Music
John Legend
Singer and songwriter, winner of an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony
Born 1978
Photo: PhilipRomanoPhoto · CC BY-SA 4.0
John Legend is one of the few people to have won all four major American entertainment awards. He worked as a management consultant while recording at night, and was playing piano on other artists' records before his own career began.
Key achievements
- One of the few artists to win an EGOT
- Academy Award for the song Glory, 2015
- Led Penn's a cappella jazz group as a student
Universities
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Took a bachelor's degree in English with a concentration in African American literature in 1999.
Facts
- At Penn he directed the co-ed a cappella group Counterparts and arranged a version of Joan Osborne's One of Us that appeared on a national compilation.
- He worked at the Boston Consulting Group for three years after graduating while trying to get a record deal.
- He played piano on Lauryn Hill's Everything Is Everything while still an undergraduate.
Photographs
Photographs come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences; the author and licence are shown on each image.