John Legend: Addressing the Internet Rumors [VIDEO]
2023-03-22 00:44:20
The most-listened to podcast by women. Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy has been creating conversation since 2018. Cooper cuts through the BS with topics and guests - asking the burning questions you want the answers to. There will be laughter, there will be tears. There will be everything in between. New episodes drop on Wednesday and Sunday. Want more? Join the Daddy Gang @callherdaddy
What is up Daddy Gang? It is your founding father, Alex Cooper, with Call her Daddy.
John Legend, welcome to call her daddy.
It's great to be here.
I'm so happy to have you here. First of all, congrats on becoming a new dad again just a few weeks ago.
Thank you, thank you. Number three is here.
Oh my God, Estie, how are you doing?
We're good, you're good. Yeah, we're good. I mean, I didn't actually have to carry the child, so it's a little easier for me, easy for me to say we're good.
But Chrissy's doing pretty well, it's a recovery process.
Yeah.
Yeah.
How has the legend-tegan household changed since welcoming baby Estie?
Honestly, more love, more joy, it's like more energy. It's been really good. Our older kids are so good with Estie and they love feeding her, holding her, kissing her. We wondered if they were going to be more jealous or anything.
No, they've been really good, they were actually jealous before. When Chrissy was pregnant, we were like, Oh, no, they're going to be terrible. Because you could tell they were jockeying for position, jockeying for love a little bit. Then when Estie's born, they're fine.
That's good to know because I do remember my mom sharing with me, saying, When I came home, my sister said, What is that? Send it back. You never fucking know how it's going to go.
You never know. I had friends that told me that too. We were worried, but they've been good so far.
I think it's fun to get to know you a little bit better. You're from Ohio.
I'm from Springfield, Ohio.
When I'm looking at your life, it's so interesting because I'm like, you're really fucking smart.
Obviously, thank you.
You had a very untraditional upbringing when it comes to school, You were skipping school, not skipping school, you were skipping grades.
I was homeschooled and then I skipped grades.
You moved around schools, right?
Yeah, I graduated high school when I was 16, and I only went to public school from 8th through 12th grade. Before that, I was mostly homeschooled and then I was at a private school for a couple years in that time period, too.
How do you think having a pretty nontraditional schooling experience affected you as a kid?
Well, I think one. I benefited from being the second kid, and I had an older brother who was two years older than me. Because I was so precocious and because my parents were.
I would just hang out with my older brother and learn the stuff he was learning, and so I ended up kind of catching up with him. Because I was so into learning, I was into reading, I would just read the World Book Encyclopedia for fun. I was that kind of kid, I was just very nerdy, very precocious, wanted to soak up everything.
We'd go to the library and I would want to read about Martin Luther King and civil rights heroes, and not just the normal kid shit that kids would read. And so I was always kind of like that, and then having an older brother made me just want to learn everything he was learning. And so that's even why I started taking piano lessons, because he was taking piano lessons and he didn't really want to do it. And he wanted to go to drum lessons. And I was like, I want to take piano lessons, I'll take them, and so I started piano when I was four because of that.
I feel like you because you're obviously so bright, you kind of could have done anything, I'm sure.
Well, I was a management consultant for three years, I went to Penn and I graduate, and most of my friends are doing finance jobs, consulting jobs. I took a job as a management consultant for three years, I worked at a place called Boston Consulting Group. And I was still trying to get a record deal during that time.
I'd already played on Lauryn Hill's Miseducation album in 98 when I was still in school. And then when I graduated, I had started working with some of the producers I met through Lauryn Hill and some other producers around Philly. But I needed a day job and kind of the inertia of being in that Penn atmosphere kind of made me like, Well, maybe I should apply for the same jobs my friends are applying for, and so I applied to be a management consultant and got the job.
Okay, we're rewinding for a second. So you, because I'm thinking about you young, saying, at four years old, you're like, I'm starting to play piano. Was there a moment, or, like, a significant moment in your life that you were like, Music is my thing?
