Stevie Wonder
“OOOOOOOO! Look at me!
I’m an eclecticist!” – Me
“I just
listened to Songs In The Key Of Life, and you’re right, it’s FANTASTIC.”
–
“Hey
Stevie, how do I look?” – Someone a few jimmies short of a satisfactory ice
cream cone
Albums Reviewed:
Hey! Look at this. Mr. “I Hate Rap and R&B Because All of it’s Crap” is reviewing an R&B artist! What has come over him? Well, see, I don’t hate ALL R&B-type stuff, I just pretty much hate all the modern TRL-sponsored stuff. I like me some classic stuff. I like me some P-Funk, some Sly Stone, some Curtis Mayfield and Marvin Gaye and all them dudes. They’re cool. And I REALLY like me some Stevie Wonder. I’m just gonna come out and say it: He’s the Beatles of R&B/soul/funk/whatever. He’s just SO GODDAMN GOOD at what he does, it almost seems useless to compare other artists of the genre to him. Today, Stevie’s all super-famous and whatnot, and he’s an icon, but how many people really know all that much about his music? It’s not like there’s any “classic R&B” radio stations around, and it’s not like classic rock stations are gonna fit him into their playlists next to Foreigner and the Steve Miller Band. Sure, you’ve all heard “Superstition” and “Higher Ground” and the single edit of “Isn’t She Lovely,” but, con sarnet, Stevie’s mid-seventies catalog is just as essential as The Doors or Black Sabbath or something. And EVERYONE, no matter if their favorite artist is Britney Spears or Cannibal Corpse, should have a copy of Songs In The Key Of Life in some form. I will NOT argue about this. It’s like The White Album of R&B/soul music.
Anyway, besides his songwriting, which is obviously incredible, WHAT makes Stevie so impressive? Well, he did everything himself. And by everything, I do mean EVERYTHING. Just take a quick look at the Innervisions credits on the All Music Guide: “Stevie Wonder – Bass, Harmonica, Piano, Arranger, Composer, Drums, Keyboards, Vocals, Moog Synthesizer, Multi Instruments, Producer, Writer, Fender Rhodes, Moog Bass, Fender Electric Piano, Moog Bells.” SHIIIIIIIIIT. That’s impressive. And you know what makes this even MORE astounding? HE’S FUCKING BLIND!!! Even if your tastes are fucked-up and stupid and you don’t like Stevie’s music, you HAVE to admire his work ethic.
Now,
compare this to modern R&B/soul/rap/whatever acts (who are fully sighted,
mind you). They hire invisible producers
with stupid names like “Timbaland” to, like, make their joints fresh,
DUDE. Plus, everything’s fucking
computerized. I won’t even MENTION the
P. Diddy “sample” technique now, because that gets a thorough lambasting later
on this page. And, what’s more, THEY
CAN’T EVEN DO A SONG BY THEMSELVES! Does
every song have to feature like six people?
I mean, really, does it? The
“featuring” phenomenon is even more beyond me than the P. Diddy “sample =
ripoff” phenomenon. I mean, look at the
typical video by, oh, I don’t know,
Before I
stop bitching, I’d like to address
OK, fuck that shit, onto the Stevie
reviews!
ddickson@rice.edu writes:
Say! I just thought of
something. You know who's to blame for all
those "featuring this" and "featuring that" on modern
R&B albums? DR. DRE!
I mean, the Chronic's a good album and all, and the Doctor's one hell of a
producer, but he realized he wasn't that good a rapper, so every frickin'
track on that thing has like three guests on it!! Once Snoop Dogg
followed
his lead on Doggystyle, it was downhill from there. Still, much as I hate
that kind of music, like you do, I must admit, I wouldn't mind being one of
those people. That's the life to live. Decadence to the nines.
If I got any of this wrong, correct me, folks. Maybe it was Humpty-Hump
or
some other fool who started the whole "featuring the population of
Beach
Dominick
to ddickson: i actually
think it was public enemy
that started the "guest-starring" trend. yeah, yeah,
i know what you're thinking, but on "burn hollywood
burn" from Fear Of A Black Planet, Chuck D shares
rapping duties with Ice Cube and Big Daddy Kane, and
they all spend roughly the same amount of time
rapping.
still, we'll forgive them because it's fucking PUBLIC
ENEMY, man.
