Last night music icon Mavis Staples returned to The Late Show with Stephen Colbert stage to perform ‘Human Mind’ from her new album Sad And Beautiful World, out this Friday. Co-written by Hozier and Allison Russell with Mavis in mind, watch + listen to the performance of the song below.
Praise for Mavis Staples
“One of music’s mightiest, most vital voices” – Rolling Stone
“Mavis Staples has built a life on singing about what is right.” – NPR Music
“Mavis Staples’s vocal dynamism, marrying the spiritual and the sensual, is intact –as growling and skin-tingling as ever.”
– Wall Street Journal
“Staples maintains a peer approval rating roughly on par with sunny days and ice cream cones. In an age of walls, she continues to see only bridges.” – The New Yorker
“Staples is one of those giants on whose shoulders a new generation of artists stands.” – Chicago Tribune
“Mavis continues setting the world to rights with one of the best albums of her triumphant second act.” – MOJO, ★★★★★
Sad And Beautiful World is the latest solo album from a national treasure and multigenerational talent who stands side by side with us in the face of dangers she knows all too well, at a time when more and more people have reason to wonder who and what could be lost. Produced by Brad Cook, the record spans seven decades of the American songbook — a range nearly as vast as Mavis’ career — and includes reinventions of timeless songs as well as original music. ‘Human Mind’ was the first track recorded, paying tribute to the complexity of life yet maintaining a faith in humanity: “Even in these days, I find / this far down the line, I find good in it sometimes,” Mavis contemplates. That magical last word — “sometimes” — shows her choosing hope, even with the disappointments that experience has brought.
It’s impossible to talk to Mavis’ collaborators without them bringing up the strength of her spirit and her generosity, growing animated over how much her songs mean to them. Russell described hearing the Staple Singers as a preteen and finding out that Mavis had played a key part in the civil rights movement as a young woman.
Upon being told that a verse from ‘Human Mind’ she’d written (“I am the last, daddy, the last of us”) had made Mavis cry, Russell said she’d been deeply affected. “Mavis is the transcendent force of love embodied,” she said. “There is no higher honor than one of my biggest heroes being moved by words I wrote.”
Producer Brad Cook also tells stories about growing up listening to the Staple Singers. About seeing Mavis perform live, he said, “I remember being utterly floored by the conviction and power she had in her voice.”
To capture Mavis’ resonant phrasing and textured vocals, Cook tried to build every song around that voice. He began with spare skeleton recordings, just drum and piano, and focused on recording her vocals. Then he expanded the song from there, trying never to overshadow or undermine the framework she’d established. He imagined a record in the tradition of Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s Will the Circle Be Unbroken, a group of artists coming together to celebrate community—in this case, one centered on Mavis.
Sad And Beautiful World shows that love is a choice and a force all its own. The album is a litany of prayer, of Mavis breathing life into these songs. “I just have to deliver the compassion I feel,” she says. “I want to share the song the way I feel it.”
Mavis Staples
Sad And Beautiful World
Tracklisting
1. Chicago
2. Beautiful Strangers
3. Sad And Beautiful World
4. Human Mind
5. Hard Times
6. Godspeed
7. We Got To Have Peace
8. Anthem
9. Satisfied Mind
10. Everybody Needs Love
https://mavisstaples.com/
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