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The Unlikely Return of Cat Stevens

By Howard Fishman

Early in a Cat Stevens, a.k.a. Yusuf Islam, a.k.a. Yusuf/Cat Stevens, concert in Boston a couple of years ago, there was a hushed pause in the room as the then sixty-six-year-old performer waited for a stagehand to bring him a guitar in between songs. “I’m really happy to be here!” the singer suddenly exclaimed. It did not sound like ersatz show-biz banter; it sounded humble, childlike even, as if he himself were surprised by the emotion. It sounded like capitulation. The crowd, in response, rose to its feet en masse, producing a sound that was more than just a cheer. It was an embrace. It was an acknowledgment by artist and audience alike: Cat Stevens, a figure who, for all intents and purposes, had ceased to exist more than three decades ago, had come back.

For a long time, it has been hard to love the man once known (and now known again) as Cat Stevens. In the years since he formally retired from the popular music world, in 1978, his name has popped up in the media from time to time. He would be quoted, or seen in a video-clip interview, and it was difficult to accept the visage of the person whom he now presented himself as—to reconcile this cold, humorless, unhappy, and severe-looking man with the joyful, understanding, goofy, wise songwriter whose music we’d known and loved. For a long time, the man who’d changed his name to Yusuf Islam had completely disowned his artistic output as Cat Stevens—a confusing, dispiriting slap in the face to those it once meant a great deal to.

The man who was Cat Stevens ran Islamic schools for children, spreading the word of Allah, and acted as a spokesperson for Islam. After a while, he began making some children’s albums, but he wasn’t playing the guitar, and the music was not for his traditional fan base . In interviews, he sounded defensive and removed. Some remarks attributed to him seemed to be in line with some of the more distasteful prejudices of orthodox Islam.

Then, in 2006, came “An Other Cup,” his first album of commercial music in twenty-eight years. He’d dropped his adopted last name of Islam, and was now calling himself, simply, Yusuf. Something had shifted, certainly. How welcome it was to hear that voice with that guitar again, after all these years. Still, the album’s opening track, “Midday (Avoid City After Dark),” set a tone of unease, paranoia, and judgment that never really lifted. Elsewhere on the recording, there was a revisit to a much earlier composition (“I Think I See the Light”) and an interesting (if forced-sounding) reworking of a section of his “Foreigner Suite” (“Heaven/Where True Love Goes”), but the bulk of the album felt earthbound. Nowhere was there the joie de vivre that inhabited his best work. The follow-up, “Roadsinger,” in 2009, sounded fresher, but still unconvincing. Which was it—was he wary of us, or we of him? There seemed to be skepticism and distrust on both sides.

Some live performances began to appear here and there online. Yusuf was steadfast about not playing any old Cat Stevens material, save for a select few songs that he could justify in the context of his religious path, such as “The Wind” and “Peace Train.” He had collaborated on a musical called “Moonshadow” that featured actors singing some of his old songs and was having a run in Australia. It proved a critical and financial flop.

I paid attention to all of this because, unhip as this may be to admit, the music of Cat Stevens once meant a great deal to me. I did not grow up listening to it, per se (I was too young), but his music became the soundtrack to my adolescence when I watched “ Harold and Maude ” for the first time, and my world changed. I went out and got a guitar. I listened to Cat Stevens obsessively, played and sang his songs with friends, hunted down all of his albums. While it was clear that he’d lost his way artistically on later albums like “Numbers” and “Izitso,” the earlier, classic albums that he’s still known for (“Mona Bone Jakon” through “Foreigner”) were full of treasures that could be mined again and again. Indelible melodies, beautiful production, emotionally committed performances, and, most of all, a gentle wisdom, a repudiation of the status quo, a sense that we were not alone. Here was someone who was trying to make sense of life, too; he may not have had the answers, but he was looking for them, and we were encouraged to join him. Here was a friend.

Of course, I quickly learned that Cat Stevens had already ceased to be. My adolescent soul despaired, knowing that there would be no more Cat Stevens albums, no more Cat Stevens concerts. The man who had become a hero to me had long since retired from the music world.

In time, his music, too, would fade from my consciousness. As I grew and matured, so did my musical tastes and sensibilities. I might reach for a Cat Stevens album on rare occasions, to remind myself of something that I’d once treasured, sometimes surprised that a song or album held up as strongly as it did, but his music was no longer a living thing for me. I was intrigued when he came out of retirement with the two Yusuf albums, and listened to each of them a handful of times with attendant hopes and (it seemed) inevitable disappointment. It was hard to get excited about his music now. The voice was the same, but the spirit was changed, different, unwelcoming.

Nevertheless, when it was announced, in late 2014, that he was going to perform in America for the first time in thirty-eight years, I put my misgivings aside and became a teen-ager again, queueing up for tickets on the phone the morning they went on sale. I did not listen to his latest album, “Tell ‘Em I’m Gone,” nor did I look for any news about the kinds of shows that he’d been playing of late. I simply drove up to Boston to see my old hero, expectations dimmed to almost nothing. I imagined that there I would see Yusuf Islam, delivering a respectful program of his latter-day music, with perhaps one or two old favorites thrown in as crowd appeasement. I wasn’t going for Yusuf Islam. I was going to pay homage to the singer whose music had once so inspired me, for the chance to simply be in the same room with him for the first (and what I assumed would be the last) time.

It has taken some time for me to think clearly about what it was like to be at that show. What happened there was more than just a good concert given by a group of well-rehearsed, talented musicians, backing a pop icon on a comeback tour, though it was partly that. It was more than just a nostalgic trip down memory lane, as a sold-out crowd sang along to songs that many (including myself) never expected to hear played live again, though it was partly that, too. Without resorting to hyperbole, being there, for me, was an unexpected catharsis, something like seeing a ghost.

I didn’t know, until I got there, that the singer was now billing himself with the ungainly but revealing name of Yusuf/Cat Stevens. Was he now acknowledging his former self? This was a surprise, the first of many that the evening would hold.

The once and future Cat Stevens walked onstage to a tremendous ovation (no surprise there) and launched into a solo performance of “The Wind.” O.K., in some way, this was what we’d all come for, and here he’d already given it to us. All the latter-day Yusuf stuff would follow, we’d give him some hearty applause at the encore, and that would be that—or so I thought. What was this, though? He was wearing sunglasses and a leather jacket—not the austere, devotional garb he’d worn in the (admittedly not so recent) appearances that I’d seen online. And the stage set—it was elaborate, whimsical, evocative of the old Cat, whose tastes sometimes crossed the line into outright silliness. Most significantly, though, he himself seemed engaged, connected, and—hardest to believe—lighthearted.

“Here Comes My Baby” and “The First Cut Is the Deepest” followed, two pop hits from the infancy of his career, both secular love songs, both jarring surprises. “Thinking ‘Bout You” followed, a more recent song of love and devotion, but it was buoyed by an energy and commitment that sustained the freshness of what had come before, and served as a bridge to the first real shock of the night, as the singer made his way to a piano at the side of the stage and, unaccompanied, launched into the opening strains of “Sitting,” and the crowd seemed to collectively gasp before erupting into joyous, grateful cheers. Here he was again. Cat Stevens. Questioning, seeking, proudly admitting that he did not have the answers, but that he was on his way to find them. Our companion, our friend, had returned.

It was the first of what would be many goosebump-inducing moments in the generous, two-part concert. He followed it with “Last Love Song,” from 1978’s obscure (and mostly uninspired-sounding) “Back to Earth,” the mere fact that he was exploring and reclaiming rarities from his back catalogue speaking volumes. By the time he reached the end of the first set, closing it with “If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out,” the message was clear—something had happened. He was giving us back the songs he’d taken away so many years ago. He was, after all this time, validating their worth again, and with it, our love for them. After insisting for so many years, as Yusuf Islam, that there was only one way, only one truth, one law, one path, he’d relented. He was giving us permission, again, to do and think and live how we wanted. And he seemed genuinely happy saying and singing it.

