Yusuf/Cat Stevens performs at Glastonbury Competition, June 2023. Photograph: Matt Cardy/Getty Pictures
Yusuf Islam, the artist born Steven Georgiou and nonetheless finest recognized to the world as Cat Stevens, was born in London on July 21, 1948. Our playlist has hours of high-quality music by this quintessential singer-songwriter.
Cat, born to a Greek-Cypriot father and a Swedish mom, first got here to business consideration as a songwriter. He was signed by publishers Ardmore & Beechwood when nonetheless solely 17, by which era he’d already written the remarkably mature and reflective “The First Cut Is The Deepest,” made into successful by P.P. Arnold and later coated by Rod Stewart and countless others.
In 1966, producer Mike Hurst (late of the Springfields) took Georgiou beneath his wing and by that September, renamed Cat Stevens, he was within the UK Prime 30 with “I Love My Dog.” The infectious single “Matthew and Son” was within the Prime 10 early within the new yr, as was an album of the identical title quickly afterwards.
Additional pop hits ensued, resembling “I’m Gonna Get Me A Gun” and “A Long Night.” So did a second LP, New Masters, which featured his personal model of “The First Cut Is The Deepest.” However after a severe sickness with tuberculosis, it was a extra studious, romantic and non secular Stevens that re-emerged in 1970.
Out of his Deram contract, he signed with Chris Blackwell’s Island and launched the album Mona Bone Jakon. It wasn’t a direct success, but it surely did embody the gorgeous, intense UK Prime 10 single “Lady d’Arbanville.” Stevens was establishing the type that will make him one of many definitive singer-songwriting abilities of the Seventies.
For the following few years, he was a chart fixture, perfecting the artwork of creating expertly crafted albums that included exemplary pop singles, memorable album tracks and hits for others. The staging-post Tea For The Tillerman supplied “Where Do The Children Play,” “Father and Son,” and “Wild World,” the final of which grew to become his first US hit in addition to turning right into a Jimmy Cliff anthem. Yusuf/Cat has remade the album in its entirety to mark its fiftieth anniversary in the summertime of 2020.
Teaser and the Firecat contained the light ballad hits “Moonshadow” and “Morning Has Broken.” Catch Bull At 4 had the effusive hit “Can’t Keep It In” and Foreigner and Buddha and the Chocolate Field stored Stevens outstanding within the public creativeness.
A turning level
But Stevens’ rising dissatisfaction together with his life was heightened by a 1976 incident during which he practically drowned. He transformed to the Islamic religion on the finish of 1977 and took the brand new title Yusuf Islam the next yr, devoting himself to his religion and his humanitarian targets, leaving his secular profession behind him.
However, as Yusuf Islam, 2006 introduced a warmly-welcomed return to Western music with the Polydor album An Different Cup. Then got here a return to his former Island residence for the 2009 follow-up Roadsinger, which hit the UK Prime 10. In April 2014, as Cat Stevens, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Corridor of Fame. That yr introduced one other new mainstream launch in Inform ’Em I’m Gone, which Yusuf produced with Rick Rubin. It reached the Prime 30 on either side of the Atlantic.
In 2016, the artist’s deeply humanitarian motivation confirmed itself once more as he launched a marketing campaign to assist baby refugees in Europe with a charity live performance at London’s Central Corridor, Westminster, and launched the poignant single, He Was Alone. 2017 introduced the album The Laughing Apple and in 2020, Stevens celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of Tea For The Tillerman by ambitiously remaking the complete report, to nice acclaim and a brand new Prime 5 UK chart putting. In 2023, there was the brand new album King of a Land and a efficiency at Glastonbury Competition that reaffirmed his beloved standing amongst current followers, and created numerous new ones.
“Music is not just a business. It’s a lifestyle,” he instructed Rolling Stone. “What I was seeking most of my life was actually a better life, and that’s reflected a lot in my own songs. Therefore when I found something that got me onto a higher level of living, and perhaps personal satisfaction, then I didn’t miss anything. The only thing was, when I did break away, I did miss the personal connection to the ones who still liked me and believed in me. But I had to get my own life.”
Purchase Yusuf / Cat Stevens’ music on vinyl or CD now.
