Artist Identity

John Stephens ‘John Legend’ went to the University of Pennsylvania; during his time there he was in a band that used to perform in some shows. His lead vocals on the groups recording of Joan Osborne’s “One of us” received critical acclaim. Whilst Stephens was in University he was introduced to Lauryn Hill by a friend. Hill hired him to play piano on “Everything is everything”. He took time to hold a number of shows around Philadelphia, eventually expanding his audience base to New York, Boston, Atlanta, and Washington, D.C. After he was finished with university he started to produce, write and record his own music. He then released two albums independently, his self-titled demo in 2000 and ‘Live at Jimmy’s Uptown’ in 2001 which he sold at his shows. Stephens became a management consultant and during this time he started working on his demo and started to send his work to various labels. In 2001 Devo Springsteen introduced him to the up and coming hip-hop artist Kanye West. After signing to West’s label, he chose his stage name from a nickname he was given by the poet J. Ivy.

Stephens released two albums independently, his self-titled demo in 2000 and ‘Live at Jimmy’s Uptown’ in 2001, this is before he was signed to a label with Kanye West. In 2004-2005 he released the album ‘Get Lifted’ selling 116,000 copies within the first week of release; it then went on to sell 2.1 million copies in the United States and has sold 3 million copies worldwide. 2006-2007 ‘Once again’ was released, again in 2008-2010 ‘Evolver’ was another album that Stephens released. ‘Wake Up’ was shortly released after Evolver. John Legend’s most successful single is ‘Ordinary people’ from the album ‘Get Lifted’ in 2004-2005 where Legend uses his talent with the piano and vocals.

John Legend – Ordinary People

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIh07c_P4hc

In this music video, ordinary people; the links between the lyrics and the visuals are throughout the whole song. An example of this would be when John Legend sings, “At times we get sick of love, it seems like we argue everyday” as these lyrics are sung, the two actors you see on screen are arguing about their relationship. The links between the music and the visuals would be John Legend playing the piano, you see him on screen playing the piano and that is the song in the music video. The music video is in black and white, this can make the title of the song more understandable, “Ordinary people” no one in the video is special, everyone in the music video is in black and white so it makes everyone in the video more ordinary. The style of this video is quite clever; as John Legend is playing the piano you can see couples argueing and having problems, this is shown like this because it is not a thing that rarely happens, it happens all the time all around us.

 This music video would be aimed at a more mature audience, this is because the song is about people in love and they are having problems with their relationship. This music video goes with the codes and conventions of the R&B, soul music genre as it reflects how some people's lifes are. The acting in the video represents how people react and deal with these situations, some of which are worse than others. This music video is narrative based, what legend is singing about is what you see the actors in the background doing, it all relates to what he is singing.

In this shot it looks like John Legend is concentrating on something or possibly staring into the distance. Legend looks very clean and well groomed in this picture; his head takes up most of the album cover and the rest of the album looks like a frame, as if his head is a picture to be framed on the wall. This shot is a close up and his facial expression shows that he is concentrating.

John Legend – Once Again

This is a long shot of John Legend playing the piano; the piano shows him to be a musician who creates the piano verses in his songs by hand. In the background you can see that he is on the street, this shows us that playing the piano and making music is part of who he is. He looks quite smart in this picture as he is wearing a blazer with a white shirt underneath.  He is sitting on the piano facing to another direction looking into the distance.

John Legend – Evolver

In this shot, John Legend is facing away from the camera as if someone is calling him and he is looking over at who called him. In this album cover it looks like he is wearing a leather jacket which shows that he has style in the way that he dresses. This is a long shot; you are able to see his body language, which looks like he is turning around at someone.

John Legend – Get Lifted