I first saw John Legend in 2005, in a small club in Melbourne, a few months after his debut album Get Lifted came out and started picking up buzz.
I was a young journalist writing for a free music magazine, and he was the talk of the industry – a gifted young songwriter on the US RnB circuit whose piano-led sound caught the attention of Kanye West, leading to a deal with Good Music. At that point, Legend had also already contributed to Lauryn Hill’s The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.
He was regarded as a kind of unicorn – a gifted musician, songwriter and bandleader with the smooth and weathered vocals of soul music legends such as Bill Withers and Donny Hathaway.
What I remember most about that packed room is how immediate the set felt. Legend was shy, but intense, leaning into the piano with muscular renditions of the title track and Used to Love. It confirmed he was the real deal and hinted at where his career could go, either staying in the neo-soul space like Bilal or Miguel, or moving toward a more mainstream RnB path, perhaps a more stately version of Usher.
As it turned out, Legend went more expansive with albums such as the criminally underrated follow-up Once Again, focusing on classic soul before taking in more adult contemporary pop in later releases such as Love in the Future and Darkness and Light.
It clearly worked as the audience widened and club rooms were turned into palace grounds. As it turns out, I would reacquaint myself with his live show two decades later in a gala New Year’s Eve performance at Emirates Palace.
It was a full-circle moment for Legend as well, with his Abu Dhabi return marking the final show of a year spent celebrating the anniversary of Get Lifted.
As expected, things have changed since then. The tight backing band cramming into the room in Melbourne has now expanded to nearly a dozen members, including a trio of wonderful backing singers. Legend is now wearing a white suit, and while the urgency and perhaps desperation to succeed of those early years are gone, it didn’t diminish the sheer musician or the beguiling performer he always was.
The impressive run of 10 albums released since 2005 has meant Legend has built a warm and sturdy set touching on all aspects of his career. Get Lifted’s anniversary was marked with an epic full-band treatment of I Can Change and the intimacy of Ordinary People, the latter laying seeds for a string of exquisite ballads performed that night, such as Conversations in the Dark and All of Me, that always marked him out as more than just a supreme genre singer, but a gifted songwriter.
These were interspersed with more sprightly takes of Tonight (Best You Ever Had) and the syrupy optimism of Ooh Laa.
While Legend was seemingly content running through the hits, he did lean into the occasion in a spellbinding section towards the end of the show. He reflected on his upbringing, being raised by his grandmother and playing in the local church, paying tribute to her with a heart-tugging solo rendition of Nina Simone’s Feeling Good and Simon and Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Water.
And as the clock ticked closer to midnight, he ramped it up again with a giddy All She Wanna Do Is Dance, which set the scene for the countdown for the new year. He interestingly left the stage to allow the band members to revel in the fireworks that lasted for about 15 minutes.
It was a spectacle that reaffirms that Emirates Palace, which hosted a New Year’s Eve gig last year with Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli, is in the running to be a leading option for lavish end-of-year celebrations.
