John Legend

I'm a vocal coach to some pretty famous singers and on this show, I'll talk to them about their lives, their craft and what it takes to make it really big. So we met backstage in the green room of one of Arianna Grande's concerts in La and I love meeting people who I think are talented and accomplished self. Of course, I was really excited to meet you. I was calmer than I would have been, only because it all happened

so fast. I didn't have time to go, oh my god, I'm meeting John Lynchend and the amazing Aaron Rosenberg, our lawyer mutual friend introduced us. And you were so easy to talk to, so I was thrilled when you actually called lessons. Well, I was so impressed with Ariana's show, and I had been thinking about as I was finishing my bigger love album and thinking about touring and what

we were going to do for the next album. I hadn't been coached vocally for quite a while, and I thought it was time to brush up on my skills and get better at preserving my voice, placing things correctly in my voice, and just thinking about longevity for it. Right. Well, you just answered my question because I was going to say a lot of people would say, why in the world would he go to a coach at this stage of the game. Well, I had very little coaching in

my life, to be clear. So I grew up singing in church and everything was kind of self taught in so many ways, and you just went out there and did it. And I thought I was really good at singing, but I wasn't singing in a way that was healthy, and it wasn't built for the long haul the way I was singing back then. And so I did take some lessons in New York early on in my career because I was getting beat up. I was trying to do everything to get seen and heard, and my voice

just could not handle it. So I started getting some coaching in New York, but it was kind of in an emergency situation, like, Oh, I need to do this right now because I'm beating up my voice right now. And every other time I had done coaching since then had still been in kind of like, oh, things are going badly or I need some emergency help. And so for the first time with you, I wanted to do it ahead of time, before the tour so that I could start doing better practices and have more longevity and

just be more healthy on tour. Yeah. I think if people have not ever done any voice lessons, they don't realize the value in the warming up process. Absolutely, you just learned so much. And I was just not breathing correctly. I was not projecting correctly, and it sounded fine, but it wasn't healthy in a way that would be sustainable. Right well, now it's gonna be yes. John's world famous for his songs all of Me, Love Me, Now, Ordinary People, and many more. Do you sit down at the piano

when you're writing a song? Is to always begin at the piano? Not every song. All of Me began at the piano. But ordinary people another piano ballot did not begin at the piano. It started with will I am playing me a beat that he had made, and the beat had an instrumental with the same chord progression as ordinary people ended up having, and so I started singing

to the chord progression. So either way, I'm usually singing to a chord progression, whether I'm playing it myself on the piano or I'm playing with a guitarist, maybe sitting down with the guitarist. I don't play guitar, but I work with the songwriters who do, and so sometimes they'll start strumming some chords that'll inspire me to sing a melody. I'm usually more of the top line guy, as we call it in our business. So the top line is

the vocal melody and the lyric. So with ordinary people women molodin mad, I start mumbling, we' been, momlin baton bone, we' been though, So I start scatting melodies, and those melodies containing them rhythms, and they contain kind of a cadence for what the lyric might sound like, but they don't make any sense, and so eventually I go from that mumble track to a lyric. Once I figure out what story I want to tell, how I want to approach

the story. That melody in your voice goes so perfectly together. Maybe it's just because I know it so well, but really it's so beautiful and thank you so perfect. So has there ever been a piano riff that you came up with that ended up then going into a song because you know, I like this drip, I'm gonna wow

so with all of me. It's interesting because we started out with the pattern being like this on the intro, but we ended up deciding that it would sound better starting clean and a little straighter and less busy, and we ended up going with why would I do without your smarting Mountain? And it felt better and then it felt like it drove the song in the right way. And then we finally went to their appeggio for the chorus, Who's all of Me loves all of you, love y'all

curves and all your edges. You know, Yeah, when that opens up into that car, it's just amazing. So that's with a friend of mine, Toby gad You, and partly getting in his studio house studio and sitting on the piano and trying to figure it out. And it's funny. My manager said, you should write a song to Chrissy that's kind of like She's always a woman, the classic Billy Joel song. And this was my take on that prompt. Amazing.

