Cat Stevens

One of the era's standout singer-songwriters, Cat Stevens earned widespread praise and devoted listeners through his understated, soul-infused compositions exploring romance, spiritual quests, and aspirations for an improved society. Although his initial forays in the closing years of the 1960s cast him as a sharp pop performer, a shift occurred with the arrival of Mona Bone Jakon in 1970; subsequent releases such as Tea for the Tillerman (1970) and Teaser and the Firecat (1971) showcased his grounded timbre and reflective words, resonating deeply with global listeners yearning for solace in the wake of the chaotic prior decade. Toward the close of the 1970s he had adopted the Muslim religion, withdrawn from professional music-making, shunned public attention, and devoted himself to matters of faith and philanthropy. During the 1990s he discreetly reengaged with recording by producing children's songs rooted in Islamic themes, then in 2006 reappeared in the Western pop arena via An Other Cup, issued under the name Yusuf. Remaining steadfast in his Muslim convictions, he reconciled those beliefs with respect for the catalog he had built earlier as Cat Stevens. Subsequent years brought ongoing humanitarian efforts, renewed concert activity, and additional Yusuf projects leaning toward pop, among them the blues-inflected Tell 'Em I'm Gone in 2014, the Grammy-nominated The Laughing Apple in 2017, and the reflective, socially aware folk statements of King of a Land in 2023.

Born Steven Demetre Georgiou to a Swedish mother and a Greek father who operated a London eatery, he developed an affinity for folk and rock & roll during adolescence while enrolled at Hammersmith College; by 1965 he was appearing onstage as Steve Adams. Mike Hurst, previously of the folk-pop outfit the Springfields and now a record producer, discovered the young performer and guided him into a studio to lay down the original piece “I Love My Dog.” The resulting demo secured a contract with Decca Records and placement on its newly launched Deram imprint. Around this period he adopted the stage name Cat Stevens, partly inspired by a girlfriend’s remark that his eyes resembled those of a feline. “I Love My Dog” appeared on British charts in October 1966 and climbed into the Top 40. His follow-up single “Matthew & Son” debuted on the charts in January 1967 and narrowly missed the summit—while in America it registered only a minor showing. Another self-penned track, the song “Here Comes My Baby” further bolstered his songwriting standing when the Tremeloes took it into the British Top Five after its February chart entry, with an American peak just outside the Top Ten.

His third single, “I’m Gonna Get Me a Gun,” reached the British Top Ten after entering the charts in March, arriving after the debut album Matthew & Son had itself placed in the Top Ten. That May, P.P. Arnold scored a British Top 20 hit with Stevens’ composition “The First Cut Is the Deepest.” (A decade afterward Rod Stewart topped the U.K. charts and reached the American Top 20 with his version, while Sheryl Crow returned it to the U.S. Top 20 in 2003.) The fourth single “A Bad Night” charted in August yet stalled in the Top 20, a letdown after earlier momentum. Subsequent releases fared worse: “Kitty” barely registered in December, and the second album New Masters failed to chart at all, hampered partly by insufficient label backing. Matters grew more difficult when Stevens contracted tuberculosis in February 1968, requiring three months of hospitalization followed by an extended recovery period that occupied the rest of the year. The planned comeback single “Where Are You,” issued in July 1969, made no impression, prompting his departure from Deram.

Disheartened by industry dealings and having undergone a spiritual awakening during recuperation, Stevens turned toward more intimate, inward-looking material. He signed with Island Records and delivered his third album, Mona Bone Jakon, in April 1970. The extracted single “Lady D’Arbanville” arrived in June and became his third British Top Ten entry, lifting the album onto the charts modestly in July. His skill at supplying songs for fellow artists persisted; Jimmy Cliff carried “Wild World” into the British Top Ten in August. A backlog of material yielded a second Island release, Tea for the Tillerman, in November, which reached the U.K. Top 20. In America, where A&M Records handled distribution, Mona Bone Jakon had yet to register, but Tea for the Tillerman secured Stevens’ first appearance on the LP charts in February 1971. Shortly afterward his own version of “Wild World” appeared as a single and climbed into the Top 20. With that breakthrough he emerged as a major American star: Tea for the Tillerman entered the Top Ten, earned gold status, Mona Bone Jakon belatedly charted (later certified gold in 1976), and Deram repackaged Matthew & Son and New Masters as a two-LP set that also charted. Critics positioned him among the leading figures of the contemporary folk-rock singer-songwriter movement alongside James Taylor, Carole King, and others.

In June 1971 Stevens issued the single “Moonshadow,” which reached the Top 40 on both sides of the Atlantic. September brought “Peace Train,” a U.S. pop Top Five hit that topped the easy-listening chart just ahead of the fifth album Teaser and the Firecat. An immediate gold release, the LP climbed to within one notch of the American summit and entered the U.K. Top Five. Beyond “Moonshadow” and “Peace Train,” it included the hymn adaptation “Morning Has Broken,” which became his second consecutive easy-listening number one and reached the pop Top Ten in both Britain and America. Meanwhile Deram assembled another set of early material, Very Young and Early Songs, which charted modestly in the U.S. early in 1972, as did a delayed American single release of “Where Are You.”

Stevens contributed both new and older compositions to the 1972 black comedy Harold and Maude, which later attained cult status though no soundtrack album appeared at the time. (The previously unheard songs surfaced on the 1984 collection Footsteps in the Dark: Greatest Hits, Vol. 2, and a soundtrack album finally emerged in 2022.) He also maintained touring commitments while preparing his sixth album, Catch Bull at Four. A more robust, rock-leaning effort issued in October 1972, it marked his commercial zenith by topping the U.S. charts and narrowly missing the same position in Britain, achieving instant gold status. Different singles—“Sitting” in America and “Can’t Keep It In” in Britain—each reached the Top 20.

