New in PJ Media:
Here’s some good news for aging hippies. It’s time to replenish your stocks of patchouli oil and weed; you’ll want to be celebrating, because Cat Stevens has a new album coming out this summer! According to an Associated Press report Wednesday, “the ‘Peace Train’ hitmaker worked for years on the 12 new songs, revisiting familiar themes.” Hey, that’s swell. But what exactly constitutes “familiar themes” for the musician who identifies himself on Twitter as “Yusuf Islam the Artist also known as Cat Stevens”? Will the new album be called Salman Rushdie Had It Coming and 11 Other Songs?
Okay, seriously, the album is called King of a Land, and AP explains that the familiar themes it revisits are ones of “togetherness.” It even sounds as if the album cover is a conscious imitation of his early Seventies offerings: “The album cover illustration shows a boy playing guitar on top of the Earth, as a cat stretches and a train puffs along a track.” Yeah, that sounds like a Cat Stevens album cover, all right. AP also notes that “the first single is the cheerful, family friendly ‘Take the World Apart,’ with the lyrics ‘I’ll take the world apart/to find a place for a peaceful heart.’” More resonances: that sounds just like the peace-and-love stuff Cat sang about during the High Hippie Days.
Cat himself says that the album is rooted in material that is even older: “The source of musical inspiration for this song came from the 50s. The smoochy harmonies and chords have an enchanting effect on the ear. Life was simpler then: lonely hearts yearning for love.” Gee, that’s awfully sweet, but can Cat’s latest reinvention of himself really obscure what he became after the first time he gave us cats and trains and peace music? Should we forget, when we put on King of a Land and hear ol’ Cat looking once again for a “place for a peaceful heart,” that for a considerable period, Cat Stevens was anything but peaceful?
As the Washington Post, of all people, reminded us in 2021, when Cat Stevens was first reemerging after decades of silence, as a new convert to Islam, he enthusiastically endorsed the death fatwa against Salman Rushdie for supposedly blaspheming Muhammad, the prophet of Islam. In 1989, “after Rushdie had officially been targeted because of his portrayal of the prophet Muhammad in his novel ‘The Satanic Verses,’ Stevens had matter-of-factly confirmed that the Koran prescribes death as the punishment for blasphemy.” Nor was this simply a matter of confirming that the death penalty for blasphemy was indeed Islamic teaching.
There is more. Read the rest here.
Namer says
Cat needs to continue his journey to just fade away. His time has passed and his conversion to islam makes it more so.
PGK12287 says
I’ve couldn’t have said it any better.
gravenimage says
There are lots of washed up singers. Most of them are pretty harmless–just making the rounds of county fairs and tiny music clubs, with fans biding their time through their terrible newer material until they sing their big hits from decades ago. There are worse things.
And Cat Stevens–now, Yusef Islam–is one of them. This thug wants to see anyone who criticized Islam in any way murdered. He’s a thug, and this has nothing to do with the quality, or lack of same, of his music.
I was never that impressed by most of his stuff. I only really liked his “Morning had Broken”–coincidentally a Christian hymn that he no doubt has rejected by this point.
dazzleme says
Gravenimage, -well said sir!
tgusa says
gravenimage is a female dazzleme. A real and authentic woman.
tgusa says
Although they had their time in the sun it really makes me sad me that we have so many geriatric musicians shuffling out on to the stage trying to preform so late in the day. I don’t need that picture embedded in my mind so I will just listen to the music that the ones I still like created back in the day.
somehistory says
Very few singers can reach middle age and keep the voice control they had when younger. It is sad listening to those who keep on trying after they begin to have trouble remembering the words and tune.
Even greats such as Alan Jackson don’t sound the same as when they started out. If they need the cash or if they just have a need to keep singing, it’s understandable.
what isn’t are people like this guy.
Wonder if jane fonda buys his new stuff?
tgusa says
So true somehistory.
tgusa says
I grew up in southern California and back then anyone who was anyone in Rock preformed at Anaheim Stadium. Peaceful crowded appreciative yet boisterous audience. Over the years I saw most all of them there. I saw Vanhalen in 78 when they were just a back up band and few at that time had ever heard of them.
somehistory says
Some say Rick Nelson’s best song was Garden Party.
People want singers to sound the same as they did when they first began. Few do.
I recall hearing Conway Twitty not longer before he died…live on stage, and he came really close to his original Only Make Believe.
tgusa says
Yes I get what you are saying. I’m a bit strange in the music department. That is what my friends from the past called me. I have never been stuck on pop culture so I didn’t care what they said or thought. I like an extremely wide range of music but it has to be good music, no matter the genre.
somehistory says
I like all kinds too. Country, rock and roll, some pop some classical, Dixieland….but, as you say, it has to be good.
I was at a party once, and some girl there had brought a bunch of records. Top songs of the time, but they were all by unknowns who couldn’t sing. I thought to myself, she could have bought fewer and had the real deal, instead of a lot no one wanted to hear.
And people like Kenny G. don’t have to worry about voice control…as long as they can breathe normally, they can sound just like they did when they were young.
Breathing problems, and throat clogging…come with age.
dazzleme says
Namer -I agree, he and Islam needs to go away.
Jayell1 says
Strange. I thought that music was supposed to be ‘haram’ in islam. If so, what’s this specimen doing manufacturing more of the stuff after he’d ‘seen the light’? Or is this another case of ‘make it up as you go along’, so typical of this ‘cut and paste’ religion – and Mr. Islam’s (Stevens’s) songs.
Siddi Nasrani says
He is doing it for the money & not only that he just wants everyone that he is still alive.
Golem2 says
A menu Muslim
gravenimage says
Yusef Islam *did* give up music for quite some time after his conversion. I’ve read a couple of his muddled explanations for returning to making music, and they make little sense. I imagine he mostly likes the money and whatever is left of the limelight.
World@70 Richard says
Cat Stevens made some wonderful music way back when, then he converted to Islam, laid down his guitar and didn’t pick it up again for 20 years.
He deserted his fans so I have no reason to hear anything he may have done since then.
Hoi Polloi says
Here we are again. If one of us said or did something ordinary, we’d find antifa at our doors, but this violent sharia proponent, no.
Ade Fegan says
A man who supports the idea of burning blasphemers
Brigitte from Germany says
Since 1978 is his name Yusuf Islam.
He has in UK 4 Quran schools.
I`m not his fan. Never.
࿗Infidel࿘ says
Did he convert to shi’a or sunni islam? While Rushdie’s book has been banned in most, if not all, muslim countries, I doubt that many sunnis responded to the Ayatollah’s call. In fact, Hadi Matar, who’s from Azerbaijan, is probably a shi’a as well
As for Cat, the only song of his that I ever liked was ‘Wild World’, but other artists who’ve sang that have done it better
tgusa says
Father and Son is a good one from back in the day. Released One year after his conversion to islam. Must have been recorded before his going over to the dark side.
gravenimage says
‘Salman Rushdie Had It Coming and 11 Other Songs’? Cat Stevens Has a New Album
……………………………………….
People still tend to think of him as the “Peace Train” guy, and not the guy who wanted other Muslims to murder Salman Rushdie in the street. What a thug.