john legend’s new record dropped last week. i didn’t go out and buy it.
i’d heard a couple of tracks back in july and it was a bit… well, *pftut* i guess. the album’s produced by jack splash but i was left feeling that legend had more than exhausted his soulsleaze credentials and celeb mates production capabilities on get lifted.
so when stereogum posted a quote from legend’s rolling stone press junket interview last week, where he cites jeff buckley as one of the only singers he’s ever felt intimitated by (erm, john. dude. the word humble mean anything to you? no? apparently not) and then posted this track which legend himself calls a ‘homage’, well I took another listen.
the attention to detail soggy production of reverby guitar is uncanny Grace fodder, almost to the point of parody… and that’s before the vocal drifts in. initially, its precious verlaine channelling swimmy heroin production forces such inavoidable comparisons that i couldn’t but help think about buckley jr and really what an amazing talent he was but to tha lege’s (as i’m sure he loves to be called) credit there’s something in the melody which pulled me back in and made me listen another time.
and then another.
and then i’d listened to it maybe 7 times in an afternoon. (all this despite the fact the chorus bears a striking similarity to smoke on the water…)
but i’m still left thinking that jeff buckley was an incomparible talent and that the song writing and production on Grace really does justify its inevitable inclusion in those best ever albums lists. still, despite john legend’s startling lack of humbleness even in the context of this urban hymn (man, at least he’s got unwaivering self belief licked, huh?) its actually a pretty interesting and relatively ballsy joint to drop on your softmore release.