Did singer-songwriter John Legend state on social media that he was leaving the United States for France as a result of the 2024 U.S. presidential election? No, that's not true: Searches of his social media did not find such a statement. A search on Google News did not confirm that Legend had left the country because of the election results. An AI detection tool found that there was a "99.9%" chance that the article making the statement had been written using artificial intelligence.
The claim appeared in a post on Facebook (archived here) on November 21, 2024. The caption read:
🚨SHOCKING NEWS: John Legend REFUSES Grammy Nomination, Leaves US for Paris After Crushing Disappointment in BLUE WAVE Support: 'I Can't Stay in America Any Longer' 👇👇
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Mon Nov 25 15:40:56 2024 UTC)
The claim posted a link to an article about Legend's alleged departure in the post's comments. The article writes that Legend purportedly posted on social media, "I can't live here anymore." Lead Stories searched Legend's social media accounts (Facebook, X, Instagram) for the quote. That search did not yield any evidence backing up the claim (archived here, here, here, respectively).
Also, Legend would not be able to refuse a Grammy nomination at this point because the nominations for the 2025 Grammy Awards were published on November 8, 2024.
Copying and pasting the entire article into Hive Moderation's AI-detection tool indicated that there was a "99.9%" chance that the text was AI generated. Evidence of this is below:
(Source: Hive Moderation screenshot taken on Mon Nov 25 16:08:11 2024 UTC)
As of November 25, 2024, a search using Google News did not confirm the claim (archived here).
Lead Stories has reached out to Legend and will update this article if we receive a relevant response.
Other Lead Stories fact checks of claims concerning John Legend are here.
More Lead Stories fact checks of claims surrounding the 2024 U.S. presidential election are here.
