Cat Stevens

Yusuf Islam (born Steven Demetre Georgiou, 21 July 1948), commonly known by his former stage name Cat Stevens, is a British singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, humanitarian, and education philanthropist. His 1967 debut album reached the top 10 in the UK, and the album's title song "Matthew and Son" charted at number 2 on the UK Singles Chart. His albums Tea for the Tillerman (1970) and Teaser and the Firecat (1971) were both certified triple platinum in the US by the RIAA. His musical style consists of folk, pop, rock, and Islamic music.

His 1972 album Catch Bull at Four spent three weeks at number one on the Billboard 200, and fifteen weeks at number one in the Australian ARIA Charts. He earned two ASCAP songwriting awards in 2005 and 2006 for "The First Cut Is the Deepest", and the song has been a hit for four different artists. His other hit songs include "Father and Son", "Wild World", "Peace Train", "Moonshadow", and "Morning Has Broken". In 2007 he received the British Academy's Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Song Collection.

Matthew

Matthew may refer to:

Christianity

See also

Matthew and Son

"Matthew and Son" is a single written, composed, and performed by Cat Stevens. It was selected as the title song for his 1967 debut album. Stevens was a newly-signed teenage singer-songwriter, was performing to elaborate arrangements quite different from the skiffle which had, in part, inspired him to begin writing and performing.

Origins

The song, according to Stevens, took its name from the tailor, Henry Matthews, who made suits for Stevens, who thought up the story of the worker who is the main character in the song.

Stevens later commented, "I had a girlfriend, and she was working for this big firm, and I didn't like the way that she had to spend so much of her time working. The riff seemed to fit the words, Matthew and Son. There was a bit of social comment there about people being slaves to other people."

The song was covered by the band The Delgados in a 2002 Peel session and included on their 2006 collection The Complete BBC Peel Sessions.

Story

The selection itself is about a business called Matthew And Son; workers there, some of whom have fifty years of experience with the business, are wage slaves, and none of them dares ask for raises or promotions to higher-paying work despite a commonality of financial hardship ("He's got people who've been working for fifty years|No-one asks for more money 'cause nobody dares|Even though they're pretty low and the rent's in arrears"). They receive few breaks in their routine, and their food is generally poor ("There's a five minute break|And that's all you take|For a cup of cold coffee and a piece of cake").