4.8 • 4.7K Ratings
🗓️ 2 June 2025
⏱️ 73 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
John Legend is a singer, songwriter, and producer known for his soulful voice, emotional depth, and ability to cross genres with ease. With multiple Grammy Awards, an EGOT to his name, and a career that’s spanned decades, John has also become a voice for compassion, activism, and vulnerability in the public eye.
In this episode, John opens up about some of the most intimate moments of his life, his complicated relationship with his mother, who faced deep struggles after family tragedies, and how that shaped him growing up. He also talks about the heartbreaking experience he and his wife, Chrissy Teigen, went through with the loss of their baby, and how sharing that pain publicly became a way to heal and help others facing similar grief.
John also reflects on his once close bond with Kanye West, a friendship that deeply influenced his early music career but has since grown distant.
This episode offers a raw and honest exploration of vulnerability, healing, and the strength it takes to navigate life’s toughest moments while staying true to yourself.
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0:00.0 | Introducing our new how-to masterclass series, learn from Olympic champion Jess Ennis Hill, |
0:06.0 | physiologist Olly Patrick, and our very own expert, Damien Hughes, exclusively on the high-performance app. |
0:14.0 | My mother was living in the street. She started using drugs, self-medicating. She was out of our lives, where he is now |
0:24.5 | very sad and disappointing and pretty alien from the person I knew. I had this drive in me, |
0:32.6 | this fire, this passion in me. Every aspect of my life had music in it. The best way for them to get to know |
0:39.8 | who I was was for me to sing. Coming up on high performance, John Legend, our very first |
0:47.5 | he got guest. That's right. This is a guy with an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony, all resting |
0:54.1 | on one mantlepiece. |
0:56.6 | In this powerful conversation, John opens up to me about being abandoned by his mother as a child, |
1:02.5 | his slow and steady rise to stardom, and why he's still working to live up to the name, |
1:08.4 | legend. |
1:09.9 | He shares the real story behind his decade-long marriage |
1:13.0 | to supermodel Chrissy Teigen, |
1:15.3 | the secrets to making it work in the spotlight, |
1:18.1 | and where he now stands with the man he says |
1:20.0 | helped launch his career, Kanye West. |
1:23.6 | This is a remarkable life lived with purpose. |
1:27.0 | So let's get on and welcome John Legend to high performance. |
1:35.5 | Well, John, you've run an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony, one of only 19 people. |
1:41.6 | If you could only keep one lesson from one moment of your career and not the awards, |
1:46.3 | what would it be and why? |
1:48.3 | One lesson. |
... |
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