How cool that that one suggestion to write a song about your wife created such an iconic song now, I know partly because Toby's told me that song has a lot of distinctions and awards, right, Oh, I mean, it's one of the biggest songs in the history of music. Tell us the statistics. I think there's only a few songs in the world that have gone thirteen times platinum,

and it's one of them. And that's huge and of course the biggest song in my career, but it would be the biggest song for anybody because they're pretty much and it was my first number one. I didn't know that first and only so far. Well, we've still got plenty of time. It's such a beautiful, beautiful song. Thank you. And let's not forget John has a ton of awards already. I mean he's an egot, which means he has an Emmy and oscar a Tony and twelve Grammys, but no

big surprise. I mean, he has incredible talent, an amazing work ethic, and he's always juggling a million things. I know more than anybody else. How busy you are. Every single time we do a lesson, you are on your way to something. Yeah, I stay pretty busy. I stay booked like constantly. So obviously your piano skills have been a huge part of your career, right, it goes with your singing and your songwriting. Sure, so tell me a little bit about your training. Well, my training I started

very young. We had a piano in our home, and then I was at church all the time. My grandmother was the church organist, my mother was the choir director, my father played the drums for the choir and sang with the choir, and then my grandfather was the pastor. So I would be at church all the time. We were there for Sunday morning service, Sunday evening service, Bible study, choir, rehearsal, prayer meeting, revival service. Whenever there was something at the church.

Our family was running the service and doing something. And so I just grew up around a bunch of people who made music all the time, and most of it was gospel music. But also I started taking piano lessons, I learned the basics of music theory, and parallel, I

was learning gospel music from my grandmother. And in the Menecostal church you do still use the hymno and read some but a lot of it is by ear, and you could be playing in any key and someone could randomly start a song, and so you'd have to have some improvisational skills and the ability to just pick up what's going on, hear it and start playing along. And so I really learned how to do that in the church,

and my grandmother was my main mentor and teacher for that. Wow. Well, you know that explains a lot about why you are so comfortable and so good and to be able to change the keys. Yeah, I'm better at some keys than others. But yeah, we had to be flexible and dynamic, and the services could take many directions, and so we had to be able to roll with it, and so I developed a lot of my musical skills in that space. Do you remember any of the first hymns that you

played all those years ago? Oh? Sure, well, of course, the classic Beautiful. That was beautiful, That was great, and it had its own John legend and the church and there had a little bit of everything. And that makes sense because, like John said, he was raised with gospel

music and his grandmother. One time she wasn't going to be able to be at service, and the woman that was her backup wasn't going to be able to be there, and she taught me a couple of songs that I had to learn for that specific service for the choir. And that was the first time I ever was just thrust out there in front of the whole church and asked to play when it really mattered, and that was pretty cool. Were you nervous, yes, but you did a good job. I did, okay. Did you get a lot

of praise? Yes? And I was young, so I think they would have been happy with whatever I did. I was like, ey, well, because you know, it's my observation that people who have done really well successful in their life seem to always have a moment or an incident in their life where they're praised when they're pretty young. Oh yeah, and that sort of becomes the engine for

their whole life. I think that's a big part of why you start to develop a love for performing, because you get all this affirmation and when people tell you they love it and they cheer for you and they support you, and they make you feel like you did something great, it makes you, you know, want more of that. I definitely think that's a big part of why I enjoy performing. It isn't just for the art of creating

the song. It's for that feeling of joy I get when I bring other people joy and they give it back to me. Right, So, would you say that church moment was probably more inspiring to than even the piano recital, Like, yeah, it's more fuel And when you did it at church, it felt like you were doing it for people whose judgment you trusted and you wanted to impress them. And so whenever I would get affirmation in that setting, it

felt special. Music is so important to our services that when you do it right and you feel like you did it right and the audience affirms that, it feels like you wont you want a battle there? Wow? I've never heard anybody say it like that. So if the church was clearly your biggest influence when you were young, who were your influences as you got older? Well, Stevie wonder,

I mean it's almost too obvious, but growing up. He was such an iconic R and B singer songwriter who had written such beautiful songs of every type, you know, whether it was you know, classic ballads or beautiful up tempo songs like you know, Superstition, or just the full range. One of the great solo artists of all time, and

in my estimation, possibly the greatest. Prince is right up there, and there's a few others, but there's very few solo artists that have had the longevity and the awesomeness that Stevie's had over his career. And as a singer songwriter of you know, the same genre and with a lot of the same influences, he's been such a big influence to me. I also was very influenced by Nat King Cole. I I love that crooning, that phrasing, that style that

he brought to the songs that he performed. And I've been listening to him since I was a teenager, and you know, even when that wasn't really in vogue for someone my age to like him. I was more of an old soul and I loved that style and you can hear that influence in John songs. This is Nat King Cole singing unforgettable, that's what you you are, and you hear some of his phrasing in the way I will phrase certain things, especially with this one, the Christmas

