Darkness and Light

Album: Darkness & Light (2016)
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Songfacts®:

  • John Legend duets with the Alabama Shakes' lead singer Brittany Howard on this slow-burning soul rocker. The song finds the duo recalling a night of passion. The track's producer Blake Mills, also produced Alabama Shakes' Sound & Color album.
  • Though the song title does not appear in the lyrics, Legend chose to name the album after this tune. He explained at the Darkness and Light listening party:

    "Some artists come up with the title before the album. For me, I write the songs first and discover where I'm going. While 'Darkness and Light' is the name of one of the songs, those words also just kept coming back to me. There's a lot of darkness in the world, pain and conflict. But the album also represents the desire to find light, optimism, love and joy in the midst of all of that.

    Then there was another thing I didn't put together until a few weeks after my daughter Luna was born. The song that was playing when she came out was Curtis Mayfield's 'Superfly.' I was just randomly playing songs when [wife] Chrissy [Teigen] was like, 'Speed it up, I'm tired of these mellow songs.' So I played more uptempo songs and 'Superfly' happened to be playing when Luna came out. And the first line of that song is 'Darkest of night with the moon shining bright.' We didn't think of that when deciding on her name. But in deciding the name of the album, all of these separate things ended up coming together, kind of a confirmation."

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