John Legend Becomes First Black Man to Achieve EGOT Status

by Raheem Karim
john legend

Singer John Legend has become a legend achieving the rare coveted prize of EGOT status Sunday night at the 2018 Creative Arts Emmys when he won an award for Outstanding Variety Special (Live) for Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert. EGOT stands for Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony Awards. The 39-year-old musician became the first black man to achieve EGOT status. It took Legend 12 years to earn the status becoming the 2nd youngest to only Robert Lopez of “The Book of Mormon” was younger, by less than a year. And he completed the set in 10 years.

Legend, who was an executive producer for the show, alongside composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, and lyricist Tim Rice all achieved EGOT status that night for producing the live show. They became the 13th, 14th, and 15th people in history to have won an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony award.

Along with this Emmy, Legend has won 10 Grammys throughout his musical career, a Tony for co-producing the 2017 revival of play Jitney, an Oscar and a Golden Globe in 2015 for writing the song “Glory” featuring Common from the film Selma.

He joins only 14 others who have received the quadruple crown, a distinguished list that includes Whoopi Goldberg, Helen Hayes, Rita Moreno, John Gielgud, Audrey Hepburn, Richard Rodgers, Marvin Hamlisch, Jonathan Tunick, Robert Lopez, Mike Nichols, Scott Rudin and Mel Brooks.

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According to Variety, backstage after winning the award, Legend said, “When I got into the music business it was a dream of mine to win Grammys and have plenty of success as a musician and sell lots of records and tour around the world as a performer, but I never had a dream of winning an EGOT, I didn’t even know what that was at the time.”

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