''Darkness and Light'' is the fifth

studio album An album is a collection of audio recordings issued on compact disc (CD), Phonograph record, vinyl, audio tape, or another medium such as Digital distribution#Music, digital distribution. Albums of recorded sound were developed in the early ...

by American singer, songwriter, and pianist

John Legend John Roger Stephens (born December 28, 1978), known professionally as John Legend, is an American singer, songwriter, pianist, and record producer. He began his musical career by working behind the scenes, playing piano on Lauryn Hill's " Ever ...

. It was released on December 2, 2016, by

Columbia Records Columbia Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music, Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, the North American division of Japanese Conglomerate (company), conglomerate Sony. It was founded on Janua ...

, as well as his last album to be released with

GOOD Music GOOD Music (also known simply as GOOD, stylized as G.O.O.D. Music; a backronym for Getting Out Our Dreams) is an American record label founded by rapper Kanye West in 2004. The label signed an exclusive long-term worldwide label agreement with t ...

, following the end of his five-album contract with the label.

Recording and production

Legend recorded the album at East West Studio 2 in Los Angeles. It was produced almost entirely by

Blake Mills Blake Mills (born September 21, 1986) is an American songwriter, guitarist, producer, and composer based in California. Biography Blake Mills was born in Santa Monica, California, United States, and grew up in Malibu, where he attended Malibu ...

, who also played various instruments and co-produced most of the songs. Legend also collaborated with rapper

Chance the Rapper Chancelor Johnathan Bennett (born April 16, 1993), known professionally as Chance the Rapper, is an American rapper, singer-songwriter, and record producer. Born and raised in Chicago, Bennett released his debut mixtape '' 10 Day'' in 2012. He ...

, and vocalists

Brittany Howard Brittany Amber Howard (born October 2, 1988) is an American musician, singer, and songwriter known for being the lead vocalist, rhythm guitarist, and main songwriter of rock bands Alabama Shakes, Thunderbitch, and Bermuda Triangle. Her work wi ...

and Miguel.

Singles

The album's lead single "

Love Me Now Love Me Now may refer to: *Love Me Now (Melanie Amaro song), "Love Me Now" (Melanie Amaro song), 2012 *Love Me Now (John Legend song), "Love Me Now" (John Legend song), 2016 *"Love Me Now", by Gino Vannelli from ''Storm at Sunup'', 1975 *"Love Me N ...

" was released on October 7, 2016. On October 6, 2016, the music video was released for the single. On November 18, 2016, the album's second single "Penthouse Floor" featuring

, was released. On November 25, 2016, the album's first promotional single "I Know Better", was released and on March 27, 2017, was announced that the album's third single is "Surefire".

Commercial performance

In the United States, ''Darkness and Light'' debuted at number 14 on the ''Billboard'' 200, with 38,000

album-equivalent unit The album-equivalent unit, or album equivalent, is a measurement unit in music industry to define the consumption of music that equals the purchase of one album copy. This consumption includes streaming and song downloads in addition to traditi ...

s, marking the sixth highest debut of the week. The album selling 26,000 copies in its first week. The album was also streamed 12.5 million times in the first week.

Critical reception

''Darkness and Light'' was met with generally positive reviews. At

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an

average In ordinary language, an average is a single number taken as representative of a list of numbers, usually the sum of the numbers divided by how many numbers are in the list (the arithmetic mean). For example, the average of the numbers 2, 3, 4, 7, ...

score of 76, based on 10 reviews. Reviewing the album in ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'',

Jon Pareles Jon Pareles (born October 25, 1953) is an American journalist who is the chief popular music critic in the arts section of ''The New York Times''.Vice A vice is a practice, behaviour, or habit generally considered immoral, sinful, criminal, rude, taboo, depraved, degrading, deviant or perverted in the associated society. In more minor usage, vice can refer to a fault, a negative character tra ...

'',

Robert Christgau Robert Thomas Christgau ( ; born April 18, 1942) is an American music journalist and essayist. Among the most well-known and influential music critics, he began his career in the late 1960s as one of the earliest professional rock critics and ...

cited the title track, "Marching Into the Dark", and "I Know Better" as highlights and said the lyric from the latter song ("My history has brought me to this place/This power and the color of my face") is "not an easy brag to bring off modestly, and the more I listen the more I appreciate the trick".

Track listing

All tracks produced by

, except where noted. Notes * "What You Do to Me", "Surefire", "Marching Into the Dark", and "Love You Anyway" features background vocals by

Jessy Wilson Jessy Wilson is an American singer from Brooklyn and former member of the rock duo Muddy Magnolias. Early life Wilson was born in Brooklyn and graduated from Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School. Career Muddy Magnolias After high school ...

. * "What You Do to Me" and "Surefire" features background vocals by

Holly Laessig Lucius is an American four-piece indie pop band. The group was founded by lead vocalists Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig, joined by drummer Dan Molad, guitarist Peter Lalish, and, formerly, multi-instrumentalist Andrew Burri. Originating in Brooklyn, ...

and

Jess Wolfe Jessica Wolfe is an American singer, songwriter, bass synth player and actress from Los Angeles, California. She is a founding member along with Holly Laessig of the indie pop musical group Lucius. She was married to Lucius drummer, Dan Molad, bu ...

. * "Temporarily Painless" and "How Can I Blame You" features background vocals by

Z Berg Elizabeth Anne "Z" Berg (born June 28, 1986) is an American musician. She was a founding member, guitarist, and lead vocalist of the indie rock group the Like. Berg's father is former Geffen Records A&R exec/record producer Tony Berg. Musical c ...

. * "Temporarily Painless" features background vocals by

Perfume Genius Michael Alden Hadreas (born September 25, 1981), better known by his stage name Perfume Genius, is an American singer, songwriter, and musician. Hadreas's music explores topics including sexuality, his personal struggle with Crohn's disease, do ...

. * "Drawing Lines" features background vocals by

Moses Sumney Moses Sumney is a Ghanaian-American singer-songwriter. His self-recorded EP, ''Mid-City Island'', was released in 2014. He released another five-song EP in 2016, titled ''Lamentations''. His first full-length album, ''Aromanticism'', was released ...

Charts

Weekly charts

Year-end charts

Certifications

References

External links

* {{Authority control 2016 albums Albums produced by Blake Mills Albums produced by Eg White Columbia Records albums GOOD Music albums John Legend albums