![]() ''Right by You (for Luna)'' is addressed to Legend's daughter it's a ballad, not a lullaby, posing unanswered questions and veering into dissonance. Through most of the album, romance has as much to do with conflict and obsession as with comfort. It starts out with allusions to Black Lives Matter and taking pride in upward mobility but ends up, after an appearance by Chance the Rapper, with the singer settling into hedonism, enjoying ''my favorite mix, a little ignorance and bliss / In the penthouse, baby.'' So is the song that closes the album, ''Marching Into the Dark,'' which moves from guitar-plunking gospel roots into a surreal modern production and ponders individual sacrifice and the course of history.īut for the rest of the album, Legend quickly pivots back to love and pleasure with the rhetorically awkward yet undeniably catchy ''Penthouse Floor,'' which has a touch of Stevie Wonder in its dance beat. It's a connection to the socially conscious side Legend showed on ''Wake Up!,'' his 2010 album with the Roots, and in ''Glory,'' his Oscar-winning song for ''Selma'' with rapper Common. ![]() The album begins with a manifesto: ''I Know Better,'' a gospel-type hymn that has Legend, 37, declaring, ''Some folks do what they're told / But, baby, this time I won't'' and adding, ''My history has brought me to this place / There's power in the color of my face.'' ''Love Me Now,'' already a hit, is a seize-the-moment song with an overt sense of doom about the relationship: ''I know it'll kill me when it's over.'' Its track revolves around an insistent, lo-fi piano figure, and its chorus first arrives with Legend nearly alone, singing over simple, fading chords: pop with all of its misgivings built in. Drum tones are often woody and hollow keyboards and strings open up hazy spaces, sometimes without a beat. ![]() With a producer and co-writer from outside the usual precincts of pop and hip-hop - guitarist Blake Mills, who has worked with Alabama Shakes and Fiona Apple - Legend's music turns less glossy: earthier and often spookier. In his new songs, love can be a counterattack on mortality, a dangerous compulsion, a realm of sweaty adventures, a legacy from father to daughter, an escape from social media and a bulwark against forces of divisiveness. ![]() Without it, the love songs that regularly place him in the Top 10 - megahits such as ''All of Me'' from 2013 - are worthy and lucrative enterprises that can leave an unctuous, saccharine aftertaste.īut ''Darkness and Light,'' his fifth studio album, treats love as something far more complex than a panacea and a fount of perpetual reassurance, with music to match. A little darkness serves John Legend well. ![]()
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