Neo-soul singer-songwriter-pianist John Legend normally headlines his own shows.
But the musician says the offer to open for British R&B-soul star Sade on a 50-date summer tour -- including three Canadian shows -- was an offer he couldn't refuse, especially in the current economic climate.
"To really sell an arena show it's not enough to have one big act these days, you really need two a lot of times and I felt like the combination of me and Sade was something I couldn't pass up," he said down the line from his New York City home before hitting Toronto's Air Canada Centre on Tuesday night.
"She's got a really great band and it's a really great tour and I normally headline theatres and amphitheatres but I've never done a headlining arena tour. It's cool to be playing on an arena stage with such a legendary act like Sade. I think it's giving the fans such a great show and really soulful, sensual night. We're having a really good time."
Legend, 32, was a recent triple Grammy winner, for his own song Shine, and with The Roots for best R&B album for Wake Up! their 2010 collaboration of socially and politically conscious '60s and '70s soul covers, and best traditional R&B vocal performance for Hang On In There.
In the meantime, Legend is working on a new solo album due early next year with longtime collaborator Kanye West as executive producer, as well as producing and co-writing some songs.
"When I spoke to Kanye, I said to him, 'We have to try help to find what 21st century soul is supposed to sound like.' If you think about the people who I've often been compared to, like some of the classic soul artists like Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder, and Donny Hathaway, I said, 'It's not enough for us to kind of just make retreads of what those guys did. How can we make something that the new Donny Hathaway or the new Marvin Gaye or the new Stevie Wonder would make? All that's come before us but also doing something that's new and modern.' And really that was our mission statement when we were thinking about the music and how we wanted it to sound."
