Call Her Daddy - John Legend: Addressing the Internet Rumors

Episode Date: March 22, 2023

John Legend joins Call Her Daddy. After being homeschool, John skipped multiple grades and was only 16 when he went to college. He shares how being the youngest person in the room impacted his dating life. John recounts the first time he met his wife, the difficulties they faced early in the relationship and the evolution of their love story. John opens up about the pregnancy loss he and his wife experienced and how they navigated through the difficult experience. Get ready for unexpected conversations. John is here to address and set the record straight on the long list of internet conspiracy theories. 

what is up daddy gang it is your founding father alex cooper with call her daddy john legend welcome to call her daddy that'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 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 uh chrissy's doing pretty well uh it's a recovery process yeah yeah yeah how has the legend tegan household changed since welcoming baby Esty? Honestly, more love, more joy. It's like more energy.

It's been really good. Our older kids are so good with Esty. And they love like feeding her, holding her, kissing her. And we wondered if they were going to be more jealous or anything. And no, they've been really good. And they were actually jealous before. Like when Chrissy was pregnant, we were like, oh, no, they're going to be terrible because you could tell they were like

jockeying for position, jockeying for love a little bit. And then when Esty'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 sister said what does that send it back you never fucking know how it's gonna go you never know and i had friends that told me that too and so we were worried but they've been good so far okay so i think it's fun to like get to know you a little bit better you're from ohio i'm from springfield ohio and 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 kind of 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. And you kind of 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. And 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 non-traditional schooling experience like affected you as a kid? Well I think one I benefited from being the second kid and I had a older brother who was two years older than me and so because I was so precocious and because my parents were so into education, 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 like just read the World Book Encyclopedia for fun. I was like that kind of kid i was just

very nerdy very precocious wanted to soak up everything we go to the library and i would want to read about like martin luther king and uh civil rights heroes and not just the normal kid shit that kids would read and so um 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 like well I was a management consultant for three years. Wait, what?

I get out of college. 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 had 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 pin 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 yeah so you because I'm thinking about you young saying four years old you're like I'm starting to play piano yeah was there a moment or like a significant in like 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 till 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 love 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 local talent shows.

And I loved it. I also am curious, like, 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, you know, they go they're all around the world with with us.

And, you know, obviously, like so much more privilege, so much, so much more of everything. My dad was a factory worker. My mom stayed at home and took care of us. And, you know, we didn't know we were struggling, uh took care of us and you know we didn't know we were struggling but you know you're like we didn't have much money we had what we needed but we didn't have much beyond that and uh my dad would get laid off because you know 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. Yeah, I can imagine. And 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 and be you know just good human beings and i feel like it might be harder to pull that off given their life circumstances yeah no pressure the world's watching no pressure

no fucking pressure so before you i because i think it's really interesting you went to penn i'm from pennsy Okay, what part? I'm from Newtown. So I'm from more of like the suburbs. Yes. But my dad works in Philly and like my brother was living in Philly. So like 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 Roots and their whole crew were doing. They were doing these open mic nights and they'd have like Jaguar right there and Jill Scott and Bilal and the Jazzy Fat Nasties and all these neooul acts coming through. They'd have Common coming through, Balao. I already said Balao. 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 like inspired me and pushed me to want to pursue my career it's incredible I love how you just casually 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 um i didn't have that much money um 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 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 game.

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 acapella group counterparts and and the guy who played on lauren 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 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 i when i got there i was 16 but i would say i was 17 uh which is minor lie but it was like it made me less of like yeah a curiosity like what the fuck you're 60 17 does sound like a little bad yeah it's like it's like almost normal yeah yeah and it's my roommate actually my freshman year roommate uh he lives in boston but he came to la recently and 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 of 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 but so when we were in New York I you know 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 looked at me like, who the fuck are you? Like, 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 like 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. So my one of my roommates from college was a roommate in New York 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 you know, 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. It 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, writing songs and doing whatever. And so, um, 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 work on tracks. And, uh, he was working on the earliest beginnings of what became the college dropout. And then I was working on what eventually 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, 2, 3, 4, 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 like

fucking huge because I'm sure it can be also kind of an isolating career of like you are on this track that probably is not exactly relatable to that many people like was your family it's interesting to hear your family was obviously in music in some capacity but was your family like have you lost your mind or were they always thinking like you're gonna be successful you got this um i don't know if they really knew that all of this was gonna work out because i mean we all know people who can sing we all know like in church you grow up like everybody like it feels like everybody can sing. Everybody's talented. Yeah. And if you grew up in a black church with so much music around you, like, 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 better than me you know so it wasn't like guaranteed um that you know I would go from being oh he's a talented singer to oh he's going to be making music that the whole world's going to listen to yeah so kind of wrapping up your college experience I think it's interesting that you said you know you were younger you maybe didn't fit in but then people figured out like oh the guy can sing like 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, you know, 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. I think it's great. Yeah. 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 one percent 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 you know I'm a singer songwriter who plays the piano and so everything we did actually was pretty complimentary um and so I would sing all over his records play piano on them and 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 be making 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 yeah once you left penn did you still feel any connection to Pennsylvania? Like, did you root for the Eagles in the Super Bowl, John? I still, like, if there's no Ohio team, Philly's like my next thing I'll root for. So, like, I'd rather root for the Bengals in the Super Bowl, but they lost in the, you know, AFC Championship.