Yeah, well, it started mostly in church, because I grew up going to a Pentecostal church. My grandmother was the church organist and my mom directed the choir. So I would be in church, going to choir rehearsal, watching my family up there, leading the music of the service. And so I just wanted to be a part of it. And so when I would go to choir rehearsal, I would just beg my mom, Hey, I want to sing too. And they were like, you have to wait until you're a little older. So by the time I was seven, I started singing in the church choir and then eventually I would start getting solos. And I loved it. I loved being in front of the audience, I loved that energy that I felt, the love that I felt, the encouragement that I felt when I was up there. And then I would do it at school plays, I would do it at school talent shows, and I loved it.
I also am curious, obviously your circumstances are so different than probably how you were raised.
Oh my God, so different, just a little, just a little, John. I never even was on an airplane until I was 16. when I visited. Penn was the first time I got on a plane. Damn.
Yeah, and now my kids, they go all around the world with us, and obviously so much more privilege, so much more of everything. My dad was a factory worker, my mom stayed at home and took care of us and we didn't know we were struggling. But we didn't have much money, we had what we needed, but we didn't have much beyond that. And my dad would get laid off. Because the ups and downs of the economy and the manufacturing economy. We felt that all the time in Ohio, and yeah, it was a very different life.
You don't want your kids to be assholes, no? And I'm like, you know, they're growing up with so much and they'll probably come to expect so much that we just never even knew to expect. And you want them to still have some appreciation and again, good character and be generous and be grateful, and be, you know, just good human beings. And I feel like it might be harder to pull that off given their life circumstances.
Exactly, no pressure, no fucking pressure. So before you, because I think it's really interesting you went to Penn. I'm from Pennsylvania. Okay, what part?
I'm from Newtown, so I'm from more of the suburbs, but my dad works in Philly, and my brother was living in Philly, so very Philly-oriented family.
It was a great place for me to be during that time in my life. So I get there when I'm 16,.
And during this time period, this is when Black Lily was happening, which was what the.
Whole crew were doing, they were doing these open mic nights. And they'd have, like, Jaguar Wright there and Jill Scott and Bilal and the jazzy Fat Nasties and all these neo-soul acts coming through. They'd have Common coming through, Bilal, I already said, Bilal, Common coming through, D'Angelo coming through. So all of this was happening right when I was there at school and then right after I graduated. And so just being in that ecosystem was very good for a musician at that time, because it was like so much was happening. So many people to collaborate with, and so much inspiration and motivation. Because you're just around other really talented musicians. And it really inspired me and pushed me to want to pursue my career.
It's incredible, I love how you just captured. Like, so I went to college at 16 years old, like, what the hell, what was it like? I'm sure you were younger than a lot of people in college.
Like, what was your experience like, socially and dating wise?
I was, it was not good, I was, like, younger, I was kind of a country bumpkin like. Compared to most of the kids there. They're like, East Coast, either grew up in the city or in suburbs. And then I'm from a small town in Ohio, manufacturing town. I didn't have that much money.
Black, which makes you a minority, too. So it's like, there's like, all these reasons why you're a little bit of an outsider and then you're two years younger than everybody. On top of all that, no, I was not getting girls, I was not doing very well in the dating scene. I was just, you know, I was just this nerdy kid whose. One thing was that I could really sing and play, and so that was the thing that made me kind of connect to other people.
Yeah, yeah, okay, you said you weren't getting girls, but I did read that in high school, you were prom king.
I was.
How explain, not how, but like....
Well, I did fine in high school, but then when I got to college, it was almost like a reset and nobody knew me. I had no like, I had no game, like, I was just no. I wouldn't have been prom king in college by the time I graduated from Penn, though. People knew me as the guy who sang with the a cappella group counterparts and the guy who played on Lauryn Hill's album. And so I was starting to, you know, really connect with people through music. But when I got there, I was just like this shy Ohio kid, small town kid, like no and no game.
Did you have anything traditional about your college experience, like, were you going to frat parties, John?
