Review: JOHN LEGEND – “Muse”

I’ve been listening to them both since the first hour: Legend from «Get Lifted», Pharrell from long before that Happy, since the days of the Neptunes and NERD. When I read that they were going to make an entire album together I allowed myself an enthusiasm that I usually keep at bay for a living.

«Muse» is John Legend’s eleventh album and, according to the two, it was born almost by chance. Pharrell was producing Clipse’s comeback album, Let God Sort ‘Em Out, and Legend sang on The Birds Don’t Singthe opening song. That voice was enough for Pharrell to imagine an album around it. In twenty years of friendship they had never signed a project together.

There are sixteen tracks, three of which are introductions to the songs that follow. The album was recorded in Paris in the studios of Louis Vuitton, the maison of which Pharrell directs the men’s line. Pharrell produced it entirely, participated in the writing of every song and also sings on six.

The starting point was a “Black James Bond aesthetic, but with a modern beat at the base”, and the album takes it literally. Strings and wind instruments are in the foreground and the orchestra weighs in as hasn’t happened in mainstream soul for years. The drums, however, remain dry, and the groove can be recognized as Pharrell’s from the first bars.

Nina Simone, Nat King Cole and Marvin Gaye are the declared models, and when listening you catch the atmosphere rather than a precise quote. Gospel, doo-wop, standards, Afrobeat and hip hop alternate without one prevailing over the others. The title Legend explains it with a phrase: «Our ancestors are our muses».

Pray For Ya, an overwhelming gospel, it had already been released as the soundtrack of Louis Vuitton’s autumn-winter 2026 men’s fashion show, and then of Pharrell’s Moët Ice Impérial campaign. You can feel that this music grew up alongside the catwalks, in the obsessive attention to sounds and in a certain pose. The first single, Daylight, he pulls towards Afrobeat and puts strings, percussion and a Gregorian choir in the background. With another manufacturer he would have risked kitsch, but with him it works.

Her takes up the doo-wop and gospel that Legend grew up with: it’s a portrait of tender and slightly nostalgic falling in love, and it’s the song in which you recognize him most. Get Back, with Pharrell, it is the one in which the idea of ​​the black Bond is most evident, with horns and strings pushed to the maximum. Are You OK? he talks about a couple’s argument with a sarcasm that is not expected from Legend and which he does well. In Bodies on the Floor Pusha T and Malice arrive, that is, the Clipse that started it all, and the language of gang wars becomes the way to describe a toxic relationship.

My reservation concerns balance. «Muse» sounds more like a Pharrell album sung by John Legend than a Legend album produced by Pharrell.

He confirms it himself: he recorded songs written entirely by Pharrell, something he almost never does, and he agreed to sing differently than usual. However, it is difficult to consider it a mistake, because it was what he was looking for. He explained that the piano ballads have always worked best in his career, and that he wanted to change. So he entrusted himself to a producer like the performers of the past, his muses, did. His signature is less audible, but he sings with a freedom that was missing in his latest records.

«Muse» is a record of great style and openly retro. It often runs the risk of seeming like a luxury object rather than an album, and it almost always escapes it.

On the cover there is only Legend’s name, but those who know Pharrell’s work will find him on every track.

SCORE: 8.00

TO LISTEN NOW

Daylight – Get Back – Bodies on the Floor

TO BE SKIPPED IMMEDIATELY

Almost impossible to get close to the skip button!

TRACKLIST