And so when Philly played KC, I was okay I'll just root for for Philly and you know 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. 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 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. i have this you know i have cheeks i have dimples and a lot of babies look like me a baby is gonna play you in your so basically my biopic will happen 30 years from now one of the internet babies will play me okay that's actually amazing also that is a compliment like you look young so you're you're

never gonna age um i had written i think reggae jean page okay that would you make me a little more handsome i'll take it but then like who would play chrissy i didn't think of i'm trying to think of like um maybe like olivia rodrigo or something oh no that's good i feel like also chrissy would play chrissy right she's like i don't know like i don't know how this works because we kind of have acted right do we play ourselves uh-huh like 50 played himself you could be the next yes um what's something that you're not good at that you wish you were sports what sports specifically i mean basketball like i i played with my brothers and my cousins, but they were always more athletic than me. And like I was just never that good.

I mean, obviously, I got the talent that I got and I'm happy. But, you know, 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 know, you've heard about the QAnons. They're like, they're on some other shit. They're going off. So is that like... They include me and Chrissy in their conspiracies. It's wild.

Wait, what? I don't know if i've ever seen that 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 like they really believe some wild things and 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 about uh 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 it's 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 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 and so they have there's all these like rabbit holes they go down with it so like they 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 is it is that they believe that their perceived enemies whether it's hollywood or the liberal elite um 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 okay what do you think thank you for clarifying that now i'm gonna like when you leave here i'm gonna go down a fucking spiral like what there are a lot of people that believe it i would say probably millions on the on a planet of seven billion i think it's got to be millions of people 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 uh stop them from doing it if you really believed it and you know the the most one of the

more dangerous moments was when that guy went into uh the pizza place in dc and thought he was busting up a pedophile ring in the basement and there was actually no basement in 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. Yeah. What the fuck?

That took a turn. I know. I'm like, what was my question um so you met chrissy on a set of your music video did you have any say who was cast for that part yeah so my my uh friend nabil elderkin he's a mutual friend of both mine and chrissy's from before we knew each other and um he had shot her before and he showed me photos of her and wanted to cast her in um the video and he was shooting the video on spec um 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 and nabil was just shooting it because he hadn't really shot any videos before and he wanted to show um 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 um my brother's in there with me my uh road manager at the time who's still with me now and um 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 it was for a um so we had met in september 2006 and it was for some men's shows for uh uh who was it armani uh our friend who works for gucci now but worked for armani then invited us to the shows and um in between the shows they put us up at Villa d'Este in uh and uh at Lake Como in Italy and so we're there and I say that's when we fell in love because like it's this beautiful place. And 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 Nabil, the same guy who introduced us, is the guy who shot the video for All of Me. We shoot the video kind of commemorating our marriage to the world. It becomes my biggest song of course and and 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 coma and celebrate that's a great story another twist of that story is that the reason i met nabil 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 nabil 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 back and so he gave kanye kanye west dot 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 us. I was about to say, he knows how to get in a room and make connections. But honestly, he 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 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, literally, that's all you want you guys are like there has to be something how much he's like literally that's it no money no check no 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 experienced in 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. Part of it's just me being still, like, in my mid-20s and being, like, you know, selfish, you know, mid-20s 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, just what's going to be the best thing for me and not thinking of us as a couple as much. But as we grew together, we just fell in love, and we started to, like, intertwine our goals, you know, like the things we want to do together 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 in 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 gonna 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 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 what is the hottest thing about your wife to you 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, when they have a sense of humor, it just makes it, it makes just 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. That's a good question. I don't know what she would say.

I don't know. I take good care of her. I like to cook for her, even though she's obviously the one with food credentials that I don't have. But I like to cook for her. I like to take care of her, pamper her, and make some romantic gestures. She probably likes that. So cute. of her pamper her and 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 like if we ever want to have a good time we

gotta lock the door that's does it your does your mother-in-law live with you yeah do you ever have to be like listen we're gonna go she's not the issue it's the kids like 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 yeah

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 the man in the relationship, not carrying the baby yourself, you feel this strong sense of grief, but also this powerlessness. 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 to really solve the core problem here. And so it was just heartbreaking, and we felt powerless. And it was like deep, deep grief, deep challenge, deep pain. And for me, I'm also, you know, having gone through dealing with trauma in my own family growing up, dealing with tragedy in our family and seeing, you know, my mom react to it in ways that weren't healthy. 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 we were able to get through it, but it was tough.

Yeah. I appreciate you sharing that about your family, because I think sometimes when you go through trauma, 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 i think you have to do the actual work 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 are fully aware that mental health is like a real thing that 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, 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, particularly pregnancy loss. And then so we would the fact that Chrissy was willing to talk about it publicly, combine that with 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 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, 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 you know 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 totally 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 yeah 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 ended up being just a beautiful thing yeah 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 to take care of your mental health are important, too. 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. We had Luna and Miles already, and it was so beautiful to have them in our lives as living manifestations of our love and what we created together. And then, of course, we tried to have another baby. And it happened. 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 she's creative she's dynamic and i see a lot of her in Luna. And whenever Luna makes us laugh, I'm like, OK, 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. Yeah, those are some of my favorite things about her that I want to see in my kids.

And she has a real sense of honesty and 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 like 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 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 even more musical.

But she is more excited about art, like 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 think that's great yeah congrats on your new piano album legend 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 uh kind of like a remix album of my previous albums um

like this but my um 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 uh legend was the double album that we put out in september she was like why don't you um do a solo version of it and i was like you know that's a great idea why hadn't i done that before so good and um 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 uh you know reincarnation and uh it worked i really had fun making it it's so good thank you what is your favorite song to perform on that album um 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 Black Eyed Peas 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 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. Thank you. Woo!