In an interview by Maria Sherman in The Associated Press, Legend says:
“He’s singing a lot of backup, and he’s such a genius. I have been a fan of his for like 20 years. When I was writing these songs, my first thought of who I wanted to produce this was Sufjan, because I love how dreamy he can make music, and how whimsical, and how much character he has to everything that he makes. And I just felt like it would be the perfect energy for a children’s album: To blend my songwriting with his production and arranging and playing. You just hear his influence all over the album and I love it. I was so happy he said yes because you never know if someone’s gonna want to make a children’s album with you, and we had never worked together. We had never even met before we started working on this.”
We interviewed Sufjan back in 2009 in issue #70, check that out here.