![]() 1 funk odyssey “Superstition” that asserts Wonder’s belief in reincarnation over his trademark wah-wah clavinet and Moog bass the tongue-in-cheek Latin workout “Don’t You Worry ’Bout a Thing”, a Dylanesque barb at a social climber delivered with a potent display of Wonder’s bottomless charm and the hopelessly romantic “Golden Lady”, which spirals upward into the kind of ecstatic joy that only Wonder could generate. ![]() There’s salvation to be found in “Higher Ground”, an impossibly groovy sequel to Talking Book’s No. The album-ending slow burn “He’s Misstra Know-It-All” suavely identifies the character types who prey on those same marginalised people, including, many surmised, the soon-to-resign “law and order”-claiming US president. With the journalistic soul of Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On broadcast straight from the street corner and central booking, “Living” is among the most scathingly beautiful indictments of the American justice system. ![]() “Living for the City” is a fevered seven-minute soul operetta about the unforgiving toll of urban life for the Black working class in the post-Black Power moment. The musical peaks were as high as Wonder would ever get, though the tone was more accusatory than ever. Wonder played and produced just about everything, with the help of his experimentally minded studio sous-chefs Malcolm Cecil and Robert Margouleff. The boldest political statement of Wonder’s career yet-assailing drug addicts, infrastructural racism, charismatic con men and superficial Christians-Innervisions also managed to be deliriously funky and boundary-pushing. An April 1973 Rolling Stone interview dubbed the erstwhile teen-pop star “The Formerly Little Stevie Wonder” and quoted the 23-year-old as saying that he wanted to “get in as much weird shit as possible” 1973’s Innervisions was a start. He opened for The Rolling Stones on their enormous US summer tour, exposing his exploratory soul-funk hybrid to countless rock fans, and released his second opus Talking Book before the end of the year. The track gave Wonder his closest brush with a UK No 1, until he finally topped the UK charts with “I Just Called to Say I Love You” in 1984.On the heels of his first post-Motown-emancipation masterpiece Music of My Mind, 1972 was Stevie Wonder’s biggest year yet. And just days after its release on Innervisions, “Higher Ground” gained even more significance, when Wonder spent four days in a coma after a near-fatal car accident.Ī joyous, brassy paean to Wonder’s jazz heroes: Glenn Miller, Louis Armstrong, Count Basie and “the king of all”, Duke Ellington. What caused the rush of creative genius that enabled Wonder to write and record this funky meditation on reincarnation in just three hours? He described it as “a feeling that something was going to happen”. This exuberant single represents Motown in all its mid-Sixties pomp it gave Stevie his first UK hit, as he began to find his own unmistakable sound. A compassionate humanitarian, Wonder’s contribution to worthy causes is legendary and, most of all, as the man himself might say, “He’s got soul.” This is my pick of Stevie Wonder’s 20 greatest songsĪfter his initial success with “Fingertips”, Wonder trod water until he was 15 and released the marvellous “Uptight” to remind everyone of his precocious talent. Wonder continued to make great music well into the Eighties – if his output since hasn’t quite matched his earlier touchstone recordings, well, even a genius has to take the occasional day off. As he gained greater autonomy in the Seventies, his pioneering fusion of rock and soul, using synthesisers, clavinet, and jazz and blues-influenced rhythms within a pop framework, led to some of the finest music of the rock era. ![]() Having signed to Motown’s Tamla label, he played a huge part in its success in the early Sixties. His precocious talent was clear for all to see when he rose to fame aged 11, as the child prodigy Little Stevie Wonder. Stevie Wonder, perhaps the greatest artist to grace the Motown label, celebrates his 70th birthday on 13 May. ![]()
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