Why John Legend wants you to feel the Bigger Love

‘I’m under no illusion that music can save

the world or solve the world’s problems,

but I’ve always turned to music to help

me through tough times and I know

many of you have done the same.’

In March, just as COVID-19 lockdowns were imposed here and elsewhere, musicians like John Legend started mounting at-home concerts to support causes and reach out to fans all over the world.

It was during his Together At Home concert when he announced that he was releasing an album — his first of new and original materials in four years since Darkness and Light in 2016 — as “everybody’s home, you need stuff, you need music, you need TV, you need films. You need stuff to entertain you so I’m going to put some music out.”

The Emmy, Golden Globe, Oscar, and Tony (EGOT) winner couldn’t have said it any better. A couple of months later, the hit-making R&B singer released Bigger Love but not before previewing and asking for some feedback from journalists from Asia, Middle-East, Australia and Canada in a private Zoom listening session early June (arranged here by Sony Philippines).

With his California home with wife Chrissy Teigen and their two children in the background, Legend told us that he actually started working on his seventh studio album before the world found itself dealing with the pandemic, as well as the Black Lives Matter protests in the US and other countries, issues he feels strongly about. “It’s important for us to continue to show the world the fullness of what it is to be black and human,” he said in an Instagram post. And with Bigger Love, he hoped it would bring people some joy and love amid these issues and tough times we’re now all in.

Most of the 16-track album was previewed in a session that lasted nearly an hour. We found R&B-laden, pop-influenced, soulful numbers and collabs with female vocalists Jhene Aiko, Koffee and Rapsody, whom he had so much respect for, in the album executive-produced by Raphael Saadiq, the same award-winning co-producer of some of the “most critically-acclaimed” works in the last two decades: Solange’s A Seat At The Table and D’Angelo’s Voodoo.

With Legend leading the way, the press preview turned out to be a chill party, with some joined by their partners, kids, buddies, under dimmed lights and an infectiously relaxing vibe spreading across our shared screens.

Legend also had a few fun interactions with the roughly 100 journos in between songs. And when ABS-CBN TV host Robi Domingo reacted in the comments that he had finally found the perfect theme for his wedding music video in Conversations in the Dark, Legend and others teased that they’d like to be invited to the wedding.

From his California home with wife Chrissy Teigen and their children, EGOT winner Legend said he just wants to bring some love, joy and hope through his new album. Screenshots show the singer and his family during his at-home concert in March.

Conversations in the Dark also happened to be his wife’s favorite, he revealed, which shouldn’t be surprising because he already hinted as much that it’s inspired by their love story. Early this year, in a tribute to his wife whom he first met on the set of his music video 13 years ago, he recalled that he fell in love with her because she made her laugh and smile with the funniest text replies. “Our love story started with flirtation, conversation in the darks and blossomed into a marriage and two beautiful kids.”

There are more love songs in Bigger Love — from sweet, sensual jams to loyal love ditties — like Focused; Favorite Place; Slow Cooker; and U Move, I Move (he advised the husbands and wives in the listening party that the track featuring the “mesmerizing vocals” of Jhene Aiko is the music to go for plans to expand the family).

But Legend himself said that the songs in the album felt “different now, given the circumstances,” compared to when he first worked on them, and he considers it part of his responsibility to lift spirits up with his music. “This album is more focused on joy, love, hope and optimism,” he told us over Zoom.

And it’s not hard to feel the love that transcends the romantic kind — the bigger, higher or more “inclusive” kind of love, so to speak — as his new songs can hold different meanings during this time. You’ll get that in Bigger Love (featuring Koffee), a dance floor-ready tune to sway your worries away; or Actions, where he samples The Next Episode by Dr Dre and croons that “actions speak louder than love songs” (yes, preach!); or in the closing, anthemic track Never Break, where he talks about marriage but which could also be taken as a song for the times. It could work as a tribute to frontliners and a message of hope for everyone struggling yet trying to move forward, stay resilient and be there for each other so that you’re “strong enough to stay/we will never break.”

Legend said, “I’m under no illusion that music can save the world or solve the world’s problems, but I’ve always turned to music to help me through tough times and I know many of you have done the same.”