My Cherie Amour (1969)
Rating: 5
Best Song: “My Cherie
Amour”
OK, this is more what I was expecting when I made those disparaging remarks about Stevie’s cover-laden pre-Where I’m Coming From Motown albums being generic commercial piles of mediocrity despite having never heard any of them. This is totally something I could see coming off the Berry Gordy-approved assembly line without any real imagination or controversy. Signed, Sealed and Delivered, being the last such album, was the one that finally showed the potential Stevie had over an entire album, but this one? Not so much (by the way, do you still love my decision to review what I can of Stevie’s catalog in this backwards-type manner? People just stumbling onto this site now to read the Stevie Wonder reviews I mostly wrote almost four (egads!) years ago must be extremely confused). The fact remains that this album, fun and upbeat and filled with lovely songs about G-rated, family values-approved “love” though it is (and look at Stevie enjoying himself in that suit on the cover in front of that crowd of conservatively attired white people! Golly, he sure is unthreatening!), is simply not good.
The “hit” (meaning the lead single and title track, which I therefore assume must have been the “hit”), “My Cherie Amour,” is a somewhat melodic, sweetly upbeat, probably oversaccharine love song with too many strings that do nothing interesting in it. This is how I would also describe like two-thirds of the remaining songs as well. “My Cherie Amour” just has a snappier melody than the others (or, more accurately, a snappy melody, period). The other semi-notable hit original song (at least according to the four-line review from the All Music Guide) is the ballad “Yester-Me, Yester-You, Yesterday.” I’m just gonna let the title speak for itself on that one. Most of the rest of the material consists of covers, ranging from moderately OK (“At Last,” done in a much-appreciated fun and peppy version that shows off the pure charisma Stevie has, which is nice because it’s not like he shows off many of his other talents on this record) to the decidedly not-so-OK (a gawd-awful version of the Doors’ “Light My Fire,” which I can only assume was made to be such horseshit to draw attention away from the fact that Stevie was covering a song with the word “high” in it). He also covers a song from “The King and I,” which is so retarded I don’t know where to begin. Really, Stevie? “The Kind and I?” Yeah, I love to see songs credited to “Hammerstein, Rodgers” when I buy an album from the guy who made Songs in the Key of Life. The fact that I generally hate musicals makes this fact all the more exciting to me. Let’s move on.
I have very little to say about this record, a fact you may have gleaned from the fact that half of this review is in some sort of parenthesis. Signed, Sealed, and Delivered at least showed Stevie trying to break out of those Motown shackles in that it had that one protest song it. Plus it was, you know, good. This is an album of schlocky horn and string-laden G-rated love songs that was probably written, arranged, and recorded in a week. The string parts especially seem like they were just thrown on with no regard whatsoever to the rest of the song (whichever one it may be). In one of the cringe-inducing ballads Stevie implores his woman to not leave him like a “nervous clown” because it happened to rhyme with “around” or something (I don’t even remember which song this is). I don’t think I need to say much more. Stevie’s incessant energy and ever-present harmonica, plus a few OK melodies, make this album mediocre, but that’s all the credit I’m gonna give to it. I don’t think I’ll be continuing my backwards Stevie Wonder reviewing for a little while.