song ches nice roasting on an open fire. But even in pop music and R and B music that I make mainly for a living, I'll still incorporate some of that phrasing into genres that you wouldn't associate it with as much. So he was an influence. Marvin Gay is a big influence for me, both as a vocalist, as a creative and trying to find ways to speak to the moment that we all live in. He's just iconic

to me as a as a soul singer. A good example is Marvin Gay's What's going on and pick it sidish with rough touch, and then you can hear the inspiration with John song Glory. When the war is wa we will be Shane. We will be Shane who. I like him as a singer better than I like Stevie. I think Stevie had a more robust and prolific career over a longer period of time, of course, but as a vocalist I like Marvin a little more. And then another vocalist I love is Nina Simone. I love her tone,

her expressiveness, her creativity as a pianist. She's just like stunning. I mean, just listen to the piano and Nina Simones I put a spell on you. I put a smell on you cause your man and your daughter is named Yes. And my daughter's named Luna Simone, and I named her with Nina in mind. And then Aretha Franklin is a big influence to me. My grandmother actually, her playing style reminded me of Aretha's playing style. They both grew up

in the Midwest. My grandmother was from both Michigan and Ohio. She grew up as a daughter of a preacher, a pastor, just like Aretha did, and stylistically they had a lot in common. So you will hear some of the flourishes that I would do that are reminiscent of my grandmother, but also similar to some things that Aretha would do

on the piano because of that similar background. Can you give an example of what I mean, Even the way I played Amazing Grace in some ways that was like reminiscent of that, but just kind of that kind of thing. It's kind of like a little honky tonk, a little gospel, but it's got kind of that old school flavor to it. Listen to Aretha Singer version of Amazing Grace, Amazing Grace, the the Shine, and I still carry a lot of that with me in the way that I played the piano.

What about because we've talked about falsetto that the difference

between Marvin Gaye's falsetto Curtis Mayfield. Yes, can you talk a little bit about that, because I found that really interesting you listened so closely that one has a little more vibrato, Yes, like Curtiss is a little thinner and more vibrato, so talking or something with the moon shining by name bound, you know, it's like it's a little softer and a little more gentle like when Curtis Mayfield sings super Fly, And then I think Marvin could wail

a little more with his falsetto. Oh it's rounder yea yeah, yeah, you know that kind of vibe. You can hear it when Marvin gay sings Gotta Give It Up. And then some of the other great falsetto singers. I think Prince is obviously one of them, and his is a little like more funky. He would do a little more cry in his voice and like a little more like shriek, and it's a little more like dangerous sounding. I just

won't you. Oh it's the time, yo. I think Marvin Gay kind of that was one of the first singers I think where I used that expression, telling you that yawn sensation. And Nina, yes, yeah, you know, Nina Simone had that as well. And Smokey was more like Curtis. I think Smokey Robinson more kind of whispery, a ready sound, a little thinner, kind of a gentle vibrato baby. So those are some of the icons I think of singing in falsetto. And I gotta say, as obvious as it is,

it needs to be said with that falsetto. John is on that list too. When we come back, he and I will talk about our voice lessons together and his work on the voice as a vocal coach. All right here on backstage Pass with Eric Vitro, and now more of my conversation with John Legend here on backstage Pass with Eric Vietrow. So let me ask you this. Since we've been working together, have there been any surprises? Are

there things that maybe you didn't expect to learn. Durner Voice Lessons, Well, I was doing things a little bit wrong the whole time, you know, going into our learning. And I won't blame it on past teachers, because I think I just forgot a lot of what they taught me. But I feel like I'm singing with better technique than I ever did. I've spent more time and energy and

during downtime. I think it's important because when I was doing it, like in the middle of a tour, when I'm already stressed and tired, like that wasn't the right time to do it. The fact that I've been doing it during times when I haven't been stressed and the pressure hasn't been high, I think it made me really focus on it more and learn more from it and be able to work it into my performance is better for people listening. Do you have any rituals before the shows?

I mean, obviously now the warm up, the vocal warm up. Else, I drink a lot of water and tea and try to steam up or humidify or whatever we can do. And then I like to have a little food right before my show too. I don't know if that's advised by the Eric Vitro school of But I like to have like hot food because it makes me feel like less dry. Huh. I would say, just as long as you're not over eating to your stuff, do you don't want to be stuff, because then you can be tired.