I went to frat parties. Yeah, I went to frat parties, I had cool roommates, they were all. Everyone was older. But I lied about my age when I first got there, so I would say that I was. I think when I got there, I was 16, but I would say I was 17, which is a minor lie. But it was like it made me less of, like a curiosity.
Like, what the fuck, you're 16?
17 does sound like a little bad.
Yeah, it's like, almost normal. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And my roommate, actually my freshman year roommate. He lives in Boston, but he came.
By and met my family. And he said, Yeah, I didn't even know your dad was so young when he got there because he lied to all of us.
He's a liar. You're like, you wouldn't have been fucking friends with me had I not lied to you. So I feel like a lot of people that you've known in your life are probably not surprised you are where you are.
Yeah, well, I had a couple friends, we were laughing about it, and they became friends with me when I was still a management consultant in New York. So I graduated from Penn. I'm in Boston for one year. But then I moved to New York, and I lived in New York most of my adult life after that. So when we were in New York, I had some other friends.
Most of them worked in the corporate world, and one time I told them, Yeah, I'm going to get a record deal, hopefully, soon. And I see people like Justin Timberlake and R. Kelly as my competition. And my friend was like, Who the fuck are you?
Where did this big ego come from, this confidence? where do you think you got that confidence?
Well, I feel like any artist that you see who succeeded in our business has a bit of audacity.
It's almost irrational, but it's like, you have to believe that you have something special to offer. And we believed it. Like me, Kanye, like our crew, we believed we were making something that was special and interesting and deserved to be heard. And so, yeah, I believed I had something to offer. And I feel like you need to believe that for it to work.
Totally. When did you meet Kanye?
It was 2001.
One of my roommates from college was a roommate in New York as well, and he's Kanye's cousin. So Kanye had just started working with Rockefeller, but he still was based in Chicago. And then eventually he was getting so much work with Rockefeller. With Jay, with Beanie, all those guys that were coming out on Rockefeller. At that time that they moved him out to New York, he actually lived in Newark, but right outside of New York, so he lived in Newark, had an apartment there. And my roommate is like, Yeah, my cousin's moving out here.
He just started working with Rockefeller, you guys should meet, you should work together, and he invited him to one of my shows that was up in Harlem. And so during this time, I'm working as a consultant during the day, playing shows around New York at night and writing songs and doing whatever. And so Kanye comes to the show, we meet, and a few months later we started working together. I would go to his apartment in Newark, he had a little studio set up in there and we would work on tracks.
And he was working on the earliest beginnings of what became the college dropout, and then I was working on what eventually became Get Lifted. My debut album, both of those albums came out in 2004, so 2001, two, three, four. We're trying to get record deals, we're trying to. He's producing for other artists and including me on some of those tracks too. And then I finally got signed in May of 2004..
That's so cool that you have people obviously in the industry that you met before, you were fucking huge. Because I'm sure it can be also kind of an isolating career of you are on this track that probably is not exactly relatable to that many people. Was your family? It's interesting to hear your family was obviously in music in some capacity, but was your family? Have you lost your mind, or were they always thinking you're going to be successful? You got this.
I don't know if they really knew that all of this was going to work out. Because we all know people who can sing, we all know in church you grow up everybody, it feels like everybody can sing, everybody's talented.
And if you grow up in a Black church with so much music around you, it's not abnormal that you are around people who can really sing and really play. And so I don't know that they just knew that I was going to be the one that broke through. I had another older cousin who we all thought could sing, so it wasn't, like, guaranteed that I would go from being, oh, he's a talented singer to oh, he's going to be making music that the whole world is going to listen to.
Yeah, so kind of wrapping up your college experience, I think it's interesting that you said you were younger. You maybe didn't fit in, but then people figured out, like, Oh, the guy can sing, he's pretty cool. Do you have any advice for someone in a situation right now? Maybe they're in college, getting out of college, that feels like they don't fit in. They're trying to figure out their path, but everyone's looking at them sideways of, like, What the fuck are you doing? Like, what's your advice?