Signed, Sealed And Delivered (1970)
Rating: 8
Best Song: “Sugar”
So there I was at Amoeba one day
with the Mythical Al and I saw this thing on sale for like six dollars, said to
myself “I’m pretty sure this is the last album Stevie put out before he went
and recorded Where I’m Coming From
and Music of My Mind” (which
thankfully turned out to be true), and purchased said album posthaste (along
with Apocalypse 91…The Enemy Strikes
Black because Public Enemy rules and it’s not like I could find any of
their albums dirt-cheap back when I was on Long Island, which is funny because
Chuck D GREW UP THERE). And, upon arriving back at the Mythical Al’s
apartment (where I was staying because I had just arrived here at the time), I put it away because Al has a giant
HDTV and I hadn’t finished watching the 1st season of
Seriously, though, this is a darn-good little record album we have here. As you could probably expect, the whole “pioneering use of futuristic synth tones” thing we all know and love from Stevie’s mid-seventies masterpieces isn’t present yet, and there is a cover on here (that KICKS!), but good christ is this thing consistent It’s fun, too. Pure pop fun poppy goodness all around. The strings I complain so much about in my review of Where I’m Coming From (which ofcourse you can find below…man, this “reviewing Stevie’s early career backwards” thing is gonna be awesome) are all over it too, but the super-happy-fun-poppy tone of the whole thing makes it OK! They don’t sound gloppy at all. Actually tasteful most of the time, like on the fantastic social commentary track (Fuck! Stevie was doing social commentary songs back in 1970!) “Heaven Help us All,” where, along with the horns and church choir backing vocals, they lend the song a truly epic feel that’s found nowhere else on the album. Like on the rest of it, production-wise, Stevie’s breaking absolutely no ground whatsoever here, but who cares when the song is so damn good? The way he sings that “heaven help the man who gaaaaaave that boy a gun!” is simply outstanding. I’m not kidding when I say this tune rivals his best social commentary tunes from a few years later when he was writing all the stuff that made him a legend. Is it as good as “Higher Ground?” Ofcourse not. The production isn’t in the ballpark of that tune, but trust me when I say the songwriting is actually pretty damn close to it.
Shockingly, the ultra-famous single and reason the album has the title and cover art it does (“Signed, Sealed, Delivered I’m Yours”) is not even the best tune on the record! Hell, it’s not even the second-best, or the best goofy pop love tune, because I absolutely adore the ultra-cheerful “Sugar” and find it one of the most purely fun songs Stevie ever wrote. Part of it is the ridiculously silly and catchy “SUGAAAAAAAR! Sugar!” refrain in the chorus, part of it is the breakdown with all the horns in it that totally rules, and part of it is the absolutely mean drum groove laid down by whoever played it (certainly not Stevie; he was never this good behind the kit). Just a fantastic, wonderful song all around, like both the title track and the cover of the Beatles’ “We Can Work it Out,” which Stevie deconstructs into a groovy soul-pop tune with a great little insistent electric guitar riff. And a harmonica solo that sounds just like the one in “Isn’t She Lovely!” Way back in 1970! Well done! I can’t believe how good the first half of this record is.
The second half’s not so hot, unfortunately. Sure, it’s good (I did say this album was consistent, didn’t I?), but the highs of the first half are replaced by a lot of “oh, that’s a good song.” “I Gotta Have a Song” is pretty dramatic, I guess (at least as dramatic as a song with the refrain “I’ve gotta have a song!” can be), and probably stands out as the best one on side 2, but a lot of it is just simply “nice” soul-R&B-pop, the kind of which Stevie could probably toss off in a few hours. As you’d expect, squeaky-clean love themes predominate (“Anything You Want Me to Do,” “I Can’t Let My Heaven Walk Away,” “Joy (Takes Over Me),” etc.), and there are lots of horn charts and strings involved. I certainly like it more than Where I’m Coming From still, but it clearly doesn’t stack up to Stevie’s output from Music of My Mind onward. It’s more what I expected this whole album to sound like, I guess, instead of having 3 or 4 totally awesome tunes on side 1 like it does. Except if I expected the whole album to sound like side 2, then I’d have expected to give it a 7, and then why would I be avoiding it in the first place? You know what? I’m an idiot.
So it turns
out early Stevie isn’t a waste of time after all, and now I’ve got a bunch more
albums to get! Outstanding. Now that I know they’ll probably be good,
though, I suppose it won’t be so bad.
After all, I am living on that sweet, sweet grad student stipend
cash.
Where
I’m Coming From (1971)
Rating: 6
Best Song: “Do Yourself A Favor”
Now I see why you can’t find a copy of this record anywhere while Music of my Mind is so readily available. It’s not that good! I know I’m coming to this album like a full year after hearing the rest of Stevie’s material, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s just not up to par with what follows. Music of My Mind even beats this thing into the ground. Now, see, it’s not that bad. But it seems to me that Stevie’s still mentally half in the Motown assembly line bullshit arena, and parts of this record reek of cheesiness and stupidly overt cuteness that I just can’t in any way endorse. There are moments of classic Stevie peeking through, but not enough! Too many little kids singing and cheeseball string ass-flourishes cover it up. Goddamn you, melodically lacking and inappropriate string flourishes, damn you to HELL!!!
