John Legend and Chrissy Teigen are, we don’t know if you’ve heard, expecting. And as with all expecting parents, they’re working out the best way to bring their daughter into the world.
“I’ve definitely been trying to write a song for my daughter,” he told US Weekly in an interview at Sundance. “It’s hard. Part of me thinks maybe I just have to see her before I can write it, but I’ve been trying to think about what fatherhood means and what I should say to her.”
Legend will join a long tradition of making art for your children. An excellent recent example is Between the World and Me, a book-length essay written as an open letter from Ta-Nehisi Coates to his child. Other examples include “Wild Horses,” written for Keith Richards’s son Marlon; “Hey Jude,” written for John Lennon’s son Julian; and “Stay,” written for Fabolous’s son Johan.
Typically, these songs are piano-driven, reflective, and about the power of love. In other words, they are exactly the type of songs that John Legend writes more or less in his sleep. It’s hard to conceive of a more perfect artist for composing a song for an unborn child. Children have a tendency to soften even the hardest artists, though. Just ask Kanye.
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