John Legend - Love in the Future

Love In The Future starts out OK, with the piano-driven classic soul of ‘Open Your Eyes’ and the catchy gospel vocals and staccato beats of ‘Made To Love’, the latter being a first cousin of Moby’s better moments. But like an X Factor contestant rolled in goose fat, it goes downhill very quickly after that.
For a lauded songwriter with nine Grammys on his sideboard, Legend’s lyrics come complete with more clichés than an adolescent poetry compendium (‘Save The Night’, ‘Dreams’), with some of the blandest rhyming couplets outside a Noel Gallagher B-side.
‘The Beginning’ is a mawkish affair which has Legend confessing to his significant other that he wants to make babies with her. ‘All Of Me’ and ‘You & I (Nobody In The World’) are the kind of syrupy piano ballads that could be excerpts from the diary of a 14-year-old girl, while ‘Hold On Longer’ piles on the mushy Hallmark sentiment. The latter is the aural equivalent of condensing those supposedly feelgood Christmas ads that could drive otherwise sensible people to take up arms.
‘Who Do We Think We Are’, featuring Rick Ross, has more ‘oooh ooohs’ than a Motown compilation, but none of the passion, and is as flat as an over-80s swingers party in Westmeath. Meanwhile, the uptempo ‘Caught Up’ has yet more teenage lyrics about getting it awn, including one particularly cringe-inducing reference to “love tax”, that’s so bad, it seems like the kind of piss-take that Weird Al Jankovic would dream up.
A creative desert, Love In The Future is frighteningly free of anything resembling innovation or interest.

Key Track: 'Made to Love'