Well, I mean, my experience just shows me that if you really focus on the thing that you really love and the thing that you're really good at, and you get better at it. Because I think you can have some innate talent, you can have some upbringing that kind of pushes you in a certain direction. But I think you only get better. And like, world, you know, world class better. If you really spend a lot of time on it and really focus on it. So focus on that thing. And you might not be socially that connected yet, but if you focus on that thing. It's going to open doors for you and you'll find your tribe, you'll find the people that appreciate what you do. And it's not going to always be something that's going to make you famous. But it could be something that makes you just really good at something. And it opens doors for you and helps you find other people who are really into that thing, too, and that'll be your people.
That's great, another thing too, of like comparison, I think it's interesting you talking about. When you met Kanye, you were both trying to come up, you were both like trying to do your own things. But also you were saying like, you were kind of working with him on some of his shit. How did you two not get competitive in an arena that's pretty fucking small?
Like, that's 1 that makes it.
Well, I think we were so different in what we were trying to make. Like, I'm an R&B singer, he's a rapper, he's a producer, and I'm a singer songwriter who plays the piano. And so everything we did actually was pretty complimentary. And so I would sing all over his records, play piano on them, add some kind of soul and musicality to them. And then he would add a lot of, like, hip hop flavor to what I was doing.
So it was a cool time to make music because you could find ways for, like, hip hop and soul to intersect. And because we were making different enough music. We never felt like we were going head to head. We could find ways to like, make each other better, and that's what we did.
That's dope. Once you left Penn, did you still feel any connection to Pennsylvania, like, did you root for the Eagles in the Super Bowl, Josh?
I still like, if there's no Ohio team, Philly's like my next thing I'll root for.
I rooted for the Bengals in the Super Bowl, but they lost in the AFC Championship. And so when Philly played KC, I was like, OK, I'll just root for Philly. And I still have a lot of band members that are from Philly. A lot of my favorite musicians I've collaborated with, like the Roots, they're from Philly. So I have a lot of affection for Philly. And a lot of people that work with me, including my manager and one of my producing partners.
They're from Philly and so I definitely have a lot of love for Philly.
Philly, Philly, Philly, Philly.
Who should play you in the John Legend biopic and who would play Chrissy?
Oh, my goodness, let me think about this. Now. I've got to think about who all the people that people say I look like on the internet. It's usually just babies, everyone puts their light-skinned babies up and they all think my baby looks like John Legend. Because I have this, you know, I have cheeks, I have dimples, and a lot of babies look like me.
A baby is going to play you in your biopic.
So basically, my biopic will happen 30 years from now, and one of the internet babies will play me.
That's actually amazing, also that is a compliment. You look young, so you're never going to age. I had written, I think, Regé-Jean page.
Okay, you make me a little more handsome, I'll take it.
But then who would play Chrissy? I didn't think of that.
I'm trying to think of maybe like, Olivia Rodrigo or something.
Oh, no, that's good. I feel like also Chrissy would play Chrissy, right?
I don't know, I don't know how this works, because we kind of have acted, right.
50 played himself. You could be the next.
What's something that you're not good at that you wish you were?
Sports.
What sports specifically?
I mean, basketball, I played with my brothers and my cousins, but they were always more athletic than me.
I was just never that good. I mean, obviously I got the talent that I got and I'm happy. But I always wished I was a little more athletic, I wish I was a little bit taller, I wish I was a baller, you know the song?
Exactly what is a misconception about you that you see on the internet a lot?
Well, we could get into all the crazies on the internet, there's like the Qanons.
You're like, Do we have five hours?
The qanons you've heard about, the qanons, they're on some other shit.
They're going off.
They're putting me and Chrissy in their conspiracies. It's wild.
Wait, what? I don't know if I've ever seen that of you.
You should go down the rabbit hole one day just to see where humanity is.
Stop, and then do you guys just laugh about it at home?
