John Legend has performed at the Super Bowl, the NBA all-star game and a Major League Baseball game, all during 2006.
"I guess we have to do the Stanley Cup next," said the multiple Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter, whose new CD, Once Again, hits stores today.
"I don't know what else is left. Maybe the U.S. Open (tennis tournament). I saw Gladys Knight do something for that."
Legend, who hails from Springfield, Ohio, is such a sports nut -- football mostly, and he's a big Ohio State fan -- that his dream as a youngster wasn't to be a musician, but to be a play-by-play man.
"I wanted to be like (sports announcer) Bob Costas," said Legend, 27. "He's great, one of the best. But I also wanted to be a lawyer. I wanted to be different things, but usually it involved talking.
"The music thing worked out, though."
In terms of critical accalim, did it ever.
Legend's first CD, Get Lifted, was released in 2004 and achieved platinum status. It garnered eight Grammy nominations, and Legend took home three trophies.
Legend knows other artists work their entire lives to gain even a hint of the praise he already has received. But he's way harder on himself than the critics, who he feels tend to give him "a pass."
"Critics partly just give me a pass because I play piano and I write my own songs," Legend said. "There are so few artists who actually are doing that in pop music right now, so it's almost like they're just celebrating the fact that I'm not crap.
"The first hurdle is just not being crap. But my standards for myself probably are higher than what the critics' standards are for me. I'm snobbier than any of these critics. I'm critical of myself, I'm critical of everything I listen to.
"So for me it's beyond just, 'He can play, he can sing, he can write a song.' It's trying to make great songs and great records, songs that move people, songs that are transcendent. That's what I'm aiming for. So I figure if I do that, the critical acclaim will come, and will continue to come, as long as I keep my standards high and keep listening to great music."
Legend's new CD has elements of classic soul, classic pop and even traditional pop.
"That wasn't on purpose, it just kind of happened," Legend said. "Whenever I go someplace creatively, I don't turn myself away and say, 'No, you can't do that.' "
Based on the early returns, there doesn't appear to be much musically that the multi-talented Legend can't do. Through the coming years, it merely will be a matter of what kinds of sounds he wants to explore, and whether his explorations align with popular tastes or not.
Whatever happens, Legend always can find work as a sports announcer, or even a pre-game/halftime singer.
"The Super Bowl (pre-game) was with Stevie Wonder, India.Arie and Joss Stone," Legend recalled of his performance in Detroit last February. "Obviously it's the biggest TV program in America, and one of the biggest in the world -- not as big as the World Cup -- but in America everyone is watching, so it's intense. I only had a small part, so it wasn't too hard for me. I didn't get nervous. The NFL treated me very well and gave us a lot of cool perks and invited us to parties and all that stuff.
"The NBA treated us great, too. We were in Houston. The NBA all-star game obviously isn't as high-profile as the Super Bowl, but I got to do two of my own songs (during halftime). That was fun.
"And then Major League Baseball, I just sang God Bless America during the seventh-inning stretch of a game in Pittsburgh. That was 45 seconds or something, probably my shortest performance ever."
Sophomore jinxes notwithstanding, there likely is going to be nothing short about John Legend's career.
