Yusuf

Cat Stevens rose to prominence as a singer and songwriter among the era’s dominant figures throughout the 1970s, only to relinquish that celebrity at decade’s end in favor of a deeper spiritual path. When he resurfaced during the mid-1990s under the name Yusuf Islam, frequently shortened to Yusuf, he initially bypassed the melodic approach that had secured his global following, concentrating instead on spoken-word recordings and compositions rooted in his Muslim beliefs. Beginning with An Other Cup in 2006, Yusuf fused the sonic textures and stylistic traits of his Cat Stevens recordings with lyrics shaped by greater maturity and spiritual focus, an approach he revisited on The Laughing Apple in 2017, while King of a Land in 2023 merged the sonic character of his celebrated 1970s work with themes drawn from the 2010s and 2020s.

Steven Demetre Georgiou, born in 1948, first attained recognition in the 1960s both as a songwriter and as a pop vocalist, achieving British chart success with “I Love My Dog” and “Matthew & Son.” Following a serious case of tuberculosis, Stevens reappeared with an altered perspective on existence and the industry, redirecting his creative direction to present himself as a more contemplative and philosophical singer/songwriter on the 1970 release Mona Bone Jakon. Later that same year came Tea for the Tillerman, which achieved widespread international acclaim after the single “Wild World.” From 1971 through 1977, Stevens issued six additional studio albums while maintaining an extensive touring schedule as one of the period’s leading folk-rock performers.

Although much of his most popular material had already conveyed a spiritual sensibility and his engagement with Buddhism, Stevens grew steadily more committed to Islamic principles as the 1970s progressed; on December 23, 1977, he formally embraced Islam and adopted the name Yusuf Islam. Despite this transition, one final Cat Stevens album appeared—Back to Earth, issued in December 1978—which achieved only modest sales. At that point Yusuf Islam declared his withdrawal from the pop-music sphere. He entered a marriage that would produce five children, sold his collection of instruments at auction, and devoted himself to family life along with various humanitarian initiatives. He played a central part in establishing the Muslim Aid charity, which assisted victims of the Ethiopian famine, and he also created a Muslim primary school near London. For the next decade he remained largely absent from public view until the late 1980s, when he drew attention by addressing the Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa against novelist Salman Rushdie for The Satanic Verses. Islam later clarified that he had not advocated Rushdie’s death but had merely outlined 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 broadcasting his recordings, and he encountered considerable criticism in the media.

In 1990 the compilation The Very Best of Cat Stevens reached the U.K. Top Five. Over the ensuing years he gradually resumed recording, establishing his own studio and label, Mountain of Light, and issuing the 1995 spoken-word album The Life of the Last Prophet. After two further releases in a comparable style, he presented the educational children’s album A Is for Allah in 2000. His philanthropic work persisted as well; during the late 1990s he and his wife, Fawziah, created the charitable organization Small Kindness to support survivors of the conflict in the Balkans.

Following the 2000 reissues of his complete Cat Stevens catalog and his public condemnation of the 9/11 attacks in New York, Yusuf’s public profile continued to rise, and after several additional children’s projects he chose to return to Western popular music. Issued in 2006 and credited simply to Yusuf, An Other Cup marked his first pop-oriented album in nearly three decades. Alongside promotional appearances across print, radio, and television, he also began performing selections from his earlier repertoire. In early 2009 he collaborated with “fifth Beatle” Klaus Voormann on a cover of George Harrison’s “The Day the World Gets ’Round,” donating all proceeds to assist children in war-torn Gaza. Later that year he released another pop album, Roadsinger. Yusuf maintained a steady touring schedule in the years that followed, and in 2010 he performed at The Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear in Washington, D.C., hosted by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert; on that occasion he sang “Peace Train” in contrast to Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train,” after which both performances were followed by the O’Jays’ rendition of “Love Train.” The year 2012 brought the premiere of Moonshadow, a stage musical constructed around Stevens’ best-known songs, which opened in Melbourne, Australia.

In April 2014 he received induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. That October a third album under the Yusuf name appeared, Tell ’Em I’m Gone. Produced by Rick Rubin and featuring guitar contributions from Richard Thompson, the record found Yusuf returning to the early blues and R&B that had first influenced him. In 2016 he marked the fiftieth anniversary of his 1967 debut single, “I Love My Dog,” with A Cat’s Attic Tour—only his second North American tour since 1978. The following year he released the studio album The Laughing Apple, which included the newly written single “See What Love Did to Me” together with re-recorded versions of several of his own 1967 songs. Credited jointly as Yusuf/Cat Stevens, it became the first release to feature his former stage name since 1978 and received a Grammy nomination for Best Folk Album. Fifty years after his international breakthrough album, Yusuf/Cat Stevens revisited the material of Tea for the Tillerman on 2020’s Tea for the Tillerman 2, re-recording all eleven songs with new arrangements alongside producer Paul Samwell-Smith. The Cat Stevens songs featured in the 1972 black comedy Harold & Maude—later embraced by a devoted cult audience—were finally gathered into a soundtrack album in 2022.

In 2023 Yusuf issued his first collection of original material since Tell ’Em I’m Gone with King of a Land, comprising twelve tracks on which he had been working since 2011. Recorded at studios in Berlin, Brussels, Provence, and Dubai, the album was mixed at George Harrison’s private facility within his British estate, Friar Park—the first occasion an individual outside Harrison’s immediate circle had been permitted to work there. The melodies and arrangements evoked the folk-leaning dimension of Cat Stevens’ 1970s recordings, while the lyrics frequently addressed Yusuf’s pursuit of peace amid an unjust world.