The second set held even more surprises, as song after song from the old œuvre was brought back to life. “Oh Very Young,” “Sad Lisa,” “Miles from Nowhere” (I have my freedom / I can make my own rules / Oh yeah, the ones that I choose). They were presented, for the most part, as set pieces, with hardly any improvisation at all, but that didn’t matter. The faithful Alun Davies was there on lead acoustic guitar, as he has been since 1970. Matt Sweeney was a welcome addition on electric guitar, adding a pinch of verve and danger to the mix, but if old concert footage is any indication, Cat Stevens was never one for taking too many risks onstage musically, choosing instead to eschew spontaneity in deference to the arrangements on his studio recordings.

It was touching to hear the singer-songwriter still tinkering with that beautiful failure “Foreigner Suite,” still trying to get it right. Classics such as “Where Do the Children Play?” and “Trouble” brought with them a great sadness; confronted with the simplicity, the naïveté even, of the sentiments in these gentle lyrics, it was impossible not to think of how the world has changed and darkened since these songs were written and last performed. Even “Moonshadow,” his lullaby of Buddhist acceptance, carried with it the sting of longing for less dire times.

Being at that concert, hearing those songs again, sung with conviction by that man, was like being allowed to spend a night in one’s childhood home, with everything back the way that it was from some preëxistential, innocent moment—with even one’s family members frozen in time the way that they were decades ago. For me, it was eerie, spooky, unsettling, like Emily’s return from the dead in “Our Town.”

At the end of each of these old songs, there was that same sustained applause that followed his aside, early in the show, about how happy he was to be there. It’s a sound I keep coming back to in my mind when I think about the experience of being at that concert, a sound distinct from any that I think I have ever heard. It was an entity, a palpable force, as though the emotion behind every voice and every pair of hands could be heard. There was a sort of desperate celebration to it. It was the sound of reconciliation, of gratitude, of redemption.

Yusuf/Cat Stevens has a new album coming out this week, called “A Laughing Apple,” and more tour dates have been announced. I have not heard the new recording yet, but news of its release has led me to reflect on that night, when it felt as though this shape-shifting performer had brought someone we once loved back from the dead, a phantom from another time, and with that act offered tacit acknowledgment that we’re so much better together than we are apart. It’s a notion as naïvely idealistic as any he ever gave us; an echo from the past, finding its way to us past a wall that is, miraculously, no longer there.

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By Amanda Petrusich

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I saw Yusuf/Cat Stevens at the Ryman Auditorium a few years ago. In Nashville, we’re kind of spoiled with all the concerts available to us but this was truly exceptional. We were given an intimate look into his life, almost as if we had been invited into his living room for a personal chat with his music woven in. Truly one of the most memorable concerts I’ve ever attended and I feel fortunate to have had the experience!

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The Cat is AMAZING!

Saw him in London at the "You Are Not Alone" charity concert.

Powerful, moving, elegant, and masterfully human. Catch any show where he performs, prepare to cry, with joy.

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Cat Stevens announces 5-city US concert tour

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NEW YORK (AP) — New Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member Cat Stevens is taking the “Peace Train” back on the road.

He announced Monday that he will make a six-city concert tour in North America this December, his first series of shows in the U.S. since 1976. His conversion to Islam followed, putting his music career on hold for a quarter century.

Stevens, who also is releasing a blues album on Oct. 27 produced by Rick Rubin and titled “Tell ‘Em I’m Gone,” is using that stage name along with Yusuf, the name he took when he converted. The performer of 1970s-era hits “Wild World,” ’'Morning Has Broken” and “Peace Train” has slowly broken back into secular music during the past decade and has made only a handful of semi-public and television appearances in the U.S.

“I’ve been a bit slow in coming around to the United States, but there were so many people asking me to do that, that I just felt an obligation,” Stevens said in a telephone interview from Dubai, where he lives most of the time now.

The title of the “Peace Train ... Late Again” tour refers to his unhurried music career. Only six dates are scheduled so far — starting Dec. 1 in Toronto and hitting Boston, New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Stevens said he frequently gets feedback on Facebook asking him to perform more and that it makes him feel guilty “because I’m not doing as much as they want me to do. Then again, I’m 66 years old, and I do take things in my stride.”

Stevens, who was inducted into the rock hall this spring in Brooklyn, said he had a lot of hesitation about getting back into the music business.

“That’s something I ran away from a long time ago,” he said. “But that’s not to say the music business is the same as making music. When I finally reconciled my questions about the issue — where it should be in my life — by that time, I had something to say. I wouldn’t be writing songs if I didn’t have something to say.”

Despite the political climate, with the U.S. fighting Islamic State militants in the Middle East, Stevens said he didn’t expect his faith to be an issue when he goes on the road in this country.

“I’m afraid that a lot of things that people believe about Islam are totally different from the religion that most of us recognize,” he said. “I was really fortunate that I got to know Islam before it became a headline.”

Gary Bongiovanni, editor of the concert industry trade publication Pollstar, said he didn’t expect problems, although it would be different if Stevens had spoken out in favor of the Islamic State militants, for instance. He said it looked like a modest tour designed to test the waters and that if Stevens makes clear he’ll be playing his old hits — Stevens said he will — he should get some interest.

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Yusuf / Cat Stevens talks re-recording Father And Son and Tea For The Tillerman, 50 years on

By Thomas Barrie

Of all the politically and socially charged music to arise from the late 1960s, the album that has demonstrated perhaps the most longevity and continued appeal is Cat Stevens’ Tea For The Tillerman . Tillerman was a statement of intent from Stevens, as pertinent today as it was when it came out in 1970, with strong themes of environmentalism, generational divides and personal change and growth; in a sense, some of the questions on the album pre-empted Steven’s own search for fulfilment and his subsequent high-profile conversion to Islam in 1977. Its best-known track, “Father And Son”, takes the form of a conversation between a young man and his father, debating both sides of the age-old question as to whether a person should seek to change the world around them or try to carve out a place within it and live contentedly. While the younger Stevens – who now records under the name Yusuf – chose the first option, deeply questioning his fame and lifestyle before largely withdrawing from the world of pop music, at 71 he is settled: he lives in Dubai, where he continues to record music and coordinate a charitable initiative called Peace Train.

Yusuf travelled to France last year with his son Yoriyos, his tour band and a number of the original collaborators from Tillerman , to re-record a new version of the album, called Tea For The Tillerman 2 . He spoke to GQ about returning to a classic half a century later.

GQ: Talk us through the genesis of the project. It was your son’s idea?

Cat Stevens/Yusuf: That’s right. It was coming up to the Tillerman ’s birthday and we thought, “Well, what can we do to put a smile on his face?” And we thought, “Well, let’s record it again.” That was his idea. And I love a challenge and I thought, “Why not?” 

When I go out on stage, these days – the tour’s going to be delayed for a while now, but when I do – I like to change things around sometimes. So “Wild World” is a drastic departure from the original. It’s fun for me. I don’t go quite as far as Dylan does – I don’t think you can recognise the songs at a Dylan concert. With me, you recognise the song and the lyrics. The sentiment is very strong, still clear. But I play around with the music. I’m an arranger. I love that aspect of making music. 

We found this great studio in the south of France. It’s got massive history itself; the whole ambience is beautiful and the weather was great. It was summer and we just booked it for a week. I got all my musical friends together – I got Paul Samwell-Smith back on board, Alun Davis came along, Bruce Lynch, my old bass player and some new faces I tour with – all very brilliant musicians. And it was a very inspired week at La Fabrique.

