammys and selling records, but because it's really fulfilling to have all these things happen with something you love to do.
I always saw myself as a singer-songwriter, a solo-artist, that's why working with other artists was never satisfying for me.
Well, I like songs that have like a little bit of quirkiness to them.
I am a feminist. Women are discriminated against in so many ways, and they make up half the population.
I want to move people.
Some people start with the lyrics first because they know what they want to talk about and they just write a whole bunch of lyrical ideas, but for me the music tells me what to talk about.
Marvin Gaye was one of the coolest. I look to him as a style icon and as an artist.
The prison-industrial complex, poverty, and the school system has more effect on a young black male in America than Jay-Z does, by far. And that's not a diss to Jay-Z. The crime rate in the black community was high before hip hop. Rapping about it is just a reflection of the life a lot of people are living.
I think writers are prone to hyperbole sometimes.
Now that I'm coming out with my own record people can see I'm a solo artist.
As a nation - and as a world - we need more truth.
I don't feel like that many musicians are competitive with each other.
I listen to all those kinds of music, from classic soul to hip-hop to Brazilian music to, you know, jazz to indie to alternative. So whatever. I listen to all if it. Classic rock and classic pop, all of that.
Well, what's interesting, I try not to think about the radio when I'm writing a song. I want people to love the song, and that means it might not be exactly thinking about the radio, but it's thinking about your audience and saying, 'I want people to like this song after it's done.'
I sang 'All Of Me' at the wedding. I sang 'Stay With You' from my first album. And then Stevie Wonder came up and sang 'Ribbon In the Sky.' It was impromptu... It was cool... He's always been a friend and a mentor to me.
In the 1970s, for all the Stevie Wonders, I'm sure there were five artists that were making forgettable music.
I think the thing about love is that even though the things around us change, we as human beings, a lot of the ways we interact, and the ways we love each other is timeless. It requires trust, honesty, commitment, romance, and physical chemistry.
Soul is about authenticity. Soul is about finding the things in your life that are real and pure.
Sometimes there's that perfect moment when the crowd, the music, the energy of the room come together in a way that brings me to tears.
The best training is to play by ear: trial by fire.
I think they need to get a more reliable way of watching television on the laptop. Because I travel so much, if I want to watch my favorite sports team it might not be showing in that place, so I want a reliable way to watch whatever I want to watch on my laptop.
There's a certain confidence that comes with being sure about the way the world works.
When we see people that are impoverished and people who are dealt an unfair hand, then if we have the power to help them, we should try to do that.
It's really about making the best music you can make. It's really about working hard.
I played classical as a kid.
I'm trying to be me and embrace all the parts of me that have grown up, listened to more music and soaked up more influences.
I think every film is made better by having smart music supervision that's really in tune with the spirit of the visual content.
I don't like going to football games. I like watching them on television. When you go to a game, it's hard to focus. There's so much going on, and it's cold. I'd rather sit and watch it and get replays and commentary.
Shoes are important, of course. I love my Lanvin sneakers - they go with a lot of things. And then I think a nice bag is great, so you carry your computer or whatever else in style. I've been carrying a Tom Ford backpack lately.
My fried chicken is very simple. I pan-fry it in a skillet.
We should care about what is going on in the world.
My first big break came with Lauryn Hill on a track called Everything is Everything, I played piano on that track way back in 1998.
London is a good fashion city. They're a little more daring. There's the element of the aristocracy, which is always interesting.
I'm craving more soul, I'm craving more truth, I'm craving more socially - just people that are aware of what's going on in the world.
I don't get to listen to music for fun very often; a lot of what I'm hearing is for work and isn't released yet.
There's nothing that can shock me anymore, but at this point, Trump's made it very clear how his temperament is, how his personality is, what his level of intellectual depth is when it comes to policy, and he's made it abundantly clear that he's utterly unqualified to be president - no matter what your political views are.
Before every show, I eat half a rotisserie chicken.
I used to work for a management consulting company, so I dressed differently - business casual, probably a lot of things from Banana Republic. My wardrobe now is definitely more expensive, but I always dress for the occasion.
We weren't allowed to have secular music in the house growing up. I was home-schooled, and gospel was the only choice we had.
John legend is a nickname that somebody started calling me a while ago and part of it is 'cos I sound like an old man when I sing.
My first album, 'Get Lifted,' was a hip-hop soul album that had some of its roots in the church, as far as the sonic choices, in the way that I sing and write songs. I have always had that as part of my background and part of my influence when I am making music.
I was a wedding singer as a teenager.
Anybody under the age of forty knows hip-hop, gospel and R&B pretty well, and it's all a part of what we consider to be 'black music.' There is a natural synergy between the three.
I was always the front man for what I was doing from when I was 6.
Well, Jeff Buckley for me is one of the greatest singers I've ever heard. And the reason why is he has an amazing range, amazing emotional power in his voice. And the music he put around it also just had this passion and this soul to it and this spirit to it that very few artists have, and he passed at a very young age.
As a young black boy, it made me proud to see black leaders that did something amazing and made the world change.
I was a busy kid in high school - a little bit of an overachiever, I guess. Prom king was kind of silly, but the rest of the stuff was important to me.
Experience is a great teacher.
I like cool jackets - a nice fall or winter coat. You can get a lot of use out of it, and you'll wear it frequently, so it can really set the tone of your uniform for the season.
I'm honestly not a great gift giver. I could give better - my girlfriends have always complained about that.
I love to make fried chicken.
At work, you want to stand out but not in extra-funky ways. At the core, it's about dressing for girls - who are most of my fans - and you want to dress up for them. You just want to feel like you're on top of your game.
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