Anyway, “Do Yourself a Favor” is a fantabulous six-minute classic Stevie funk track that you should all try to get RIGHT NOW if you haven’t heard it (and chances are you haven’t). There’s a cool, old-school-sounding organ sound in there that Stevie’d abandon later on, and it meshes nicely with the funky-ASS “robotic” keyboards that you’ll later find plastered all over classic Stevie funk tracks throughout the seventies. Rules pelvis! Nothing else comes close, but a lot of the first side is not bad at all. “Look Around,” as the opener, has never done much for me (yeah, that’s a cool keyboard line, but does the song GO anywhere? NO!), but following “Do Yourself a Favor” you’ll find a couple nice slower, ballad-ish tunes that offer previews of what you’d find on, say, Talking Book, only less good (that’s not English). Not really because the songwriting’s all that much weaker (it is, but not a lot), but because I’m guessing the Motown stooges might’ve had a little bit of influence over the production on this puppy, and “Think of Me as Your Soldier,” which would be a GREAT simple, melodic tune, has those damn string flourishes all over the frickin’ place, stuffed into every nook and cranny until they bubble over and piss me off. I dunno if the oboe was in Stevie’s original track either, since it follows the keyboard line exactly whenever I notice it. Same complaints go for “Something out of the Blue.” The oboes and flutes and meandering strings are just unnecessary, and you only need to take a listen to Talking Book or Fulfillingness’ First Finale to see what these songs would sound like without this gook. Much better, I tell you! Annoying poo.
Moving on, “If You Really Love Me” was the single, I believe, and this time I’m gonna complain about the female backing vocals, which lend an otherwise nice, peppy pop song an element of annoying cuteness that I don’t like so much, because I’m a bitter, bitter asshole. Like the last two, it’s a good song, see, but the production is given a cheesy Motown touch that is absent from Stevie’s subsequent albums. I don’t know if this was Stevie’s decision or the record company’s (was it here or on Music of My Mind that Stevie got TOTAL control? I’m not completely sure anymore…), but fuck it up the ass.
Post-“If You Really Love Me,” then, we start having some dire problems, and this is where the album turns from “good songs with annoying production” to “Stevie really hasn’t hit his stride yet at all.” “I Wanna Talk to You” is at times another cool Stevie funk rocker, but many other times has a ridiculous old man (or what sounds like an old man) scolding Stevie for writing a song that features him on vocals, because absolutely NO ONE wants to hear that shit. “Take up a Course in Happiness” pushes my cheese meter to the limit, with its way-way-way-too happy melody and MORE string flourishes that add nothing to nothing. “Never Dreamed You’d Leave in Summer” is a slow, melodic Stevie piano ballad that has a lot of other unnecessary instruments like flutes and oboes and strings (sound familiar?), and while the “la la la” parts at the end of “Sunshine in their Eyes” are great, and the melody in the second half is ace, the familiar Motown strings o’ nothingness make themselves heard a bit too much, and large chunks of the lyrics are handled by a choir of tonally challenged elementary school students, which is SO FUCKING CUTE it makes me run to the bathroom to projectile vomit. This is poor stuff, and I’m glad Stevie grew out of it quickly.
I don’t really know how to end this review because, as I said before, I really don’t know whether Stevie authorized these flourishes himself or some faceless Motown assplug though they’d sound good because they’re really, really, really not tasteful. So basically it’s that I don’t know who to make fun of, and, since I usually make fun of someone, this really rubs me the wrong way. Normally I’d just make fun of George W. Bush in a situation like this, but I’ve done that so much recently I bet people are getting desensitized to my rants. 7 for material. The cutesiness and string cheese knock the overall effect down a point. This is the end of the review.
Music Of My Mind (1972)
Rating: 8
Best Song: “Love Having You Around”
Before I start this review, I think I’d better explain why it will be a babbling, incoherent mess. See, as I write this, I just finished my last exam. Literally half an hour ago. My brain is completely 113% fried. Three solid weeks of studying and/or papering for like 10-12 hours a day (except football playoff days, ofcourse!), with no break. I lost my sanity a while ago. Why would I want to write a review in such a state, you ask? Well, see, I’m going home for a week in a few hours (Harvard’s famed “intercourse,” TEE HEE!), and I’d like to write some of these Stevie Wonder reviews while I’m home so I can post this page soon after I get back (all the more to serve YOU! All TWO people that read this site regularly!). I have all of Stevie’s albums on (burned) CD except this one, which only resides on my PC as an mp3 playlist, and thus I can’t take it home. And I like to review albums in order, and thus this one must come first. So there you go! Why don’t I just burn the CD and take it home, you ask? Well, I thought it’d be fun to write a review when I’m completely incapable of forming a coherent thought. It’s pretty fun so far!