Yeah, we laugh about it. It is wild, though, they really believe some wild things and they kind of talk each other up. And they build these entire alternate universes. Where they think all these crazy things about Hollywood people, especially people on the left and in politics, and it is insane. It's a wild subculture. We've made fun of it before publicly, but the thing is, the more you deny it, the more they think see.
You're like, okay.
There's no really rationalizing with them, it's like a truly psychotic subculture.
And to people that aren't familiar, can you just give a little explanation of what these people think you're doing?
Well, they believe that Donald Trump was put into office to end a secret cabal of Hollywood and Democratic pedophiles, and he was put into office. And that's why everyone was so worried about him becoming president was that he was here to solve that issue for the world. He was going to destroy this cabal and arrest all those people.
There's all these rabbit holes that go down with it for a while. I think they thought that if you were covering your ankles, it was because you were secretly on house arrest and you had an ankle bracelet. Which doesn't make any sense. Because if you were so dangerous and you were going to be arrested, why wouldn't they just actually put you in jail? But they thought, for some reason, that people like Hillary Clinton had an ankle bracelet on and Ellen DeGeneres had an ankle bracelet on. And they were secretly arrested by Donald Trump's Justice Department. It's insane, honestly, it's insane.
The overall thrust of it is that they believe that their perceived enemies, whether it's Hollywood or the liberal elite, were actually not just people they disagree with, but people that were doing this inhumane pedophile ring. And there's still a lot of them that believe it, and they've included us in that. They just added us to the list of people who've gone to Jeffrey Epstein's Island, which we never knew. The guy never flew anywhere with them, they just added us to the list.
It's wild.
Oh my god, okay, what do you think? Thank you for clarifying that. Now I'm going to, like, when you leave here, I'm going to go down a fucking spiral, like, what?
There are a lot of people that believe it, I would say probably millions. On a planet of seven billion, I think it's got to be millions of people who believe it.
Is that kind of scary to you?
It is a little scary because, you know, if you really believe that about someone, you would do some dastardly things to like. Or some awful things, some violent things to stop them from doing it, if you really believed it. And you know, one of the more dangerous moments was when that guy went into the pizza place in D.C. and thought he was busting up a pedophile ring in the basement. And there was actually no basement in the pizza shop. But he went in there with a gun, like looking to save a bunch of kids, and it was all just a figment of his conspiracy addled mind.
Okay, what the fuck?
That took a turn.
I know I'm like, what was my question? So you met Chrissy on the set of your music video? Did you have any say who was cast for that part?
Yeah, so my friend Nabil Elderkin, he's a mutual friend of both mine and Chrissy's from before we knew each other. And he had shot her before, and he showed me photos of her and wanted to cast her in the video.
And he was shooting a video on Spec, so he kind of needed a friend to be the model because he wasn't really offering any money. He was doing the video on Spec. And I was like, Cool, and he showed me a picture of Chrissy and I was like, Sure, great.
And we shot the video not far from here and we just hit it off.
What do you remember about that first day meeting her?
Well, she'll tell you, like, when she walked in, I was ironing my own clothes, which I do and I still do. And we didn't have any budget for the video. It was truly on spec, and Nabil was just shooting it because he hadn't really shot any videos before. And he wanted to show people in the industry that he could do it.
And up until that point, he was just a photographer and he had done a decent amount of photo shoots, but no video shoots. And so we were like it was shoestring budget. She walks in, I'm ironing my clothes. My brother's in there with me, my road manager at the time, who's still with me now.
And.
Yeah, she walks in and I'm like, Wow, she's beautiful and we just hit it off.
When did you actually like, ask her out?
Well, we hung out that night because she came to my show, I had a show at the Roxy that night and we hung out that night. And then every time I came back to L.A. I would reach out. And I was living in New York at the time, and she was mostly living in L.A. But she would go to Miami for work as well. And so we just kind of started this three city romance where she would come see me in New York sometimes.
And she would have work there too and come stay with me. And then when I was in L.A. we would hang out, and then when we both were in Miami, we would hang out. And then eventually we started going on trips together and just kind of falling in love. And the first time we went to Lake Como was in 2007..