How do the songs on this album differ from the originals, if at all?

I call it a reimagination of the album. There are so many songs people have adopted as their theme tunes for life from the album. There’s “Father And Son”, “Wild World”, “Where Do The Children Play?”… Every song has its own universe. There are some that you can’t really change that much – for instance, “Into White”. It’s just such a pretty song. It’s picturesque. It uses all the colours. It’s like painting with words. It pretty much stays the same, but in a new key, perhaps a little bit more dynamic. And then things like “Sad Lisa” – you can’t really play around too much with it. It’s already made beautiful with the arpeggio piano, but we just made it a little bit more up to date with synthesisers and a few other little touches and themes. 

What I did play around with was a song called “Longer Boats”. I couldn’t live with the lyrics of the original any more, and, in fact, I had another verse which I never recorded in 1970. It was all to do with aliens. I talk about, “Raise your mind up / look around / you can see them / they’re looking down on a lonely asteroid / in a vacant void / dying, but not destroyed.” That’s to do with aliens looking down on us and going, “What the heck is going on? What are these creatures doing? What’s their objective? What are they doing to the earth?” Anyway, I changed that radically. I stopped at a certain point, after a certain bar, and I ripped into a James Brown, funky approach. And it was great! “Miles From Nowhere”, I think, is quite a classic and we’ve taken it to another level. There’s some great guitar work on there. On “Wild World”, I just freaked out a little bit and did something totally different. I call that my “black and white” arrangement: it goes back to black-and-white films and Casablanca and smoky bars. It’s interesting, that one. 

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On “Father And Son”, I found this beautiful melody which came out of the chord sequence. And I just had to use it. We used it on tour. And now it’s embedded in the song. We took my voice from 1970 for “Father And Son” – the voice of a male, 22 years old, singing in The Troubadour in Los Angeles – and we use that voice [for the son’s part]. So, today, you can hear my voice in the 1970s and you can hear my voice now [singing the father’s part], brought together with the magic of digital editing.

Tell me about “Father And Son”, specifically. Where did that song stem from?

“Father And Son” is probably the most prominent and profound song on the album. It doesn’t necessarily refer to my dad. It was originally written for a musical. So, after I had my first expedition, you might say, into the pop fray, which happened in ’67, ’68, I was taken very ill with tuberculosis and I was suddenly erased from the scene. 

During that time, I was really looking within myself and trying to find where my centre was, and where I was going… all the big important questions you ask yourself when you’re on death’s doorstep – or it seemed to me, anyway. And I came back to my original ambition, which was to become a composer of musicals. I was living in the West End and musicals were a big thing in my life. I got together with Nigel Hawthorne and we started writing this musical called Revolussia.  

Yusuf/Cat Stevens in the studio with his son Yoriyos

Essentially, it was about Nicholas and Alexander, the last tsars of Russia, and against that there’s another story about this family in the farmland, in the country. And the father, of course, basically wants to keep things as they are, while the son is really inspired by the revolution. He wants to join. And so that’s the inspiration for that song. That’s why I’m able to represent both sides – though I feel that my preference, my emphasis, was on the son’s side, and the father’s arguments were not quite as strong as the son’s, which is interesting. Change is basically the theme of the song.

And that’s incredibly relevant now, of course – as relevant as it ever has been since 1970. Does it feel the same when you revisit it today?

It’s a powerful song, whatever way you approach it. You can take many different positions on it. Some people relate it to their own parents, and their own family, but also against the backdrop right now. That’s the great thing about youth – it has a fresh take on life. It comes in, brand new, and says, “Well, OK, what’s going on? Why are you doing this? Isn’t there a better way?” The child is daring with all kinds of questions, being able to challenge the status quo, which is what we’re facing when we’re born into a system. 

For instance, on the racist issue [and the global Black Lives Matter protests ]. People are saying, “Why are we continuing to go down this route? It’s not leading towards anything positive, so why can’t we all look at our ideals and revisit them?” And that’s great. I mean, that’s the message of the song. Let’s look at our ideals. And let’s see if we’re in the right place now; if we’re not, let’s move.

Do you have more sympathy for the father now? Or do you still identify with the son?

Absolutely. I’ve never really adopted the father. Even though I look much closer to his persona now, with the grey beard and everything.

You mentioned that it is more of an allegorical song than an autobiographical one and that your father was largely supportive of your career and your life decisions. Is that broadly true? Could you tell me a little bit more about that?

I think my life has been a play out of my lyrics, whether I wrote them before I did it or not. Now, of course, I’m in more of a reflective mood, so I could write about what I’ve done. But for many of my songs, there are hints and signposts towards what I was destined to do anyway in life. And I mean, I wrote one lyric in “On The Road To Find Out” from Tea For The Tillerman . I have this last verse where I say, “Pick up a good book.” Well, that was a prediction of what was going to happen. I picked up the Quran and suddenly my whole view of life recentred. There was no room for me to develop in the old atmosphere, which was the pop world and the music business. I needed to grow. I needed to get a life.

So do you see some of these songs as presaging your decision to convert to Islam?

No, no. I see music as a gift and all I’m doing is I’m just enjoying that gift. With certain presents, you unwrap it and that’s it. The thrill has gone after you’ve ripped off the wrapping paper. But not with music. Music continues to vibrate and mean something.

After my first experience in the pop music business, I was careful to be as honest with myself as possible with my writing, what I was doing, where I was and why, what I was looking for. I tried to explain everything in my songs. And that’s why I think they still live. They still relate, because a lot of kids, I’m sure, are going through that stage of questioning “If things are the way they are now, are they going to stay like that forever?”. No. Things have got to change.

Can you describe what it was like for you when this album came out in 1970?

It was a roller coaster. Once it began, it was non-stop, it went faster and faster. My success was an incredibly large thing to deal with. When it came to my fourth album [ Tea For The Tillerman ], it just went “Wham!” and zoomed up in the Billboard charts. That shook me and I didn’t feel that comfortable. I didn’t want to be nailed into any particular goal. I didn’t want to feel I was a product, which tends to be the thing that happens when you get to a certain stature. Or you become a kind of a hologram of yourself: you don’t really live or breathe any more, you’re doing it for public.

Do you think you’ve managed to avoid the trap of becoming a pastiche of yourself?

There’s a balance. It’s a tightrope, really. There are big megastars out there. I’m not a megastar any more. I’m just me. I’ve got a history and I’ve got my story to tell. I think I’ve found a balance, as much as my story is relevant and has hints for people who are looking in different directions as to how to know what to believe in. It’s good to have someone like me around for a time. I’m filling a role.

Lyrically, this album is incredibly relevant, still, today – you wrote about concern for the natural world, generational divides, political change… which lyrics speak to you the strongest, today?

I suppose the most prescient is “Where Do The Children Play”. It’s become clear that what I was talking about, the problem, has not gone away. It’s just got bigger and more dangerous. If you listen to that, there’s also a reference towards what we’re living in – a corporate world. And that’s why this rebellion or upsurge in wanting to find our human balance again, and the freedom that goes along with that, is happening. It’s great. We’ve got a voice.

Tea For The Tillerman²   is out on 18 September. Lead single “Where Do The Children Play?” is out now.

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Cat Stevens at Alexandreon Athleticon, Thessaloniki, Greece

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Cat Stevens at Karaiskaki Stadium, Piraeus, Greece

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Cat Stevens at Hala Tivoli, Ljubljana, Slovenia

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Yusuf/Cat Stevens on Songwriting, Spirituality, and Climate Hope

By Simon Vozick-Levinson

Simon Vozick-Levinson

Plenty of songwriters spent the early 1970s looking for some kind of truth, but none of them sang about that quest with as much authentic conviction as Cat Stevens . On songs like “Where Do the Children Play?,” “Miles from Nowhere,” “The Wind,” and “Father and Son,” the London-born artist spoke for a generation that was watching the trusted institutions of the past crumble, leaving big questions in their wake. What’s our place in the universe? Is living a good life compatible with individual happiness? Does getting older necessarily mean growing wiser? He didn’t just ask those questions — he let you hear how badly he needed to know the answers.