One more sidebar! It is ASS COLD in Boston right now. In the ten minute walk back from where I took my final to my dorm, my skin felt like it was violently torn off my face about 62 separate times. I’ve been back for like 20 minutes and I STILL can’t feel my ears. Just for fun, my roommate and I checked weather.com for the temperature when I got back. You know what it was? TWELVE DEGREES! With a wind chill of SEVEN BELOW ZERO! Apparently, Boston packed up and moved itself to Antarctica. This is why Boston rules, though. It was like 100 degrees in September, and now we’re in negative temperatures. It’s the VARIETY, people.
OK, OK, FINALLY I’ll get to the album in question. When Stevie turned 21, he had had quite enough of making 3 Motown shit records with one hit single per year (none of which I have, fuck THAT), and so he felched out of his contract, recorded this album by himself, and used it as a bargaining chip in negotiating his new Motown contract. He made one record of all-Stevie before he felched out (Where I’m Coming From), which I looked for EVERYWHERE, but was unable to find (Found it! Review above! It’s not that good!). Not on Kazaa at ALL, not at my local Newbury Comics or used CD stores, not for sale on Amazon! Yikes. I found a copy on Half.com for FORTY FUCKING DOLLARS, though. Call me crazy, but “half” does not mean “three times the goddamn suggested retail price.” My conclusion from these endeavors is that, apparently, Where I’m Coming From is about as easy to get as a blowjob from Natalie Portman, and so I start here, with his first post-shit Motown contract record.
So, how is it? Well, it’s pretty good. Not up to par with the “classic string” that comes after it, but Stevie knows what he’s doing. It’s a little unfocused, a few songs are piece of crap useless R&B jam things I never under any circumstances want to listen to ever again in my life, and every song’s lyrics have the word “love” in them about 500 times, but otherwise, not bad! I suppose we can’t blame Stevie for the wuvvey-duvvey lyrics. He’s just 21 and less than a year removed from being Motown’s bitch, remember. Before I finish this paragraph, I’d like to mention the songs that are dumb, so I can concentrate on the rest of this record better, because the rest is good (that was not at ALL coherent, lo siento). “Sweet Little Girl” is like half spoken word bullshit with Stevie going “come on, sugah! Come on, baby!” in the most fucking annoying voice EVER, “Happier Than The Morning Sun” is fine, but way WAY too simple and underdeveloped to be vintage Stevie, and “Seems So Long” is a mess that sounds like elevator music.
The rest is good, though, though it certainly isn’t up to par with what would come after. Why did I give the record an 8, again? I guess it certainly doesn’t hurt that the three best songs are the three longest, taking up half the album. “Love Having You Around” rules all sorts of 100% classic Stevie ass, and the coda is neat with funky robotic vocals and horns coming in at all sorts of inappropriate times, but it goes on a little long. “Superwoman (Long Parentheses In The Title I’m Too Lazy To Look Up And Type Out, Yet Apparently Retarted Enough To Make Up A Fake One Four Times As Long)” follows, and the first half is as gorgeous as Stevie’s best ballads, but the second half doesn’t measure up, and it goes on a little too long. “Keep On Running” kicks BALLS (ooooo, neat piano fills!) despite having a total of one lyric repeated 5,670 times and going on a little too long. A lot of this album goes on a little too long. It’s UNFOCUSED. He’s fucking around in his little home studio like the happy little blind person he is. There are three other songs on here, and they’re all pretty good (a fast happy one, a funky one, and a ballad-y one), but this is about the length I try to keep my reviews at, so I’m gonna stop, maybe go drink a beer. I feel like getting drunk. I always feel like getting drunk.
See, this is what happens when I
allow myself to type a review when completely incapable of forming a coherent
thought.