Sensing renewed pressures from pop fame, Stevens departed Britain for Brazil in early 1973 to avoid taxes and redirected those funds to charitable causes. He accepted a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador role; during five years in Brazil he performed less frequently and grew more guarded in granting interviews. June 1973 saw the release of “The Hurt,” a U.S. Top 40 single. August brought the ambitious seventh album Foreigner, which devoted an entire side to a continuous musical suite. The record achieved further strong commercial results, landing inside the Top Five in both countries and going gold immediately. His principal engagement that year was a 90-minute appearance on the American television program In Concert in November.

His eighth album, Buddha and the Chocolate Box, arrived in March 1974, preceded by the Top Ten single “Oh Very Young.” As expected the LP reached the Top Five on both sides of the Atlantic and went gold at release. July brought an independent summer single, a cover of Sam Cooke’s “Another Saturday Night,” which hit the U.S. Top Ten and the U.K. Top 20. November saw A&M issue “Ready” from the same album, a Top 40 entry. The Greatest Hits collection appeared in June 1975 and, predictably, sold briskly, eventually moving more than three million copies in the United States alone. A new track on the set, “Two Fine People,” reached the American Top 40. By November Stevens had prepared his ninth studio album, Numbers. Although it entered the U.S. Top 20 and later earned gold certification, it produced no Top 40 single and failed to chart in Britain. After an eighteen-month interval he delivered his tenth album, Izitso, in May 1977. It restored some commercial standing, reaching the U.S. Top Ten and going gold within a month while placing in the U.K. Top 20; the single “(Remember the Days of The) Old School Yard” charted on both sides of the Atlantic.

On December 23, 1977, Stevens formally converted to Islam and took the name Yusuf Islam. Despite the transition an eleventh and final Cat Stevens album, Back to Earth, appeared in December 1978 and sold only modestly. With its release Yusuf Islam declared his retirement from the pop sphere. He entered a marriage that ultimately produced five children, sold off his collection of instruments, and concentrated on family life while supporting humanitarian initiatives. He played a central role in establishing the Muslim Aid charity to assist victims of the Ethiopian famine and founded a Muslim primary school near London. Public visibility remained limited for another decade until the close of the 1980s, when he drew attention by addressing the Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa against novelist Salman Rushdie for The Satanic Verses. Islam subsequently clarified that he was not advocating Rushdie’s death but rather articulating Islamic legal principles in the manner a Bible student might “quote the legal punishment of a person who commits blasphemy in the Bible.” Nevertheless, “classic rock” stations ceased airing his music and he faced considerable negative press coverage.

In 1990 the compilation The Very Best of Cat Stevens reached the U.K. Top Five. Over the following years he gradually resumed recording, establishing his own studio and label, Mountain of Light, and issuing the spoken-word album The Life of the Last Prophet in 1995. After two further releases in a comparable style he presented the educational children’s project A Is for Allah in 2000. Philanthropic work continued; in the late 1990s he and his wife Fawziah launched Small Kindness, an organization aiding survivors of the Balkan conflicts.

Reissues of his complete Cat Stevens catalog in 2000, together with his public condemnation of the 9/11 attacks in New York, kept his profile elevated. Following additional children’s albums he chose to return to Western music. Credited simply to Yusuf, An Other Cup appeared in 2006—his first pop-focused project in nearly thirty years. Promotional activity across print, radio, and television accompanied the release, and he began incorporating earlier material into his performances. Early in 2009 he joined “fifth Beatle” Klaus Voormann for a cover of George Harrison’s “The Day the World Gets ’Round,” directing all proceeds to a charity supporting children in war-affected Gaza. Later that year another pop album, Roadsinger, followed. Yusuf maintained a steady touring schedule thereafter and in 2010 participated in The Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear in Washington, D.C., hosted by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert; he performed “Peace Train” as a counterpart to Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train,” with both acts followed by the O’Jays’ rendition of “Love Train.” In 2012 the stage musical Moonshadow, constructed around Stevens’ best-known songs, premiered in Melbourne, Australia. April 2014 brought induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. October of the same year saw the third Yusuf album, Tell ’Em I’m Gone, produced by Rick Rubin and featuring guitar contributions from Richard Thompson; the set revisited the early blues and R&B influences that had shaped his youth.

During 2016 Yusuf marked the fiftieth anniversary of his 1967 debut single “I Love My Dog” with A Cat’s Attic Tour, only his second North American trek since 1978. The following year he released The Laughing Apple, which included the newly written single “See What Love Did to Me” alongside re-recordings of several 1967 compositions. Credited jointly as Yusuf/Cat Stevens, it marked the first use of his former stage name on a release since 1978 and received a Grammy nomination for Best Folk Album. Five decades after the international breakthrough of Tea for the Tillerman, Yusuf/Cat Stevens revisited those songs on 2020’s Tea for the Tillerman 2, re-recording all eleven tracks with fresh arrangements alongside producer Paul Samwell-Smith. In 2023 he issued his first collection of original material since Tell ’Em I’m Gone with King of a Land, a twelve-track set he had been developing since 2011. Recorded across studios in Berlin, Brussels, Provence, and Dubai and mixed at George Harrison’s private facility in Friar Park, the album represented the first occasion an outsider to Harrison’s immediate circle had worked at the late Beatle’s estate. The melodies and arrangements evoked the folk-leaning character of Yusuf’s 1970s recordings, while the lyrics frequently addressed the pursuit of peace amid an inequitable world.