Lately, he’s been working with his son on retrospective projects like 2020’s entirely re-recorded Tea for the Tillerman² , last year’s Teaser and the Firecat box set, and a new 50th-anniversary LP release of the Harold and Maude soundtrack. “It’s been rejuvenating,” he reflects. “It’s great to go back into that time, that era, and listen again to what you did. It’s slightly distant now; obviously it’s not the kind of music I’m making today. So I admire it probably even more now, because of the distance. We were riding a wave, and it was beautiful.”

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“I know for sure there’s only one God, and that’s it,” he says. “Beyond that, there’s a whole lot more to learn, and you never stop thirsting for more knowledge.”

What’s the best advice anyone has ever given you? I would have to go to the prophetic sources: “Leave that which makes you doubt for that which does not make you doubt.” That’s a great piece of advice. We’re constantly having to choose; we’re creatures of choice, and we try to assert our wills. Sometimes we may have a problem choosing what’s the best. Remove yourself from that which makes you doubt, for that which does not make you doubt — that means you have a calmness about you and you can relax a little bit, rather than having these monkeys jumping around in your head all day.

Do you remember the mindset that produced “The Wind,” which opens Teaser and the Firecat ? What was driving that for you? I’m talking to somebody; I think it’s the divine, but I’m not quite sure, and because I’m not sure, it’s universal. When it comes to the sun, which is part of the lyrics [“I’ve sat upon the setting sun”] — that means that you’re not really part of the physical world anymore. That was my goal: to be able to detach myself from my physical surroundings and material things. I was very earnestly searching. I would visit esoteric bookshops whenever I could, and pick up whatever new pathway to the truth I could find. That was my modus operandi. And I was writing songs at the same time, so all of that was informing what I was writing.

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Do you wish you had found that certainty earlier in your life, or was it necessary to go through the searching before you got there? Oh, yeah, for sure — I had to go through that. That’s part of the learning process. Mistakes are what makes us, in a way. So no, no, no. I wouldn’t have written all of those great songs — come on! [ Laughs. ] It was important and it was necessary and it had to be.

When you think back to the music that was around when you were younger, is there anything that still speaks to you now? R&B was always my home. Classical, as well, but you had to wait for a long time to get to the idea with a classical piece, whereas an R&B song was three minutes. I would go to the blues — things like John Lee Hooker, “Boom, boom, boom, boom,” and all those groovy songs. And then I like the classics. I like Tchaikovsky. I like Beethoven. I love them, in fact. You’re talking about the best pop song ever, that’s got to be Beethoven’s Ninth. That will always move you.

Who do you see as your musical peers? In the beginning you were frequently compared to people like Bob Dylan and Paul Simon. In musical terms, in that genre, I would definitely see myself in that group. But it’s what follows after that. What happened next? That’s important. We’re all in the game of survival; we all want to make sure we get through this. I’ve taken a few interesting turnings in my life, and those I think have benefited me. I haven’t gambled, but I’ve risked. Doing things other than what was expected. I think that’s paid off.

Many musicians have written songs about searching for God. Something that fascinates people about your career is that you really followed through on that in your life. Yeah. I mean, Little Richard left music. He said it was the devil’s stuff. Then he came back again. But yeah — I did strive, not only lyrically, but mentally, spiritually, to attain the ideals of my songs.

Little Richard spent many years moving back and forth between music and the church. You’ve followed a bit more of a straight line, haven’t you? That’s true. There was a time when I rejected everything. You can read John Lennon’s own words, saying the Beatles were nothing. We all go through that when we find something else. But yes, there is a consistency, I think, and I’m very grateful to God for the consistency in my life.

You faced a lot of hostility from the world when you first told people about your faith. Do you think the world has gotten any better at understanding Islam since then? Well, we’ve got a Muslim mayor in London, so that’s not bad. That’s at least progress in one direction. … It’s important to give the right job to the right person. But when it comes to spiritual things, that’s where we get a little bit confused. A lot of people want to claim that they’ve got the truth and it’s exclusive. That’s the problem.

What’s the best part of success, and what’s the worst part of being a successful musician? Success is incredibly unstable. It’s ever moving somewhere else. You can’t really chase it; if you do, you may fail totally. In order to be successful, you’ve got to be true to yourself and what you believe. You’re not going to be another Elvis, so be who you are, and don’t scramble to grab what other people have got.

The past two years have been a time of reflection for many people. What have you learned from the pandemic era, if anything? It’s taught us all that we can change. We can do things differently. We’ve learned that we can live on less. The problem is that the economic machines want things to stay the way they are. They’ve got to find new ways of making money out of this new reality. So you have to be aware.

It’s put a big strain on a lot of people, and I feel most sorry for those who were kept in their urban prisons — a one-bedroom flat somewhere. That’s scary. The freedom that we’ve been given, it should make us value that freedom more.

What do you do for fun, to relax?   I may do some art. I may get into Photoshop and do some things. I like all the artwork I’ve been putting together for the Teaser and the Firecat box set, and before that Tillerman . My son’s got me lined up for Catch Bull next. I really do enjoy it. I might watch a bit of football. Competition, I like my team to win.

By the way, I’m also writing my autobiography. That hopefully will come out [in 2022], as well.

Does the memoir cover your whole life? Oh, yeah, it’s absolutely my whole life. If you want to know about me and Jimi Hendrix, it’s in there. It’s terrific. Some friends have read it, and they went, “Oh, my God, I don’t feel as if I’ve lived!” Because I’ve done so many things, and I’m grateful for being given the chance to do that. It’s everything.

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Are you still writing new songs? Yep. In fact we’ve got a whole album in the can, ready to go. It was just the Tea for the Tillerman 50th that knocked that back. I think it’s good — it’s enabled me to look at a couple of songs and say, “Well, I might do a better mix on that one.” So we’ve got an album more or less ready now to come out. All new songs. I wrote a new song last week! Sometimes you do things, you don’t really know what you’re doing, and suddenly it develops into a song. It feels like a gift coming to you out of nowhere. It’s beautiful, the feeling of writing a song.

What kind of songs are they? This recent one is about the climate. It’s two people, a husband and wife, talking about the old days, and how the world used to be in their time. A little like “Old Friends,” by Simon & Garfunkel, but as an up-to-date climate reflection. The songs are always going to be, in some way, leaning toward idealism and morality — and the problems that get in the way. 

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Cat Stevens Shares Worldly “All Nights, All Days,” From Upcoming Album ‘King of a Land’

by Tina Benitez-Eves May 18, 2023, 9:18 am

On Yusuf / Cat Stevens new song “All Nights, All Days,” from his upcoming album King of a Land, out June 16, 2023, he questions what would happen in the world if he shook things up a bit. 

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The Americana-driven track finds Yusuf pleading for a way to peace and change— I shake the world around / Until my little mellow home is found / I look ‘til I find my beauty. He’ll swim the ocean wide or take the world apart in order to put it back together in better order.

“I like to take on different genres,” said Stevens in a statement on the sound of the track. “‘All Nights’ just felt naturally born for that, but it could easily have ended up somewhere else.”

Throughout the songs, Stevens suggests some of his solutions, including removing all the bad “parts.” “The only way that we can get on in peace is to get rid of most of them,” said Stevens. “Not all, perhaps—but most.”

