John Legend Releases ’Muse,’ His First Full Album With Pharrell Williams
The 16-track album, produced in full and co-written by Pharrell Williams, is out today on Republic Records. It’s the pair’s first full project together after more than 20 years of friendship.
John Legend released a new album Friday. Muse is out today on Republic Records, and every track on it was produced and co-written by Pharrell Williams.
The two men have known each other for more than 20 years. They had never made a full record together until now.
“I wanted to shake up the formula and do something fresh and new,” Legend said. He said he almost never records songs he didn’t write. On this one, he did: “I recorded some songs on this album that [Pharrell] fully wrote.”
It started with a Clipse chorus
The project began in 2025 after Legend sang the chorus on “The Birds Don’t Sing,” a track on Clipse’s comeback album Let God Sort ’Em Out. Pharrell heard the vocal and decided to build a whole album around it.
The two started writing and recording in January 2025. The studio was Pharrell’s, inside the Louis Vuitton headquarters in Paris.
For reference points they reached back to Nina Simone, Nat King Cole and Marvin Gaye. What they made draws on gospel, doo-wop, soul, standards, Afrobeat and hip-hop, with orchestral and cinematic touches layered over it. Legend has described the sound as “classic, cinematic elements” set over “a modern backbeat at its foundation.”
What’s on the record
The album runs 16 tracks. Pharrell appears on six of them, including the title track. Clipse show up on “Bodies On The Floor,” a song Legend wrote with Samm Henshaw about a relationship he described as both toxic and magnetic. The pair released a black-and-white video for it Friday, directed by Paul Hunter.
Other tracks include “Her,” which draws on doo-wop and gospel; “Get Back,” with horns and strings; and “Under The Bridge.” The lead single, “Daylight,” came out September 8 and got its first live airing on CBS’s America’s Tailgate special.
“Pray For Ya” had a runway debut earlier this year, soundtracking Louis Vuitton’s Fall-Winter 2026 men’s show. Hunter also directed the video for “Fireflies,” a collaboration with Pharrell that pairs Legend’s piano performance with portraits of people living in a housing project.
Outside the album, Legend is writing his first original stage score, for Imitation of Life, a musical with a book by Lynn Nottage and direction by Whitney White, opening at The Shed in New York in November.
