John Legend Explains How He Builds His Songs

[scatting to the tune of Ordinary People]

♪ We're just ordinary people ♪

♪ We don't know which way to go ♪

I'll say scats that sound like they're almost words

and then those scats will push me

into saying certain lyrics.

And then once I figure out kind of the main line

of the song, then I have a concept.

[light music]

♪ Give me the green light ♪

♪ Give me just one night ♪

So this song started with a different beat.

I was writing it with Rick Knowles and a guy named Fink,

who's an artist out of the UK.

We started with it on the guitar and that basic groove, the,

[imitates music]

[Green light music plays]

it kind of had a 80s kind of Prince-ish vibe

to it originally.

The song's about being out,

seeing somebody you wanna dance with

and probably the most infamous line is,

Do I have a girlfriend, technically no.

♪ Do I have a girlfriend ♪

♪ Technically no ♪

Chrissy did not like that line.

We had already been dating at that point for a year or two.

Just a song, it's just a song.

But anyway, but it's also become kind of a consent anthem

because the whole song is asking for permission

before you go further with someone,

which is a thing I would advise you to do

if you're out there in the dating world.

So I play it for my A&R at the time,

his name is KP, Kawan Prather.

He's a legendary A&R and he's a DJ

and he's just an all around good guy.

He did a new mix of the beat, completely new sounds.

The tempo was the same

but the drums were completely different

and then we were like,

Oh okay, this is sounding really good.

♪ Checking your smile ♪

♪ Working the back like it's going out of style ♪

And then KP is very good friends with Andre 3000

because he was Outkast's A&R way back in the day,

they grew up together in Atlanta.

So he reached out to Andre and asked him to be on the song

and this is already at the point

when Andre was basically doing nothing.

He was barely doing any features, wasn't performing live

and so getting him on a song was a huge coup.

♪ One two three green light ♪

♪ Well if it's what it seems like ♪

♪ The way you moving baby ♪

♪ Lets me know that it's gon' be right ♪

But it was interesting 'cause he started with,

One two three red light, and then did green light next.

The only editorial comment I ever gave to Andre 3000

was we should start with green light

then red light after that.

So we just moved the green light part to before

and then the red light part to after.

♪ One two three red light ♪

♪ I wanna see what you dance like ♪

♪ But if I can be your buddy ♪

♪ Help you study, get your head right ♪

But other than that,

we just left Andre's beautiful work alone

and we had this electric fun song

that nobody would've expected me to come out with,

'cause I had done nothing like that in my first two albums.

That was kinda like the theme for that song,

was John's coming from behind the piano

and doing a uptempo song, and at the time,

it was the biggest, highest charting song in my career.

Of course, All Of Me surpassed that.

♪ Give your all to me ♪

♪ I'll give my all to you ♪

We wrote All Of Me to this four-on-the-floor beat

and so, when Tiesto did that remix of it,

♪ What would I do without your smart mouth ♪

that was actually more like the original version

than he even knew.

I listened to our four-on-the-floor version

and I was thinking, I'd rather hear it stripped down.

♪ What would I do without your smart mouth ♪

It's always interesting when you write a piano line

that becomes a hook in itself, and as soon as I start

playing All Of Me and I hear that,

[imitates piano of All Of Me]

[All Of Me music plays]

everybody knows exactly what it is.

Eventually, I just kept fooling around with the piano

and found the rhythm that kind of felt like it grounded

the song in the right way.

♪ You got my head spinning, no kidding ♪

The whole second half of the song, during the chorus,

there's a vocoder singing harmony with me.

♪ 'Cause all of me loves all of you ♪

So vocoders are basically machines

that you can run your voice through that sing the lyric,

but they're kind of played by a keyboard as well.

Instead of doing all the traditional things

you would do for a ballad, we put vocoder on there

and made it a little more interesting and modern.

♪ I want you to love me now ♪

♪ I don't know who's gonna kiss you when I'm gone ♪

So Love Me Now was originally brought to me

as a song idea from a guy named John Ryan.