To visually compliment “All Nights, All Days,” is a mixed media video produced by Studio Linguine referencing the 1971 film Harold and Maude, which included a soundtrack composed by Stevens. In the video, the main characters of Harold and Maude appear in the video and are chased into the forest by “evil” politicians, who are later locked up at the London Zoo.

“All Nights, All Days” follows Stevens’ recent release of “King of a Land,’ which he released around the coronation of King Charles III.

“I wish they’d give him a bit more power, actually,” said Stevens of the title track. “I despair a bit about politics. I think it’s great to have someone who oversees things and maybe walks in and reminds everyone how they should behave. If they don’t, then I would suggest that he takes the initiative and locks up all the troublesome ones, in London Zoo, as opposed to the Tower.”

On June 25, Stevens is set to make his debut at the Glastonbury Festival with a performance on the iconic Pyramid Stage. Stevens’ upcoming performance and the release of King of a Land occur nearly one month before his 75th birthday on July 21.

In 2020, Stevens released Tea for the Tillerman 2, a reimagining of his 1970 album,  Tea for the Tillerman . Last year, Stevens also commemorated the 50th anniversary of his ’ highest-charting album,  Catch Bull At Four , by releasing it on vinyl for the first time since its original release in 1972.

Earlier in 2023, Stevens also shared his rendition of George Harrison -penned Beatles hit “ Here Comes the Sun ” on Feb. 25, which would have marked Harrison’s 80th birthday.

Stevens recently signed to  Dark Horse Records , the label Harrison originally founded in 1974, which is now run by his son  Dhani Harrison  and David Zonshine. Under Dark Horse, seven albums from the Yusuf / Cat Stevens catalog will be re-released. The label will also operate Stevens’ official online merchandise store.

Photos by Aminah Islam / Shore Fire Media

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Cat Stevens, AKA Yusuf Islam, Kicks Off First North American Tour In 35 Years In Toronto On Monday

Former rock star Cat Stevens, who has gone by the name Yusuf Islam since shortly after his conversion to Islam in 1977, will kick off his first North American tour in decades starting in Toronto Monday night. His tour continues through the U.S., where he has not performed since 1976, starting Thursday in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, moving to Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, and two dates in Los Angeles, the last of which will be Dec. 14.

The momentous tour is not beginning without controversy for the singer-songwriter who quit performing and even playing instruments in 1977. Stevens canceled his New York City concert, which would have been his first in NYC in 40 years, because of what he called “extortionate” ticket prices on resale websites, a problem he's had with paper tickets since the 1970s, reports the Guardian . He apologized to his fans. “My fans will understand and I thank them for informing me about the extortionate ticket prices already being listed on some websites," he wrote. "I have been a longtime supporter of paperless tickets to my shows worldwide and avoiding scalpers."

Responding to a tweet by the Global News Toronto asking for concertgoers to respond to the tight security measures in place at the Toronto venue, Stevens dismissed the question as trolling.

@globalnewsto @CMarglobal trying to make a story out of nothing? Not surprised. Doors open 2 hours before show. 30 mins earlier than normal - Yusuf / Cat Stevens (@YusufCatStevens) November 18, 2014

A longtime fan complained to the Toronto Star about what he felt were tightened concert restrictions:

• Concertgoers must arrive at least two hours before the concert starts and have government-issued identification that matches the credit card with which the ticket was purchased.
• Ticket holders are prohibited from being able to reenter the concert once they have exited the venue.
• Security is implementing an “airport-style search, including walk-through airport metal detectors.”

The complaining fan, Ric Doedens, said to the Star: "You have to wonder if he (Yusuf) is doing this because he feels threatened." Stevens maintains that the identification request is to make sure his true fans -- and not those who paid scalpers -- are at the concert.

In 1989, when Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini called on Muslims to kill author Salman Rushdie for what he called blasphemous remarks in "The Satanic Verses," Stevens was asked what his thoughts were on the fatwa during a British talk show . Not only did he not condemn the remarks but he suggested that if he were invited to go to the burning of a Rushdie effigy, he'd be disappointed. “I would have hoped it’d be the real thing," he said, a remark that has dogged him ever since. “I never called for the death of Salman Rushdie," he wrote on his website, "nor backed the fatwa issued by the Ayatollah Khomeini -- and still don’t.”

Ten years ago, on a trip to the United States to visit and perform with Dolly Parton, he was sent back after erroneously being put on a no-fly list. And he successfully sued two British newspapers for libel when they accused him of participating in terrorism.

Stevens decided to play music again recently, and in response to Muslims who criticized him, he told Agence France-Presse , "I say: listen to me, this is part of Islamic civilization, we have lost our contact with it, we lost our vibrant approach to life and to culture." This year, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

As a devout Muslim who has spent his music royalties on Muslim schools for children in England and who has received numerous humanitarian awards, Stevens is nevertheless concerned about his musical legacy. "One song I do is 'The First Cut is the Deepest,' he told AFP . "I try to remind people I wrote that song, not Rod Stewart!"

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Remastered Yusuf / Cat Stevens 1973 Album, 'Foreigner' To Be Reissued on Vinyl

The album will be released in a variety of newly remastered formats on July 26.

Since 2020, Yusuf / Cat Stevens’ iconic 1970s albums have steadily been lovingly remastered and reissued in celebration of their enduring popularity more than a half century later. Now, following acclaimed multi-format reissues for Mona Bone Jakon, Tea for the Tillerman, Teaser and the Firecat, Harold and Maude, and most recently Catch Bull At Four, the legendary singer-songwriter’s classic 1973 album, Foreigner, will be released in a variety of newly remastered formats on July 26 via A&M/UMe.

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Foreigner showed enormous artistic ambition and courage with Cat boldly stepping away from his signature acoustic sound in order to freely explore the heat and love of the soul and R&B genres. Recorded in the heart of Jamaica, his fearlessness was rewarded with the album reaching No. 3 on both the U.S. and U.K. album charts. The album will be available on vinyl for the first time since its original release, on both 180-gram black vinyl and limited edition 180-gram blue vinyl, with a replica 12” lyric card insert. The blue vinyl pressing can be purchased exclusively at CatStevens.com, uDiscover Music and Sound of Vinyl. Foreigner will also return to CD for the first time since its reissue in 2000, complete with a 16-page booklet. The new remaster will also be available for streaming in both standard and stunning hi-resolution audio. The initial production run of the vinyl and CD versions will feature the super rare color front cover, originally released only on the original A&M pressings in 1973.

Yusuf / Cat Stevens offers, "We’re all foreigners. Say to an American or a European, that he’s a foreigner and he’ll say, 'No, you’re the foreigner!' But we’re all foreigners here, in a wider sense. We're all looking for freedom and accommodation within humanity."

In addition to Foreigner being re-released, Yusuf / Cat Stevens’ timeless trilogy, 1970’s Mona Bone Jakon and Tea for the Tillerman and 1971’s Teaser and the Firecat are being pressed on limited edition 180-gram color vinyl, with each LP receiving a unique color variant: Mona Bone Jakon on Sky Blue, Tea for the Tillerman on Mint Green and Teaser and the Firecat on Neon Orange. The albums will each boast the remastered 2020 audio and be released on July 5.

Mona Bone Jakon established Cat Stevens as his generation’s premier acoustic troubadour with such songs as the deeply romantic “Lady D'Arbanville,” the spiritually uplifting “I Think I See The Light,” the tongue-in-cheek “Pop Star” and the heart-rending “Trouble.” Tea for the Tillerman followed Mona Bone Jakon just seven months later that same year, confirming the sensational rebirth of Cat as a spiritual seeker capable of drawing from a seemingly bottomless well of imaginative inspiration. Here, his new-found gentle and folk-oriented style was artfully weaved with urgent, morally demanding questions beneath bewitching melodies. This soul-searching masterpiece, with some of his best known songs like “Where Do The Children Play?,” “Hard Headed Woman,” “Wild World,” and “Father and Son,” felt simultaneously like a deliberate reaction to what Cat saw in the world as well as his own struggle for answers, and would continue to resonate through countless generations to come.

