Right By You (for Luna)

Album: Darkness & Light (2016)
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Songfacts®:

  • This sweet, thoughtful ballad was written for John Legend's baby daughter Luna. The singer welcomed his first child with wife Chrissy Teigen in April 2016.

    "When I played it for her and Chrissy for the first time, I just started crying because it felt so real to me and felt so appropriate for how I feel as a new father," Legend said to The Associated Press.
  • The song raises questions about what it means to be a father. "We wrote it before she was born, in fact. And it was kind of in anticipation of being a new father and kind of the uncertainty that comes with it and the questions that we all have about how's your kid gonna turn out," Legend explained to ABC Radio. "How are you gonna be as a parent? Are you gonna influence them in the right way? So it's kind of approaching all of that."
  • The moving ballad features tenor sax from Kamasi Washington. The American jazz saxophonist also played on Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly and arranged and conducted the string section on the Compton rapper's "Mortal Man."

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