So we had met in September 2006.
And it was for some men's shows, for who was it? Armani, our friend who works for Gucci now but worked for Armani, then invited us to the shows.
And in between.
We met up at Villa d'Este at Lake Como in Italy, and so we're there. And I say, that's when we fell in love because it's this beautiful place and we just got really close. And you could just feel like, Oh, this is going to be special. And so that place always became like, significant to us, because that's where we fell in love. And then fast forward to 2011, I propose, we get married in 2013 and we shoot the All of Me video that week.
The week we get married at Lake Como, we get married at Lake Como and the Bill. The same guy who introduced us is the guy who shot the video for all of me, we shoot the video, kind of.
World becomes my biggest song, of course, and and uh, also commemorates this special moment in our lives. And that's all, um, going to be the 10th anniversary. Uh, in September this year, 10th anniversary of all of me, 10th anniversary of our getting married. And, uh, we're going to go back to Lake Como and celebrate. That's a great story.
Another twist to that story is that the reason I met in the bill was because he squatted Kanye West.
Com Um, so you remember back in the day before, like, the internet was really big. Um, people would squat domain names, um, and a lot of times they would just ask for a huge ransom to pay it off. But in the bill, all he wanted was let me take a photo, take photos of you guys, let me follow you guys around and take photos of you. And I'll give you your website name, Kanye kanye west.com back.
And he just started taking photos of us. He was living in Chicago and, uh, he would go around with us on tour, and we all became friends with him. All on him blackmailing, I was about to say he knows how to get in a room and make connections.
I'm like, but honestly, it was like the most benign blackmail of all time. I just want to take pictures of you guys for free, He's like, just let me like.
Hang out and take photos. You're like, that's all you want, you guys are like, there has to be something. How much? He's like, no money, no check.
Damn, and then, and and.
Then, you know, years later, he meets Chrissy and shoots her, and then, you know, introduces us. And then all of that because he squatted. Kanye West..com. That's a great story, um?
Obviously every relationship, I love how you were like, we had, like a three city romance, like when you start a relationship, it's so exciting. And then there's obviously the hard parts, like what was the hardest part that you and Chris V experience? And like those.
Beginning early stages of your relationship. Well, I think part of it's distance, and so, you know, you're traveling a lot. Um, part of it's just me. Being still, like, in my mid twenties and being like, you know, selfish, you know, mid twenties guy, and like, still wanting to, like, not like, I think you're still selfish. During that period of your life, you're not thinking fully about being a good partner.
You're thinking more about, like, what you need to do, and like, I'm thinking about my career. I'm thinking about, you know, um, just what's going to be the best thing for me? And not thinking of us as a couple as much, um, but as we grew together, we just fell in love and we started to like, intertwine.
The things we wanted to do together, um, and grew into a real partnership. Yeah, I.
Think that's also cool because I think a lot of times you can meet someone and be like, you're really dope. But like, I'm going to pick me and my career. Like, no shade to them. But if it is the right person, almost even as much as you want to do your own thing. You're like, I'm going to find a way to merge lives because you want to be with that person.
Yeah, eventually, like, I was just like, so happy. Spending time with her, she brought so much like joy and energy to my life, and like, humor and fun. And we just had great chemistry and like, I didn't want to be with anybody else.
Oh, my goodness, the hottest thing, honestly, like, it's probably obvious, but she makes me laugh all the time and I think that is that it just changes your whole world.
When you have somebody around you, that makes you laugh, because it just makes every experience, like even when you go through, like the worst things. Um, when they have a sense of humor, it, it just makes it. It makes his life better, it really does. What do you think she would say about you? I don't know, that's a good question.
I don't know what she would say, I don't know. I take good care of her. Like, I like to cook for her, even though she's obviously the one with, uh, food credentials that I don't have. But, uh, I like to cook for her. I like to take care of her, pamper her, and, uh, make some romantic gestures.
