Watch Yusuf/Cat Stevens Perform ‘Wild World’ on ‘Colbert’

Yusuf/Cat Stevens celebrated the 50th anniversary of his classic album Tea for the Tillerman — and the release of his new rerecorded version, Tea for the Tillerman² — with a performance of “Wild World” on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.

The singer-songwriter and his band were situated in a coffee shop with artwork evoking the Tea for the Tillerman album cover on the walls, showing a young boy and girl climbing a tree. His rendition of the song was fairly straightforward, with an additional waltz section from the new album thrown in the middle. Overall, it sounded just as bright and melodic as the version he recorded 50 years ago at age 22.

Cat Stevens released Tea for the Tillerman² earlier this month, updating songs like “On the Road to Find Out” into a “bluesy banger” and adding a speech from rapper Brother Ali to the track “Longer Boats.” Ahead of the album release, he shared a stop-motion animated video for “Father and Son,” which showed him dueting the song with his younger self.


“‘Father and Son’ feels pretty appropriate for what’s going on right now if you take the father figure as being the establishment,” Yusuf said of the video. “However, I don’t think revolutions are that kind to the previous order, its main objective is to turn it around and to get rid of them. Whereas I don’t personally believe in that; I believe in a kind of a change that would not necessarily destroy everything.”