Released the following year, Teaser and the Firecat propelled Cat into superstardom, spawning some of his most unforgettable hits including “Moonshadow,” “Peace Train” and “Morning Has Broken,” songs by a youthful spiritual seeker, wise beyond his years that would lay the pretext for a poignant new wave of soulful troubadours and poets. Later, “The Wind” would see Teaser and the Firecat celebrated anew, rising to prominence following the song’s use in Wes Anderson’s much lauded film “Rushmore” as well as the Oscar-winning Cameron Crowe film, “Almost Famous.” Through his spellbinding gift for songwriting and his introspective vision, Stevens delivered a universal sense of hope and peace in Teaser and the Firecat that still resonates profoundly to this day.

Pre-order Mona Bone Jakon, Tea for the Tillerman and Teaser and the Firecat color vinyl  HERE .

Foreigner, released in 1973, was Cat Stevens’ fifth LP with Island Records/A&M and represents the adventurous, risk-taking streak in his character. In addition to the radical shift away from his more familiar acoustic sound in favour of a smoother, more luxurious American sound, the album is also entirely self-produced - the first time Cat had worked fully independently in this way. He chose to record predominantly in Jamaica and recruited an all-star band from the R&B world including drummer Bernard Purdie, guitarist Phil Upchurch and the Tower of Power horn section in order to help realize his soulful vision. As a result, Foreigner is simply one of the most creative of all Cat’s albums: the entire first side consists of the 18-minute opus, “Foreigner Suite,” which transports the listener on an epic journey of compelling grooves and deeply layered lyrical meaning, and the album’s second side includes the Top 40 hit, “The Hurt,” which exemplifies the authenticity of Cat’s relationship with soul music. Foreigner is essential listening for anyone who truly wishes to understand the range and courage that underpins Cat Stevens’ artistry.

Cat Stevens’ music helped define the melodious ‘70s and in 2024 his timeless songs continue to be intertwined with the fabric of popular culture as they have magnified and developed a life of their own through their ever-expanding use in film, TV, and numerous reinterpretations by other artists. In 2023, his songs remained ubiquitous with high-profile usages: “The Wind” soundtracks a poignant scene in the Oscar-nominated film, “The Holdovers,” while “Father and Son” was used in the emotionally-charged series finale of “Ted Lasso.”

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2. How Many Times

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Pride walk: ben platt takes the post on a tour of the nyc spots that made him loud and proud.

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For Ben Platt, his coming-out party as a pop artist on “Sing to Me Instead,” his 2018 debut studio LP, was no big queer reveal.

“When I made my first album, it was sort of received as, like, a ‘coming out’ — and it’s not even something that I anticipated,” Platt, 30, said in The Post’s exclusive video series, “Music to My Years.”

In fact, for Platt, it was all a matter of fact: The Tony-winning star of “Dear Evan Hansen” had come out as gay long before that — “when I was 12 or 13,” he said.

“If I’m going to write about my relationship or I’m going to depict it in a music video, it’s a queer relationship,” said Platt of openly expressing his sexuality. “So it was kind of a no-brainer to me. And then I didn’t really realize till after the fact that it was, like, still somewhat radical.”

And just as Pride Month begins, “Honeymind” — Platt’s third studio album that arrived on Friday, three days after the beginning of his 18-show residency at Broadway’s historic Palace Theatre — is a sweet reminder that queer love has always been here.

Get used to it.

It’s a rainbow flag that Platt is proud to wave all year round. “Having a lot of queer fans who feel like their relationships and the specific complexities and experiences of being in a queer relationship are reflected in my music … is something I love to see in my audience,” he said. “Queerness has just always been an intrinsic part of my art.”

There is an easy openness about the queer experience on “Honeymind” — with Grammy-winning producer Dave Cobb (Chris Stapleton, Brandi Carlile ) behind the boards — but the album harks back to another time when the LGBTQ community didn’t live so out loud in the music world.

In fact, it’s ’70s singer-songwriters such as James Taylor, Cat Stevens and Paul Simon (with and without Art Garfunkel) who are the touchstone troubadours.

But right after the airy acoustic-guitar balladry of opener “Right Kind of Reckless,” you realize that we’re not in Kansas anymore. The LP’s second track, “All American Queen,” comes sashaying on out as the queer anthem we needed for Pride 2024.

“He was born in the sticks, right in the middle of fall/He wants to be a cheerleader, runs away from the ball/He’s got a song in his heart and a collection of dolls/And there’s a pale shade of pink on his bedroom wall,” Platt sings on this shimmering sunshine-pop bop.

“I wrote it with Alex Hope … and they’re also queer,” said Platt. “We loved the idea of writing about, like, a young kid growing up in America who is, like, cliche American and traditional … but he’s incredibly flamboyant. He’s a queen. I just think that that is part of the fabric of America that always has been there.”

Meanwhile, “Before I Knew You” is a heartfelt dedication to Platt’s fiancé, Noah Galvin. The two singer-actors got engaged in November 2022 and are getting hitched this fall in Brooklyn, their home borough.

The couple met when “we were like 19, 20 years old, doing a web series that never saw the light of day,” said Platt. “And we immediately had, like, an attraction to each other and started dating pretty quickly. But then I panicked and … I sent him a long text message, and I was like, ‘We should just be friends.’ ”

While the two remained friends, they eventually rekindled their romance. And last Friday, Galvin joined Kacey Musgraves , Kristin Chenoweth and Leslie Odom Jr. as one of the surprise guests that Platt will have on each night of his residency that ends June 15.

But there’s always one special spirit in the house: Judy Garland, who famously played the newly renovated venue in her career. Respect is paid when Platt closes his show with a stunning rendition of “Over the Rainbow.”

“She inspired me to want to perform and also just, you know, helped me realize my queer identity,” he said. “She’s the queen.”

For more, watch Platt give The Post an exclusive tour around the NYC spots that shaped him — including the Bowery Hotel, Joseph Leonard and the Palace Theatre.

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How Imagine Dragons became the sound of gaming culture

Dan Reynolds loves video games. The game companies love him back.

A decade ago, former games journalist Geoff Keighley was busy planning the first Game Awards, a project to build some prestige and pomp around video game award ceremonies.

He had already booked famed Nintendo composer Koji Kondo to perform on piano a medley of songs from the Legend of Zelda franchise, but he wanted a little more sound to fill the Las Vegas stage. And then he remembered: A young band called Imagine Dragons was climbing charts and fresh off a memorable Grammys performance with Kendrick Lamar . The Las Vegas group would become Kondo’s backing band .

“That Koji Kondo moment was super fun and last minute,” Keighley recalls to The Post. “It was a combo of the show being in Vegas, their hometown, and knowing they’re big gamers.”

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“I geeked out harder on that than when we played in front of McCartney,” Reynolds says.

Reynolds says the band’s ties to gaming trace all the way back to when publisher Ubisoft asked to use its song “Radioactive” on trailers for the 2012 game “Assassin’s Creed III.” Reynolds loved the series and gave the green light right away.

Since then, various game companies have kept approaching the band. Epic Games’ iOS game “Infinity Blade III” featured the band’s name and song “Monster” (a collaboration that first caught Keighley’s attention, leading to the Game Awards show). In 2017, Nintendo created a Super Bowl trailer to launch the Switch console with the band’s hit single “Believer.” Riot Games and Netflix commissioned the band to write “Enemy,” the theme song for the hit animated series “Arcane,” now approaching 1.5 billion streams on Spotify.