Talking Book (1972)
Rating: 8
Best Song: “Superstition”
So, from the prototypical "low
8," we proceed to the prototypical "high 8." And we also
proceed to, hopefully, a semi-coherent review, as I'm sitting at home right
now, rested and thinking somewhat clearly (I never really think very
clearly). Oh, I went to the DMV today to renew my driver's license, and I
was in and out of the place in FIVE MINUTES. Easily the most surprising
thing to ever happen in my 21 years of life, almost as surprising as how, when
you put this album on, you don't hear Stevie! FUCK DUDE, CHECK OUT THAT
SEGWAY!!!! Anyway, when "You Are The Sunshine Of My Life" opens
up, some random guy whose voice isn't as cool as Stevie's sings the first line,
and some random feminina whose voice isn't as cool as Stevie's sings the second
line. When I first listened to this album, I thought I had downloaded the
wrong version and this was a cover by like The Captain and Tenille or
something. Thankfully, however, Stevie comes in with his cool voice and
sings the third line, and we're off on another sickeningly happy album of
wuvvey-duvvey songs about wuv.
Oh, but, dude,
it's got "Supersition" on it!
Even with
"Superstition," though, I count 8 of 10 songs as being about love and
love-related topics, and that's probably why it can't get a 9 from me, because
I'm such a fucking cynical pessimist BITCH. The two album bookends are
the best examples of this. Lyrics like "You are the sunshine of my
life, that's why I'll always be around," and "I believe when I fall
in love with you, it will be forever" do not make think "gee
whillikers, Stevie's a genius!" but instead make me thing "fucking
happy optimistic prick." Ofcourse, two things make me like all these
wuv songs. First, it isn't fake. As hard as it is to believe,
Stevie really IS this happy. ALL THE TIME. Second, the music is
REALLY, REALLY GOOD. "You Are The Sunshine Of My Life" is
catchy as fuck and has some neat bongo rhythms that get my ass all in a tither,
and "I Believe (When I Fall In Love It Will Be Forever)" suddenly
STOPS at about the 4:15 mark and comes in with this "Don't you wanna don't
you wanna fall in loooooooove!" coda that is probably the second-coolest
thing on the record, after, like, that other song.
I mean
"Superstition!" Did you hear me? "SUPERSTITION"
IS ON THIS ALBUM!!!!
There's one
other non wuvvey-duvvey song here besides "Superstition," which is
"Big Brother," a nice a-little-too-overt reference to 1984
("Your name is Big Brother, you say that you're watching me on the
telly") that sounds sort of like "Happier Than The Morning Sun"
from the last record, but a little better. The rest will make you cringe
if you hate love songs, so from now on I'll refrain from talking about that and
concentrate on the music. We've got more standard Stevie tricks all over
the place here, like the funky coda to "Maybe Your Baby" that just
keeps GOING and GOING and GOING with all those random chicks singing that one
line OVER and OVER and OVER again, and it's a good thing it fucking
rules. Because it goes on pretty long.
Oh, and did I
mention the album has "Superstition" on it? Kiiiiiiiick-ASS!
There's also a
standard Stevie "slow, boring, sparsely arranged ballad that depends on
how godlike Stevie's voice is to be any good," in this case "You And
I (We Can Conquer The World)." Do you realize that's the second song
that contains an ENTIRE SENTENCE in a parenthesis? Pardon my bad Boston
accent, but that's FRICKIN' RETAHHHHHHHTED! Anyhoo, it's a love ballad,
and it's slow, and I'm not especially fond of it, but that's because I'm generally
not very fond of really, really slow boring love ballads. It's about
6,000,000,000,000,000 times better than anything Celine "I Married My
110-Year-Old Manager" Dion has ever done. I STILL haven't seen
Titanic, by the way, and I never will. Fucking skinny Canadian Frog
bitch. I'm VERY sure you actually drive a CHRYSLER.
Ohhhhhhhhh!!!!
And the record has "Superstition" on it!