She probably likes that, so cute, okay, what advice do you have to people to keep your sex life hot and fun and alive? Come on, John, lock the door.
If you have kids, our.
Kids have a way of, like, finding their way into our room, so we're like, if we ever want to have a good time, we got to lock the door. Does it your? Does your mother-in-law live?
With you, yeah, do you ever have to be like, Listen, we're going to go. She's not the issue, it's the kids.
Take the kids, we gotta go have a meeting upstairs, okay, so you're just.
Like, lock the door, you gotta just find time, no, you have to find time. You have to like, still, like, do those romantic gestures and like, make an effort, I think.
And, uh, I think that's all important. You can't like, take things for granted, I think, especially if you've been together for a long time. If you, if you allow yourself to just get in a rut. Um, like, you gotta, you know, go on a date, do some things, do some fun things, um, make.
Some romantic gestures, totally. You mentioned how, like, obviously, through hard times, it's you have to find the positive, and Chrissy's really good at doing that. You have been open about the pregnancy loss that you and Chrissy experienced in 2020. Do you remember, like the feelings you felt after that experience?
Oh, it's hard because you feel especially.
Being, um, the man in the relationship, not carrying the baby yourself.
You feel this strong sense of grief, but also this powerlessness. Um, because, you know, it's like, you want to be there to protect, you want to be there to help, but like, you literally can't do anything. Um, to really solve the core problem here, and um, and so it, it's. It was just heartbreaking and we felt powerless, and um, it was like, deep, deep grief, deep challenge, um, deep pain.
And um, for me, I'm also, you know, having gone through dealing with trauma in my own family, growing up, dealing with um tragedy in our family. And seeing, you know, my mom. React to it in ways that weren't healthy. Um, I was trying to, like, be the best partner for her, so I could buttress her, support her and make sure she responded in the healthiest way that she could. And um, we were able to get through it, but it was like it was.
It was tough. Yeah, I appreciate you sharing that about your family. Because I think sometimes you are so in your head about like, how do I do different? how do I do it different? how do I handle it? different to someone?
Maybe that's going through something similar. Do you have any advice of how to find the strength to move forward while also grieving at the?
Same time, I think I know it's like, not everyone can afford therapy. Or. And it is a privilege, you know, to some extent, even though I think it's affordable for a large group of people.
It's hard to like, take care of your mental health and you can't expect to be able to do it by yourself. And so I think Chrissy and I both, like. We're fully aware that mental health is like a real thing that needs to be taken care of, and it needs expertise and care. And um, I think it's important if you're able to afford that, you're able to access it, that you do it. And honestly, um, us talking about it publicly created this sense of community. Because you start to realize how many other people have gone through it, and it's way more than you think. Um, and particularly pregnancy loss.
And then, uh, so we would the fact that Chrissy was willing to talk about it publicly. Combine that with, um, just the love that we got from so many different people. People would send books, people would send flowers, just people cared. And we felt like so much love from people we truly did, but also they felt love coming from us and empathy coming from us.
And it made a lot of people who didn't usually talk about this publicly, or didn't usually talk about it, even among their larger friend group, uh, feel more comfortable talking about it and feel like they weren't alone in that situation. And people still come up to us, this is now what, two years later, uh, two and a half years later? People still come up to us at the grocery store, or at wherever we're shopping, or just wherever we're out in public. And tell us how much it meant to them that Chrissy talked about it and made them feel less alone, yeah.
Do you guys have conversations about those things?
It was Chrissy's idea to share it, and it was right in the heart of our grief. So it's like, kind of, like, courageous, that she was even able to, like, think about that. But people had been with us on the journey, they knew we were pregnant. She had, you know, been sharing her journey through pregnancy. And when it started getting complicated. And and she had to be in bed rest and we were trying to save the pregnancy.
Um, she was sharing all that. So it would have been weird to not share the outcome. Because then it's just like this, it's just like the baby just disappeared and like, there's no explanation. And so it made sense to share it, but it was still hard, you know? And then, um, once we did share it, it really became this just powerful again, like it built community.
