So as many of you probably know I usually write these posts on the *illustrious* lives of untouchable celebrities. But my post this week focuses on something that happened right here in our community. This past Monday the Grammy award winning singer John Legend came to PSU as part of the Distinguished Speaker Series. Me and a group of my friends braved the cold in order to get the chance to be up front and center for his performance. Unfortunately, as the line outside Eisenhower auditorium got longer and the crowd more rowdy a stampede ensued as soon as the doors opened resulting in complete chaos.
It wasn’t all about piano playing and singing for John Legend’s purpose at Penn State. The topic of his speech was the importance of education. He urged the audience young people at various crossroads in life to remember the opportunities they have been afforded in life and how lucky we all are to be at this university. He juxtaposed this advice with descriptions of children with next to no opportunities in the area of education and explained that not everything is equal when it comes to the futures of our youth. This tied into the charities that are very close to Legend’s heart: The Show Me Campaign and Teach for America. With Teach for America, Legend is a board member while he is the founder of the Show Me Campaign.
Finally, the evening closed with John Legend performing five of his most popular songs with help of the many young girls in the audience, myself included. When the night was over the one thing I took away from the event wa show inspiring it was to see John Legend; a man with so much influence and talent use his rhetorical platform to bring awareness about education inequality in our country.
3 Comments
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Your post makes me wish I had gone to this, Natalia! It sounds great. Like Anna, I think it’s really cool when celebrities use their influence to encourage other people to do good. Do you feel like most people were there for the singing or the speech? Did his speech make you think differently about his music at all?
OMG I WENT TO THIS AND THIS WAS AMAZING. His voice is like liquid gold that struck me at the core of my soul and I cried and laughed and danced and desired. It made me want to take action. Also short anecdote: after the concert, I snuck outside to his car and there was a small pool of young women waiting for John Legend to come outside. I stayed with them, and then OMG his body guard came out and told us all to get on the other side of the car, and then a few minutes later THE LEGEND CAME OUT. I was this close to him : AND SAW HIM. He is beautiful and his skin is so smooth even person (No unfortunately I did not touch it). But ANYWAYS, John Legend is amazing and he stands for something. That adds so much more depth to his music, to his lyrics, to see that he indeed takes action to what he sings about.
I absolutely adore John Legend. I not only love him for his sexy voice… and piano skills… and hot bod [haha] but he stands for civic issues, responsibility and current events like voting, Teach for America and Show Me Campaign. He has used his fame for something good- through the SPA event, he spread his message to all of the PSU students who attended. This has become a popular trend among many celebrities who are using their talents for good, in contrast to people like Charlie Sheen and Lindsay Lohan who are complete messes. What always surprises me is how celebrities get famous. Legend must be well spoken, intelligent and talented in order to share his talents and thoughts with the world. Next week, maybe you could choose another celebrity and illuminate their good works… or bad ones.