“It’s not like we’re going around knocking on doors,” Reynolds says, laughing. “They just started reaching out, and we said, ‘Absolutely, this is amazing.’ Look, I’m really tall, 6 foot 4, never played sports, always did music and drama, so people probably think I’m not a gamer, but it’s my bread and butter. It’s our world.”

Reynolds grew up playing old-school adventure games published by Sierra Entertainment, then became a big fan of Blizzard games like “Warcraft,” “StarCraft” and “Diablo.”

“Then ‘Dark Souls’ took over my life,” Reynolds says, adding that the band is always gaming on tour. “We’ve been late onstage because we’re playing ‘League of Legends.’” (Leaving a multiplayer “League” match early can result in a ban, so the band doesn’t risk it.)

Last year, the band released “Children of the Sky,” a collaboration with composer Inon Zur for the launch of “Starfield,” a marquee Xbox game that lets players explore about a thousand planets. Again, it happened because someone from Bethesda Game Studios emailed the band’s manager about a collaboration.

Imagine Dragons returned to the Game Awards stage in 2021 to perform “Enemy” and a medley of songs from indie studio Supergiant Games. Reynolds says it’s been amazing to see the event eclipse the viewing audiences of other awards shows including the Oscars.

“Geoff just reached out to us and was like, ‘I don’t know how this is going to go, and I’m just shooting from the hip here, you guys want to be a part of this?’ And we were like, oh yeah,” he says. “And then it’s blown up over the last years. He’s such a kind person, so it’s made me so happy to see good people win.”

Now the band is about to release its sixth studio album, “Loom,” on June 28. It features more of the band’s signature sound: danceable anthems drenched in reverb and soaring choruses. The latest single, “Nice to Meet You,” is a fun, funk-inflected dance track about Reynolds’s experience with a partner’s friends getting involved in their dating life.

“I grew up listening to singer-songwriters — Dylan, Billy Joel, Paul Simon, Cat Stevens. But I love pop music,” Reynolds says, explaining the airy, upbeat feel of the record. “I like to create big choruses and songs that I want to hear, and I happen to be in a healthier, happier place with this record, so hopefully that’s reflected in it.”

Many Imagine Dragons lyrics revolve around Reynolds’s struggle with depression. Hype classics like “Thunder” are about Reynolds gassing himself up despite overwhelming self-doubt. He admits that “Eyes Closed,” the first single this year (the chorus: “I could do this with my eyes closed”) is empty boasting and bluster that hint at inadequacies he still feels.

Criticism of the band tends to focus on the tension between its marketability and its supposed place in rock music. The Imagine Dragons sound is radio-friendly, approachable and clean, perfect for marketing material. And Reynolds’s choruses are so catchy and concise, you could easily imagine them backing an Apple product launch. iPhone 16 Plus Max? Nice to meet you.

At the same time, Imagine Dragons is one of the few remaining mega acts filling arenas with a real-life electric guitar loud and visible onstage. Critics of the band jeered when the group topped Billboard’s rock charts . Reynolds, for what it’s worth, agrees with them. He owns being a pop act.

“I really think the sentiment of Imagine Dragons ‘keeping rock alive’ is kind of a silly sentiment,” he says. “When I think of rock, I think Nirvana, Foo Fighters, Queens of the Stone Age. I think of a very specific genre that I love, but that’s not what Imagine Dragons has ever wanted to be or tried to be, and it’s not our influences. I didn’t really listen to any classic rock growing up!”

Of course he hears the criticism, but Reynolds says he and the group are happy with their signature sound. They write all their songs based on personal experiences, he says. He focuses on pop hooks, citing classical composers like Chopin and Bach, whom he describes as “very pop.”

“I can genuinely say we’ve never created a record where we’re saying, ‘What do you want, critics? What do you want to hear right now?’” Reynolds says. “I just write songs I want to play. If I’m going to perform them for the next two years, I’d better like them. We’re trying to make sounds that feel good on the ears and make you feel something. And all I’m doing is writing about what’s going in my life. And this happens to be a happy time period.”

And many times, that will mean writing music for the hobby and entertainment medium he’s loved since he was a kid.

“My MO from the very beginning is just following the kid in me. What would little Dan Reynolds love to be a part of?”

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Sarah McLachlan Is Resurfacing

The Canadian songwriter became a superstar through a series of defiant decisions. After slowing down to be a single mother, she has returned to the stage and studio.

Sarah McLachlan is on tour celebrating “Fumbling Towards Ecstasy,” the 1993 album that turned her into an avatar for the sensitive, mysterious singer-songwriters of ’90s radio. Credit... Alana Paterson for The New York Times

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By Grayson Haver Currin

Reporting from Vancouver, British Columbia

• Published May 30, 2024 Updated May 31, 2024

Sarah McLachlan was just 30 hours from beginning her first full-band tour in a decade, and she could not sing.

She was in the final heave of preparation for eight weeks of shows stretching through late November that commemorate “Fumbling Towards Ecstasy,” the sophisticated 1993 album that turned her into an avatar for the sensitive, mysterious singer-songwriters of ’90s radio. But three days into a string of seven-hour rehearsals, her voice collapsed, the high notes so long her hallmark dissolving into a pitchy wheeze.

So onstage in a decommissioned Vancouver hockey arena, a day before a sold-out benefit for her three nonprofit music schools, McLachlan only mouthed along to her songs, shaking her head but smiling whenever she reached for a note and missed.

“It only goes away when I project, push out,” she said backstage in a near-whisper following the first of the day’s mostly mute run-throughs. She slipped a badge that read “Vocal Rest” around her neck and winked. “Luckily, that’s only a third of what I do.”

For the last two decades, McLachlan, 56, has contentedly receded from the spotlight and the music industry she helped reimagine with the women-led festival Lilith Fair . Since 2008, she has been a single mother to India and Taja, two daughters from her former marriage. With rippling muscles that suggest a lean triathlete, she is now a devoted surfer, hiker and skier who talks about pushing her body until it breaks. Though she writes every morning, waking up with a double espresso at the piano in her home outside Vancouver, she has focused on motherhood and the Sarah McLachlan School of Music , offering free instruction to thousands of Canadian children since 2002.

A few years ago, she finished a set of songs about a pernicious breakup but reckoned the world didn’t need them; she hasn’t released an album of original material since 2014. “What do I want to talk about?” she said months earlier during a video interview from her home, swaying in a hammock chair. “I’m just another wealthy, middle-aged white woman.”

McLachlan, though, now may be on the verge of a renaissance. She is amassing a $20 million endowment for her schools, and exhaustive interviews for a Lilith Fair documentary just wrapped. In a year, her youngest, Taja, will head to college. For the second time, McLachlan’s life is opening toward music.

While revisiting her catalog to build this two-hour concert, which begins with a clutch of personal favorites before pivoting into a muscular interpretation of “Fumbling Towards Ecstasy,” she flew to Los Angeles for multiple sessions with the producer Tony Berg, who has worked with Phoebe Bridgers and Aimee Mann. She has cut at least a dozen songs there, including a gently psychedelic cover of Judee Sill’ s “The Kiss.” She has more to write. “I’m so energized by music, now that I’m living and breathing it every moment,” she said. “It’s a very different feeling.”

During the day’s second rehearsal, however, she tempered her enthusiasm with tacit worry about her voice. She told her tour manager that Taja would soon be backstage, probably with a prednisone prescription. “Mom, I’m already here,” the 16-year-old screamed, 20 rows back in an otherwise empty arena. “I have your medicine! Do you want it?”

McLachlan couldn’t hear her. She nodded to her band and started a song called “Fallen,” humming to herself.