John is a singer, a songwriter, a producer

and he had already sketched out the song.

But I was working with Blake Mills on the song as well

and Blake was producing the entire album

of Darkness and Light.

When we were listening to it,

we really liked the idea of the song,

but we wanted to change some of the lyric

to make it feel more personal to me.

John's version, since he, I think,

was writing as a bachelor,

his version felt more like it was about a single guy

just looking for a one night stand.

I wanted the lyric to feel like it was more

about making the most of the moments

that you have with the one you love.

♪ Let's make the most of every moment ♪

That was John's idea to strip the beat down

during that section,

♪ I don't know who's gonna kiss you when I'm gone ♪

♪ I don't know who's gonna kiss you when I'm gone ♪

because it just felt like it emphasized that moment

and made the lyric and the vocal stand out more.

And then when the beat comes back,

it feels even more exciting

because you've had this kind of break from it,

and it makes it even more impactful when it comes back.

♪ We're just ordinary people ♪

[scatting to the tune of Ordinary People]

♪ Girl I'm in love with you ♪

♪ But this ain't the honeymoon ♪

♪ Past the infatuation phase ♪

And so, with Ordinary People, I wrote that chorus idea

with Will.I.Am in the studio, and the premise for us

being in the studio together was we were gonna write a hook

for the Black Eyed Peas for their next album.

This was back in 2004, and I wrote the hook with him

and after a day or two of thinking about that hook

and having it haunting me, I was like,

Will, I don't want you guys to have this hook.

I'm gonna keep it myself

and I'm gonna write a ballad around it, basically.

♪ 'Cause we're ordinary people ♪

So I wrote the lyrics while I was on tour with Kanye.

This was right after The College Dropout had come out,

we went to Europe to play some shows

at clubs and small venues, and during soundchecks,

I was writing the lyric to Ordinary People

based on that melody that I just sang to you.

♪ One day when the glory comes ♪

I'm on tour in Europe and Common is in LA

and he calls me and he says,

John, I just was part of this film Selma,

I'm in the film and I've been talking

with the director and it's Ava,

and I had worked with Ava before so I knew her.

And he was like, Ava really wants a end title song,

so he calls me up and says,

Yeah, I was hoping we could write this together.

Maybe you can write a piano part and a hook,

and then of course, I'll write the raps.

♪ Hands to the heavens ♪

♪ No man, no weapon ♪

He told me what the film was

and of course, it was about Dr. King

and about the March on Selma

and the fight for voting rights.

And then he started listing title ideas for the song,

and one of 'em was Glory.

♪ We'll cry glory ♪

♪ Oh glory ♪

So not only did I have a direction,

as far as knowing what the film was,

knowing the life we were celebrating, Dr. King's,

but also knowing that Common had an idea

for the chorus called Glory.

I had the idea pretty quickly once he said those words,

once he said, Glory,

I was like, Yeah, I know what I wanna say.

♪ 'Cause we got a bigger love ♪

We wrote Bigger Love pretty quickly.

It was Ryan, Cautious Clay and I

just sitting in a room together.

Eventually we stumbled upon,

[hums melody of Bigger Love]

♪ I don't wanna think about nothing ♪

♪ Just watching you dancing ♪

I think very quickly I was saying,

I don't wanna think about nothing

and I didn't know what I was gonna say yet,

I didn't know what the song was yet,

but that kind of came early.

♪ We got a one-way-ticket love ♪

♪ We ain't going no place but up ♪

So what happened with the beat,

Ryan and his guy Zach, they had come up with a beat for it

and some of that is still represented in the final version,

but I thought if we're gonna do the Afro-Caribbean thing,

let's go ahead and do it.

[Bigger Love music plays]

And so, I called my friend Di Genius, who's Jamaican

and produced another song on the album

called Don't Walk Away with Koffee,

and I had done that song with him first,

so I knew what he could do and knew what his flavor was,

and I was like, if we're gonna go almost there

with this beat being kind of Caribbean inspired,

Afro-beat inspired, let's just get Di Genius

to help us do it.

