The folk singer behind 'Wild World' and 'Father and Son' stepped away from pop stardom in the late 1970s.
If you want to hear what people mean when they talk about Cat Stevens, put on 'Father and Son' or 'Wild World'. That's the sound that stuck around.
Songs like 'Father and Son' and 'Wild World' from the early 1970s became part of the background music of that decade. They were simple, acoustic folk tunes about generational gaps and small hopes. Even after he converted to Islam and changed his name to Yusuf Islam in 1976, tracks like 'Morning Has Broken' and 'Moonshadow' kept playing on radios. That plain-spoken quality is why something like 'The Wind' still gets covered now and then.
He started with acoustic folk albums such as 'Matthew and Son' in 1967 and 'Tea for the Tillerman' in 1970. Later records like 'Izitso' from 1977 showed him trying different sounds before he stepped back from the spotlight. He never built a permanent band, preferring to move between collaborators like Alun Davies on bass and Gerry Conway on drums.
Keep it compact: a lyric you come back to, a live memory, or the part of the catalog you would point someone toward first.
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