DURING SUMMER BREAK between sixth and seventh grades, McLachlan’s friends in Nova Scotia labeled her a lesbian. She had indeed kissed another girl, practicing for a boy. She instantly became a pariah, a middle-class kid from a conservative family surrounded by wealthy bullies.

“I became poison. Then they started calling me ‘Medusa,’ because I had long, curly hair,” she said. “There was physical abuse, too. I thought, ‘I am on my own.’”

There was little quarter at home. McLachlan was the youngest of three adopted children that she said her father never wanted. Since he tormented her older brothers, her mother — unhappy with marriage, depressed by circumstance — responded to her daughter with equal disdain, ensuring everyone was miserable. “I didn’t have a relationship with my father, because my mother wouldn’t allow it. If I showed him any attention, she wouldn’t speak to me for a week,” McLachlan said, lips pursed.

Music, however, became her refuge. She graduated from ukulele at 4 to classical guitar at 7 after the family moved to the provincial capital. She struggled in school, skipping class to hide in the empty gymnasium and play piano there. Though she despised the hard stares and high expectations of recitals, she begged to join a band. Her parents relented to a few hours of Sunday practice. The group’s first show, for several hundred dancing kids in a student union, was transformational.

“I was being seen, and I was being accepted,” she said. “It was the first time I felt that way.”

That night’s headlining act included Mark Jowett, who was then running a small label, Nettwerk, in Vancouver. Stunned by McLachlan’s voice and verve, Jowett urged her to move west and start writing songs. Her parents insisted she finish high school and college. Soon after meeting the label’s co-founder Terry McBride, she defied them, anyway. They barely spoke for two years. “She was green but really disarming,” said McBride, McLachlan’s manager until 2011, in an interview. “Her ambition was to get out.”

McLachlan soon cut a ponderous debut informed by the folk of her youth — Cat Stevens, Simon and Garfunkel, Joan Baez. Jowett and McBride wanted a producer to push her. When they asked Pierre Marchand, who had worked with the Canadian folk royalty of Kate and Anna McGarrigle, what he’d do with McLachlan’s music, he seemed flippant, saying he’d find out in the studio. “My manager was like, ‘I don’t like this guy.’ But I’m like, ‘I love this guy,’” she recalled. “It was all about exploration.”

The pair decamped to the New Orleans studio of the iconoclastic producer Daniel Lanois, where their professional relationship turned physical. (“We wrote a lot of songs naked,” Marchand admitted, laughing.) That intimate bond proved critical when an ascot-sporting representative from McLachlan’s American label, Arista, stopped by to listen. When he didn’t hear a marketable single, they didn’t capitulate. They told him to leave.

“It was a defining moment for me in deciding how I wanted to control my future,” McLachlan said. “I thought, if this is what being famous and successful means, to compromise this thing that feels so important, I don’t want it.”

They gambled correctly. The success of “Solace,” McLachlan’s second album, drifted from Canada into the United States, where it was released in 1992, buying her and Marchand good will. They spent a year and a half in a studio in the Quebec countryside, McLachlan often walking home by moonlight while Marchand built late-night loops and atmospheres. The result, “Fumbling Towards Ecstasy,” remains an uncanny singer-songwriter record, her frank observations on betrayal, friendship and lust warped by his outré sensibilities. “I like it when it’s complex, when there’s not one feeling,” Marchand said. “It’s like a person.”

Marchand and McLachlan added the layered grandeur of U2 and the supple strength of Depeche Mode to these testimonials of yearning and loss. Critics lauded it as smart and sensual. Sales were stronger still: It went quintuple-platinum in Canada and sold more than three million copies stateside.

“I was in a punk band listening to a lot of hardcore — and, strangely, Sarah McLachlan,” said Leslie Feist , the Canadian songwriter who will open the U.S. leg of McLachlan’s tour. “I could hear her power, but it was being expressed more fluidly. It wasn’t about aggression. It was about conviction.”

As McLachlan’s profile grew, letters from stalkers mounted at Nettwerk’s offices, especially from an Ottawa programmer named Uwe Vandrei. They met once, and he slipped her a scarf. But after she read one of his pleas, she asked not to see more. Still, in the album’s opener, “Possession,” where bass pulses and guitars radiate above droning gothic organs, she worked to mirror his mind, to articulate his misplaced passions. When it became a hit, he sued, alleging McLachlan had lifted his words. Vandrei died before trial.

“I felt a strange sense of relief,” McLachlan said haltingly. “But then I thought, ‘Oh my God, this is somebody’s son. Should I have tried to reach out? Tried to talk some sense into him?’”

The success of “Fumbling” — and the draining circus that followed, including conspiracy theories about label involvement in Vandrei’s death — helped spur McLachlan’s most historic defiance. She demanded to not headline every show, to be partnered with acts who could share celebrity’s weight. Promoters balked at the idea that women could carry such a docket, rankling McLachlan. She named a genre-jumping touring festival for Lilith, a woman repeatedly lambasted in sacred texts. Lilith Fair not only dominated the summer concert scene of the late ’90s but showed onlookers and executives that women were not music’s second-class citizens.

“I busked outside of Lilith and applied when I was 16,” said the singer-songwriter Allison Russell , who made her onstage debut by performing McLachlan’s “Mary” alongside high school friends in Montreal. “She changed the landscape for women. She resisted what everyone told her she had to do.”

When McLachlan was the kid being bullied at school or alienated at home, music made her feel valuable. After her hit-laden 1997 album “Surfacing” (“Building a Mystery,” “Adia”) and Lilith Fair, it had also made her wealthy and famous, affording her a family and an activist legacy. She no longer needed the spotlight’s validation, getting it instead from her daughters and dogs, her music school and morning music practice. Her career steadily slowed, with more years passing between albums and her experimental ardor fading. She didn’t mind.

“I’m a middle-aged woman. You kind of became invisible,” she said, leaning in with a wide grin. She whispered: “And I really like that.”

THE ENCORE BREAK on McLachlan’s new tour is brief, maybe 40 seconds. At her benefit show in Vancouver, soon after the band faded from the title finale of “Fumbling,” McLachlan slipped through a black curtain and rushed to her polished Yamaha grand. She’s making a new record, she told the crowd, and she wanted to try a song alone: “Gravity,” her balletic ode to perseverance, to letting others lift you. If McLachlan discarded an album of breakup songs, this is a hymn for what comes after.

It is also a fitting prelude for “Angel,” the poignant 1997 ballad that became a maudlin punchline after scoring a commercial for the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

“I see it at the end of the day, and it’s like, ‘Hi, I’m Sarah McLachlan, and I’m about to ruin your day,’” she said of filming the commercial as a favor. “But that’s just not me.”

Before “Adia,” McLachlan told the audience she never explained that song, because it immortalized her taboo transgression — ruining a relationship by dating her best friend’s ex. “We needed to part ways for a while,” she said. “And I swear it was the hardest breakup I’ve ever been through.”

But they fixed the friendship, which has since endured divorces, children and new love. For years, that friend, Crystal Heald, urged McLachlan to take “Fumbling” on tour. “Thank goodness she forgave me,” McLachlan continued.

McLachlan is candid about her prospects. Relevance, she admitted, is a young person’s game that she has long resisted. She’ll be at least 57 by the time she releases new music, and she knows most people only like the old stuff. Still, when she told her forgiveness tale, the arena erupted with a wave of recognition for bygone mistakes and second chances, for comebacks. Her audience has aged with her; stepping back into the spotlight, she is ready to have that conversation.

“I didn’t talk for the first 10 years of my shows. When the music was happening, I knew what I was doing. Take the music and my voice, and I’m 12 again,” she said two months before stepping onstage. “But in the last 10 years, I say whatever comes to mind. I feel more freedom daily to be who I am.”

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