I like to eat like a little roasted chicken, like a little something with a little uh perfect, a little a little grease, but not too much, and like it just kind of warms me up. Yeah, no, that's perfect. Roasted chicken, roasted vegetables. Yes, I do that. Yeah, things like that I think are really helpful. It helps me feel a little warmer. And also not to get too graphic, but when you have a little food in your stomach,

you do not to keep running to the bathroom. Yeah, exactly, Yeah that no, I mean that is a huge key for people. You're drinking all this water and if you don't have any food to absorb it, it's like, oh I gotta go yep every twenty minutes. Yeah, And I know people say, oh my got it ruined my show because that's all I thought about. Yeah, you know, do you think is there anything you would say? The word sacrifice is too strong? But you know, sacrifice things that

you've done to take care of your voice or your hands. Well, part of it's not talking a lot during the tour, and it's frustrating to everybody around you, your significant other, your kids. I just talk way less and try to preserve the health of my voice. I don't drink when I'm on tour alcohol. I try to manage my asset reflux, all those things that could get in the way of you putting on a great performance. So you know, I'm

I'm much more strict with myself. Yeah, I would say that this tour you probably can talk a little bit more than maybe you have in the past, as long as you keep the placement upfront, right, we've talked about and even more up your speaking voice in the morning if you have to do an interview, right, so you're ready. You start supporting your speaking voice, just like you're supporting

your singing voice. Right. So if you do those things during the day when you do talk, what will happen is you'll start feeling like you're actually warming up your singing voice. What if I don't want to talk, well, then let me rephrase that. You know what, John, If I were you, if your wife is listening, you should not be talking at all silent. I'm kidding. I love working with John and our Voice lessons, but I also love watching him on the singing competition show The Voice,

where he's a vocal coach himself. Have our lessons influence in anyway? Yeah? Absolutely. I can hear what people are doing wrong and try to give them better advice to help them do better. And frankly, I'm around some of your students as well, including Ariana Grande and my guest mentor on this season is Camila Cabello, who's another student of yours, and I hear your advice through them too. Your influential my friend. Oh John, thank you for saying that. Wow,

that means so much to me. I really appreciate that coming from you. But let me ask you something. Did you ever want to be on a show like The Voice when you were young? When I was seven eight, I would watch Star Search from Hollywood be entertainment capital of the world. I would watch the Grammys and see artists on television doing what I wanted to do, and I envisioned it for myself. I even submitted a Star

Search audition tape when I was like fourteen fifteen. I really wanted to be discovered in any way that I could figure out how they didn't take, And they didn't take, Oh well, I bet they're suffering now. I won the Local Like competition. It was at our new mall. They thought one of their promotions could be to have like a local star search. I won the Low Cool competition.

It got me five hundred dollars worth of a gift certificate to the mall, and so I bought like back to school clothes there and the tape from that performance was submitted to the national television show and I didn't make it. Oh well, it's worked out. I'm doing just fine. But you know, I know what it's like to be that young artist like waiting for that break, and you want to find it wherever you can get it. And talent shows may not be the best path for everyone,

but it's a path. And I love working with artists that come my way on the voice. That's why you're so empathetic to them. Then, absolutely, and I think most of the coaches are. We all know what it's like to have this kind of dream, and we know how fortunate we feel to be able to do what we love to do for a living and do it on such a big stage, and also be able to use what we've learned to help somebody else. What's the most

rewarding part of the coaching experience for you? It's firing working with these young artists one seeing their excitement to thinking about their career as not them. You know, it helps me kind of stand back and look at my own career because we have to pick songs for them. So it's an A and R function to an extent. A and R stands for artists in repertoire. It's the division of a record label that does talent scouting and

signs artists. And once an artist is signed, an A and R REP will guide the artist's career, helping to pick which songs would be best to make it onto their albums. And we think about what's going to be the most effective vehicle for their voice. And so when I think about the songs that are pitched to me, you know, because I write a lot of my songs, most of my songs or co write them, but sometimes

I take songs that are outside songs. Sometimes I'll take them and rewrite them, but still they originated somewhere else. And so I think I have a better A and R ear than I had before because I'm in the business of helping these artists pick the best songs for them to perform in these high pressure moments. Right wow, I was going to ask you what you would learn from these kids, but that's partly right there too. That's

a big one. And then if you think about what makes artists go from good voices, good singers to compelling artists, you also see what works and what doesn't work, you know, because there are plenty people that can sing, But how do you stand out? How do you make yourself interesting and make yourself connect with people, both as a writer, as a creative, but also as someone who knows how to touch the zeitgeist and figure out what people want to hear and how they want to hear it, and

how to get that to them. Do you have a piece of advice that some other artists when you were just coming up gave you. That was great advice, Quincy Jones said, still from the best, which means that there's nothing new under the sun. We've heard all these other songs.

