The singer formerly known as Cat Stevens is nothing if not controversial. It’s hard to write about him even now without generating a firestorm of hatred. But I’m going to try.
Stevens (now Yusuf Islam) is hated by a lot of people mainly for two reasons. One, he became a Muslim, and in the early days of his conversion he seemed to support the fatwah against Rushdie (he later said the remarks were a joke, but not many buy that). Two, he left performing after he converted, dismaying his devoted fans—although it was Steven’s intensity and spirituality they’d always liked in the first place (as well as his music, of course), which made the extremes of his commitment to his chosen faith a bit less surprising but no less disturbing.
A few years ago Stevens returned to performing. In more recent clips of his concerts, it appears that he has lost some of his intensity, which is not all that surprising. What originally drove it? Youth was probably a good part of it, and there would be a natural diminution of energy as he aged. But I think some of that early energy was fueled by his spiritual quest which, according to his Wiki entry, was a search Stevens had been on for quite some time.
When a person finds what he’s looking for he can lose some of that edge. Stevens’ edge was never all that edgy to begin with, though; he was sincere and touchy-feely, but not saccharine. That’s part of what made him great—that slight hint of bite combined with the sweetness in his lovely and immediately distinctive voice.
Even before Cat’s conversion he showed an almost trance-like quality in many of his performances. projecting a seemingly unselfconscious sincerity in surrendering to this religiously-inspired feeling that is unlike that of any performer I’ve seen. If you look at the comments at YouTube on many of his old videos, many people write “I love him!” and I think it’s because Stevens used to seem emotionally naked when he performed, even though he had all his clothes on. And his nakedness did not have as its source—as with some performers, such as for example Janis Joplin—the emotion of anguish. It seemed, instead, to spring from ecstasy.
Like most great singers, Stevens has an instantly recognizable and unique voice, now somewhat deepened with time. Here he is in his heyday, performing his signature piece (which he did not write, by the way; it’s a Christian hymn written in the 1930s and set to a traditional tune):
And here he sings the same song much more recently. You can see (and hear) the difference:
Here’s another before-and-after. In this case one of the oddities of the song “Oh Very Young” is that, although Stevens wrote it when he was very young, the words are more suited to an older person. I love this early version, despite the gratuitous and random still photos that the compiler of this video has chosen to add:
Here’s the same song from the perspective of age (I left in the intro because I wanted to show that the old guy still looks awfully good):
I defy you to find a cover of “Morning Has Broken” that can compare to Stevens’ original version. And I defy you to find an even halfway decent cover of “Oh Very Young” at all. Most YouTube cover versions of the latter song—as well as the cover versions available through iTunes, which number quite a few—are too sweet, icky sweet and slow, unlike Stevens’ original, with its rhythmic drive and verve. “Oh Very Young” is a song about the transience of life, but Stevens makes it energetic and upbeat whereas other performers seem to just make it syrupy. Yuck. When Stevens sings the song it may sound simple, but it most assuredly is not, and his rhythms always surprise.