"Blame It
On The Sun" threatens to become another boring, slow ballad for its first
thirty seconds, then realizes there already was one a few tracks ago, and it
gets good. Pretty much everything left on here is good, too. Jeff
Beck throws out a neat guitar solo in "Lookin' For Another Pure
Love.” Everything is still relatively simple, though. It's
basically like an improved, tightened-up version of Music Of My Mind,
without the stupid spoken word crap or elevator music. This is the one
that's pretty much universally thought to start Stevie's "classic
string," and I'm not gonna argue that (this and the next three are the
SHIT, my friends), but I don't really think it's THAT much better than the last
album. The songwriting's better, and it's more focused, but Music Of
My Mind had this weird, idiosyncratic charm that's not really on this
album. Maybe it's because he has all of Motown's studio and resources and
all, since he recorded Music Of My Mind at his home studio without
the help of the Berry Gordy #1 Hit Single Corporation. I dunno, maybe
it's just me. At least he did make a few efforts to write about something
OTHER than love, which is good. Hey, wouldn't it be neat if he spent most
of an album writing songs about politics and drugs and injustice and
stuff? Yeah, that'd be the shit.......
Oh, and dude, I
almost forgot! "Supersition" is on this record! How
fucking cool is THAT?
"SUPERSTITIOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOON
AIN'T THE WAAAAAAYYYYYY!!!!!"
Innervisions
(1973)
Rating: 9
Best Song: “Living For The City”
Oh man! It's an album all
about politics and drugs and injustice and stuff. DUDE! SWEEEEEET!
AND THEN???
NO "AND
THEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaanyway,
like I said, Stevie dropped the stupid dependence on love lyrics for this one,
for the most part. There's still chick stuff here, but it's VERY much in
the minority. The only 100% blatant "THIS IS A CHICK LOVE SONG"
tune here is "All In Love Is Fair," the token slow, boring, sparsely
arranged love ballad. I like it more than "You And I (Fucking
Parentheses)" for sure. Songs like this pretty much depend
completely on Stevie's voice, and my GOD does Stevie's voice sound superb on
this song, superb enough to make me give the tune a thumbs-up,
consequently losing my manhood. But I DON'T CARE! I LIKE THE
SONG! "Visions" and "Golden Lady" are two songs that
sound like they're wuv songs, but then you look at the lyrics and, like,
they're NOT, sort of. "Golden Lady" is a nice, pretty piano
thing and "Visions" is a little acoustic ballad thing that's so quiet
you barely notice it because of its sequencing.
And WHAT exactly
is that sequencing? Well, it's between "Too High" and
"Living For The City!" "Too High" is an anti-drug
song, which I don't really jive with, but the music is cool enough I don't pay
attention to the subject matter. The synth riff that opens the album just
doesn't sound QUITE RIGHT at first, but you get used to it, and those "doo
doo doo"'s are sweet. Is there a "doo doo doo" that ISN'T
sweet? Probably not. Ofcourse, I've never heard a Creed song with a
"doo doo doo" in it. That'd probably kill my theory. Yes,
it'd definitely kill my theory.
Now, moving on
from my groundbreaking "doo doo doo" theory, "Living For The
City" is obviously the intended centerpiece of this album, and to me it's
the centerpiece of Stevie's entire career. Just an unspeakably brilliant
song. The slow, soft synth intro, counteracted by the high, loud synth
melody in the chorus which is just absolutely fucking 100% BRILLIANT. How
Stevie sings out that line in the chorus "living juuuuuuuuuuuuust enough,
JUUUUUUUUUUUUST ENOUGH, FOR THE CITAAAAAAAAAAYYYYY!" he sounds even
angrier than on "Superstition," if that's even possible. Then
ofcourse, Stevie's political side comes out with that skit in the middle, where
the guy arrives in the city from Hicktown, the hustler hands him some drugs,
and he unsuspectingly takes them, eventually ofcourse getting arrested and
thrown in jail for ten years by the WHITE MAN. DAMN the white man!
WHITEY BE KEEPIN' US DOWN! Then, following the INJUSTICE PERPETRATED BY THE
WHITE MAN, the song comes back, and the HEAVENLY high chorus synths are
accompanied by women going "na na na na" (just as cool as "doo
doo doo," mind you), and all of it rules. Hey, speaking of the
injustice of the white man and blind people, did anyone else see the premier of
"Chappelle's Show" on Comedy Central? Man, that show
sucked. There was one skit in it that was HILARIOUS, though, about a
white supremacist who was actually black, but didn't know it because he was
blind! Pretty funny. The show
sucked ass hairs, though. I love Dave Chappelle, too, he's funny
shit. It's a shame. Oh well.
