John Legend’s EGOT and the Seduction of Symbolic Racial Progress

The announcement earlier this week that John Legend has achieved EGOT status—that is, the entertainment industry’s Emmy/Grammy/Oscar/Tony quadruple crown—affirmed him as a man for all stages. The past decade and a half since Legend broke into mainstream popular music with 2004’s piano solo “Ordinary People” has been marked with successes for the nimble entertainer. On top of his , including Best New Artist in 2005, Legend picked up a 2015 Academy Award for his duet with the rapper Common, “Glory,” the uplifting denouement of the civil-rights-movementfilm , and a 2017 Tony for co-producing , a revival of a 1982 August Wilson stage play. On Monday, he completed the entertainment industry superfecta, winning a Creative Artstelecast, in which Legend also played the titular role. Alongside Webber and Rice, themselves newly minted EGOT completists, Legend joins Audrey Hepburn, Rita Moreno, Marvin Hamlisch, Mel Brooks, and other luminaries on the 15-headed Mount Rushmore of American entertainment.