![]() With them, he showed how speaking up and getting down were not mutually exclusive ideals, fashioning a singular style of psychedelic funk where even the grittiest tracks, such as “Higher Ground”, were infused with spiritual uplift. His staggering run of classic albums-from 1972’s Talking Book to 1976’s Songs in the Key of Life-helped lend legitimacy to the LP format for black soul/R&B pop artists who, with few exceptions, were wrongly relegated to singles status. As Black Power politics seeped into the early-’70s cultural landscape, Stevie became a symbol of both the movement’s righteous indignation and its hope for a more socially just world. First emerging as a child star in the early ’60s, covering Ray Charles standards under the name Little Stevie Wonder, Stevland Hardaway Judkins (born in Saginaw, Michigan, in 1950) would, by decade’s end, graduate to the more sophisticated soul of Motown-defining singles like “For Once in My Life”, showing future teen idols like Justin Timberlake and Justin Bieber how to gracefully age out of kinder-pop novelty. That he’s accomplished it without his sight is both the most astonishing and least remarkable thing about him. Both a kiss-off to late-’60s hippie optimism and a pathway to numerous possible spiritual futures, Innervisions cemented Wonder as the most inspired and singular mind in 1970s American popular music.Īn impassioned vocalist, prodigious multi-instrumentalist and visionary producer, Stevie Wonder is a truly transformative figure in the history of popular music. 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. On the heels of his first post-Motown-emancipation masterpiece Music of My Mind, 1972 was Stevie Wonder’s biggest year yet.
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