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Yusuf : I was absent from my audience for so long,” Yusuf says, “people thought another album would never come. The 2006 album, An Other Cup, was a surprise. With this new album, the distance is much less. I’m back to doing what I do best - painting pictures with music and storytelling on a very human, personal, intuitive level through lyrics and song, so I can help people feel good again. I guess in some ways the new album picks up where the Cat Stevens the public knows left off.
The new album is a response to the way An Other Cup was received. Fans said they wanted to hear more of me with a guitar. So this album is much more folk-tale oriented. Also, apart from one track, all of it was recorded live. I listened to a lot of’ ’70s L.A. music, such as Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, Carole King, and it inspired me to go back into that intimate style of recording. The songs are somewhat autobiographical but abstract enough so everyone can relate to them and connect them to their own lives.
This part of my career feels similar in one sense to when I began. I had to get past the songs on Mona Bone Jakon before I could move on to Tea For The Tillerman, etc. This time around it was the same story: I had to lay the groundwork with my debut album, An Other Cup, before a bunch of new songs arrived.
'The album's sub-title, To Warm You Through The Night, connects to my musical (Moonshadow), which is about a world of permanent darkness where only the moon shines,'' Yusuf explains. ''The show's protagonist has a dream that there is a light somewhere and goes off to find that place.
(Source : press release issued with the album Roadsinger, 2009)
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The new album is a response to the way An Other Cup was received. Fans said they wanted to hear more of me with a guitar. So this album is much more folk-tale oriented. Also, apart from one track, all of it was recorded live. I listened to a lot of’ ’70s L.A. music, such as Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, Carole King, and it inspired me to go back into that intimate style of recording. The songs are somewhat autobiographical but abstract enough so everyone can relate to them and connect them to their own lives.
This part of my career feels similar in one sense to when I began. I had to get past the songs on Mona Bone Jakon before I could move on to Tea For The Tillerman, etc. This time around it was the same story: I had to lay the groundwork with my debut album, An Other Cup, before a bunch of new songs arrived.
'The album's sub-title, To Warm You Through The Night, connects to my musical (Moonshadow), which is about a world of permanent darkness where only the moon shines,'' Yusuf explains. ''The show's protagonist has a dream that there is a light somewhere and goes off to find that place.
(Source : press release issued with the album Roadsinger, 2009)