It connected us to a bunch of people we didn't know, and, um, it ended up being just a beautiful thing.
Yeah, what is something that you did as a family that helped you guys move forward?
Well, one, we, just like I said, therapy is very helpful, doing things actively, proactively, taking care of your mental health are important. Two, it's great when you have kids there that, like, are examples of like, you coming together to create something beautiful in this world. And little people for you to love on and care for and just bring light to your lives. Like we had Luna and Miles already, and it was like, so beautiful to have them in our lives. As just as living manifestations of our love and what we created together. And then, um, of course, we tried to have another baby.
And, uh, and here we are.
Here we are. What are some qualities that you hope your children inherit from Chrissy?
She's so, um, thoughtful, she thinks about other people's feelings, she cares about, like whether other people are happy and whether they're taken care of. Um, as I've said before, she's funny, um, she's creative.
She's dynamic and I see a lot of her in Luna. Um, and whenever Luna makes us laugh, I'm like, Oh, okay, I see mom, and then there's just certain aspects of her personality that she definitely gets from her mom.
And it's it's exciting to see it, honestly. And then, um, yeah. Those are some of my favorite traits about her that I want to see in my kid, and she has a real sense of um honesty and um authenticity.
That I would love our kids to have. Are either of them singing yet or no? Luna sings in the car all the time and she can carry a tune, so she clearly has pitch perception and is she gets it musically, she gets what's happening.
And people don't know this, but Chrissy, I think, has that same ability. Like she understands music enough, even without any formal training, that she's like, always on key. Um, has a good sense of musical like composition and understands music, even though she has no formal training. And so Luna at least has that, and we'll see if she's, you know, even more musical, but she is more excited about art, like a visual.
Art Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, she has a pretty good person in the house to help.
Her, if she wants to go that route. We keep asking them if they want to take piano lessons or anything. They're always like, No, and I'm fine with it. Like, I honestly am happy if they have passions that are like something different.
So they're not too pressured.
I.
Thank you. What inspired you to create this music? Well, I do this all the time, like.
I do live solo shows in intimate venues, I just did a couple of them at the Walt Disney Concert Hall. And I've done them, you know, for corporate gigs, private gigs, everything I've done. You know, this solo, you know, interpretation of my music, which usually has full production and everything before. And I had never actually made kind of like a remix album of my previous albums like this, but my label president Wendy Goldstein. She was like, why don't you do a piano version of this album? And this is my first album with them.
Legend was the double album that we put out in September. She was like, why don't you do a solo version of it? and I was like, You know, that's a great idea. Why hadn't I done that before?
And and it was fun just re-approaching the songs, coming up with new ways of presenting them, just kind of auditioning them for myself. Like thinking which ones will work best in this, you know, Reincarnation? And it worked I.
Really had fun making it. It's so good, thank you. What is your favorite song to perform?
On that album, I love doing By Your Side, which is a cover I did of Sade. I think I like doing that one because it's kind of new to me. I'd never done it before and I really kind of discovered how much I was into singing it as I was considering it for the album.
And I've only played it live a couple of times, but I love it so good. And then I guess, what overall is your favorite song to perform? Overall? I love doing. Honestly, it's fun doing the hits because it's just the connection is just so strong with the audience. I love doing ordinary people.
It's, you know, my oldest hit song, and it still has such resonance with the audience and I just love singing it. It just takes me back to that moment. I tell the story about, you know, when I wrote it and how it originally started out as a song. Because I was managed by the same manager as them, and we used to write together, and I actually wrote the chorus for the song in a session with Will..I..am.
And then I was like, You know, I don't want to keep this one for myself. And now, you know, it became my first big hit and I still love playing it. I really appreciate you coming today because.
It's really cool, too. It's one thing to love someone's music, it's another thing to kind of get to know them, sit down with them and know them as a human being outside of their music. So John, thank you so much for coming, thanks for having me.
What a pleasure. This was great. Thank you, thank you.
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