♪ Feel like the beginning of something ♪

Di Genius' kind of remix version is the version you hear

on the album, because he was able to work with the beat,

with the steel drums, with just the groove

and get it exactly where it should be,

so it felt like it wasn't trying to be something else

but it was actually fully doing that thing

that it was supposed to be trying to do.

♪ Actions speak louder than ♪

♪ Speak louder than ♪

♪ Speak louder than love songs ♪

So what I was thinking when we were writing Actions,

one, of course we have this Dre sample.

It's not actually a Dre sample but it's a song

that came out many years before Dre did,

but he sampled it as well.

[The Edge music plays]

It was a song called The Edge by David McCallum,

but Dre of course sampled it

and Snoop iconically said, La da da da da.

♪ La da da da da ♪

♪ You know I'm mobbin' with the D-R-E ♪

And so I figured why shouldn't I put

La da da da da in this song?

♪ La da da da da, here I go again ♪

♪ With another love song that I wasted ♪

It was cool because we had already been batting around

the idea of actions speak louder than love songs.

So when we were batting that idea around, I was like,

Well we should just start the song saying 'La da da da da'

and the whole song is about the act of writing love songs,

and so I figured we should start the song with me scatting

because that's how I start writing love songs anyway.

♪ La da da da da ♪

♪ La da da da da ♪

I think the biggest challenge with Actions

is it's such an iconic sample

that you want to do it justice,

because if you do a wack song to this beat

which everyone knows and loves,

it just feels like you're extra wrong for doing it.

♪ We got a good thing babe ♪

♪ Whenever life is hard ♪

Never Break was one of the earliest songs we wrote

and we had no idea we were gonna release it into a pandemic

and release it into the time when people were protesting

in the streets about George Floyd and Breona Taylor

and others, and we just had no idea.

In the song, we talk about, As the water rises,

so we were thinking about climate change,

we were thinking about other tests

of our resilience as human beings,

and then also talking about an individual relationship

and its challenges that might come your way

in that relationship.

♪ We will never ♪

♪ No no never ♪

♪ No no never ♪

One of the things that made this song interesting to me

was the No no never, or as we write it, Nah nah never.

We wanted to supplement my lead vocal

with those backing vocals that kind of added more emphasis

to that No no never.

♪ No no never ♪

It's almost like you're willing yourself

into being resilient.

It's like, No, we're not gonna break,

we're not gonna break and these backup vocals

kinda help support that sentiment.

♪ We will never ♪

♪ No no never ♪

♪ Oh I remember this ♪

♪ Yeah I remember this ♪

Remember Us was produced by Eric Hudson

and I wrote the topline with Trey Campbell.

My manager, she said to Eric,

We need something with some dirty drums for John.

[Remember Us music plays]

He brought in this groove

and it sounded like an Al Green song

and the reason why is 'cause the drums are the same

as the classic Al Green song

and so it immediately gives you that feeling.

But they were dirty sounding and soulful and nostalgic.

♪ Ooh yeah ♪

The more I listened to it, I was like,

I really want a rap on this song.

I really feel like if I get the right storyteller

on this song, it'll just take it to another level.

I had been listening to Rapsody's album Eve from last year

and I just loved the way she told stories,

her lyrical ability, her flow, her voice.

I just felt like she would sound perfect on this song.

And she really loved it

and she sent back this beautiful verse

that talked about Nipsey and Kobe and Biggie

and all these people we lost,

and also just all these cultural moments

that a lot of people my age would remember.

♪ I remember what Nip said, what ♪

♪ Ten toes down, you hit me up ♪

♪ Hey big head ♪

It's currently my favorite song on the album.

That changes and shifts every once and a while

but Remember Us is currently my favorite,

and a lot of it has to do with how amazing

Rapsody's verse is.

♪ 'Cause I could always call on you ♪

♪ And I hope you remember me too ♪

♪ Oh ♪