There's only so many notes on the piano. There's twelve in my time, and only so many chord patterns, And so when you're creating something, you do want it to sound fresh and new, but you're always going to be relying on things that already existed, and there's going to

be things that are familiar about them. And it's okay to have influences that when you begin your career copy you know you're going to learn from these people, learn from their music, and then hopefully develop something new that's a unique combination of all those experiences and influences that you have. Right right well, Quincy Jones, I would take anything he had to say, absolutely. I love Quincy Jones. If you had just one piece of advice to give

these kids, what would that be. I think the biggest thing is to know who you are and who you want to be to the world, and why what you're offering is urgent to the world. Because being a good singer is not urgent. You need to have something else that you're offering to the world that's urgent. I think you could hear it in both John's words and his voice. He's articulate and smart and talented, but he's also really humble and really grounded and that's what makes him such

a pleasure to be around and to work with. And I think what he said about needing to know who you are and who you want to be in the world is great advice. That's something that we all have to work on, especially an artist. His advice was perfect, know who you are and who you want to be. Don't go anywhere backstage. Pass will be right back with the vocal tip of the week and even more from John Legend. Stay tuned, and now it's time for this week's vocal tip. I think that almost all vocal exercises

can be beneficial as long as they're done correctly. The same exercise can help your voice or hurt your voice, depending on the way you sing it. The number one thing to remember is that all vocal exercises should always feel comfortable. I can't stress that enough. They should never feel tight or strained or constricted in your throat. You heard me and John Legend warming up with this melody. It's a great melody to create a nice flow, But the real magic comes in when you start moving your

body and ways to free it from any tension. Try rolling your shoulders all the way around when practicing to keep them relaxed or moving your arms around freely. There is no right or wrong way of doing it. Just keep them loose. Try wiggling your entire body around as you sing. Also, try lifting your arms in the air and then dropping them as you sing your highest note on an exercise or on a song. Do this with

a sigh ah, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Right there, drop your arms on the high note, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa whoa, like you're sighing, like you're just letting go. That will help you develop a muscle memory of letting go when you sing the high notes. Try all of these moves when singing your favorite vocal exercises. Now, you also heard John and I warming up his falsetto. He obviously has mastered that part of his range and uses

it all the time in his music. I always have my students practice singing in that voice during every session. Even if you don't use it now, I just know there's going to be a time when the only way you can get that special or unique sound or vibe is singing in your falsetto voice. If that range is difficult for you, try doing some short slides up and down in that range. For example, for me, it would be here, who try it on he or who ho ha or hay, and see which vowel feels the easiest

and start with that one. I'm using the h before each vowel to get the air flowing forward. Little by little, start stretching higher and then lower each time. Do this every single day. Once you're comfortable doing the slides, it's time for you to start doing some falsetto exercises on actual notes. This is a really simple pattern you could do.

It's just three notes up and down, starting the easiest part of your range, and then go up by half steps for example, and then when you feel you've gone as high as you can without straining, start going back down in half steps. Go as low as you can comfortably, and then stop. Little by little you're gonna stretch a little higher and a little bit lower and really increase

that range. If you want to share your falsetto, I'd love to hear you, Or if you come up with some of your own moves to loosen up your body, you can share them too. Use the hashtag backstage pass pod on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok or wherever you like to post. I can't wait to see what you come up with.

Maybe baby, maybe baby, maybe maybe maybe may. Backstage Pass with Eric Vitro is written and hosted by me Eric Vitro and produced by Morgan Jaffee, Katherine Giardo as our show runner, Emily Rosstek as our associate producer, Mixed and mastered by Ben Tolliday. Additional engineering help from Jacob Gorski, Mia LaBelle as our executive producer. Our development team Leetal

Mullad and Justine Lane helped create the show. Thanks also to Jacob Weisberg, Heather Faine, John Schnars, Carli Migliori, Christina Sullivan, Eric Sandler, Maggie Taylor, Nicole Morano, Daniello Lucan and Royston Bazzer. Original theme music by Jacob and Sita Steele for Premier Music Group. We record at Resonate Studios. Fred Talackson does our videography and the photography is by Ken Sawyer. Special thanks to Michael Lewis for his inspiration, his friendship, and

the best guidance anyone could ask for. Backstage Passed with Eric Vitro as a production of Pushkin Industries, If you like the show, please remember to share, rate, and review. I mean that really. If you love this show and others from Pushkin Industries, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content and uninterrupted listening for four ninety nine a month. Look for

Pushkin Plus on Apple podcast subscriptions. To find more Pushkin podcast listen to the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts, and now for your listening pleasure, The One, the Only mister John Legend all right, could I get a cocktail that was so relaxing