Yusuf / Cat Stevens

Yusuf / Cat Stevens (born Steven Georgiou, 1948, in London) wrote some of the most beloved songs of the singer-songwriter era — “Wild World,” “Father and Son,” “Peace Train,” and the album “Tea for the Tillerman.” At the peak of his fame he converted to Islam, took the name Yusuf Islam, and left pop music for nearly three decades before returning to recording and touring; he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2014.

A voice in the silence

In February 2025, Yusuf was credited among the 1,000-plus co-writers of “Is This What We Want?”, the silent protest album organized by Ed Newton-Rex and featuring Kate Bush, Damon Albarn, Annie Lennox, and Hans Zimmer. The record — recordings of empty studios and performance spaces, its track titles spelling out a single sentence aimed at Westminster — protested the UK government’s December 2024 proposal to exempt AI training from copyright unless creators actively opt out. Profits went to the charity Help Musicians.

The campaign argued that an opt-out regime reverses the foundations of copyright, handing musicians’ life’s work to AI companies for free and leaving working artists to police the machines. For a songwriter whose catalog has anchored six decades of covers, films, and royalties, the stakes of unlicensed machine reuse are concrete.