And yet I
digress. There are four more songs here, and they need to be addressed,
goddammit! "Higher Ground" is the upbeat political hit single,
and you've all heard it (either the original or in Red Hot Chili Peppers cover
tune form), and ofcourse it's awesome. Second-best song here.
"Jesus Children Of America" is all about Jesus and how he loves you
and shit, so I don't much like the lyrics (RUCK FELIGION!), but, again, I'll
overlook that because the music is COOOOOOOL!
"Don't You Worry 'Bout A Thing" marks the debut of the Stevie
"goofy nonsense Latino song," and is definitely better than the one
two albums later where he sings in three languages for no other reason than to
be able to go "HEY! LOOK AT ME! I CAN SING IN THREE
LANGUAGES! AM I NOT THE SHIT?" I don't know whether what he's
yelling at the beginning is really Spanish or just nonsensical Stevie-ish. I guess I don’t much care. After that,
he starts gabbing to this chick, and it’s like the goofy nonsense Spanish was
just to impress her! That's cool, my friends. The song finally
kicks in, and it's a fun time, but does Stevie really have to open the hi-hat
cymbal on EVERY BEAT FOR LIKE TWO MINUTES during the chorus? I like the
hi-hat and all, but that's a bit much. NEVER hire a blind man to play the
drums. He'll just fuck everything up. Let him stick to piano,
keyboards, synths, harmonica, vocals, songwriting, and producing. That
should keep him satisfied. The closing "He's Misstra
Know-It-All" is a good song and all, but I've always wondered why he chose
to end this great, fun, diverse, and uplifting album with a sarcastic tale
about a swindler. Seems odd to me. Musically, it's a GREAT way to
end the album, but lyrically it just seems like a WEIRD. Damn, DAMN good
song, though. Who da man!
This is
definitely Stevie's best single-album accomplishment, and easily the 2nd-best
thing he ever did. If you don't feel like having your Stevie introduction
take up an hour and 45 minutes, go grab this one. TODAY.
Fulfillingness’
First Finale (1974)
Rating: 9
Best Song: “Boogie On Reggae Woman”
This one
pretty much functions as a holding pattern for Stevie. Just a few months
after the release of Innervisions, the happy little blind man got into
some kinda wicked pissah car accident and almost died. I don't know if
his original plan was to follow up Innervisions with Songs In
The Key Of Life or not, but I figure, whether it was or not, he decided
to just sort of take a break, go on auto-pilot, and make a restful, super-duper
mellow ballad-heavy record BEFORE he summoned all his Stevie resources and
splurged out his gargantuan career-defining double-album.
But the amazing
thing is just HOW good this album is despite Stevie's going on auto-pilot and
retreating from the angry political stances he took on Innervisions.
Now, DON'T WORRY! Just because this album is pretty much ALL slow,
mellow, ballad-y stuff, it's not all wuvvey-duvvey. Sure, there's more
love-related songs (maybe 3 or 4) than on Innervisions, but these
ballads are related to stuff more along the lines of general attitudes and
thoughts Stevie's got going on in his fun little blind head (unfailingly
optimistic, ofcourse). The opener "Smile Please," by itself,
pretty much provides the definitive blueprint for the album as a whole.
It's slow, quiet, unassuming, and has all-happy-and-shit lyrics like "It's
OK, don't delay from smiling...there are brighter days ahead." But,
you see, it keeps building, with HEAVENLY "bum bum bum"-singing women
(first the "doo doo doo," then the "na na na," now the
"bum bum bum!" COOL), and every time Stevie does sing that
"there are brighter days ahead" line, you know what you're gonna
do? You're gonna smile. Big and wide and happy and goofy.
Because you can't help it. Because you know Stevie's smiling and happy
and goofy himself, or was 30 years ago when he made this album. Hell, he
still is, even though he hasn't been musically relevant for over two
decades. I LOVE this song.
Now, the album
is VERY ballad-heavy, but Stevie does take a few breaks to liven up the mood,
although you get the feeling the record company made him. Specifically,
"You Haven't Done Nothin'" gives me this impression, because it's
just a "Superstition" rewrite. It's got those same
"guitar-synth" things that made "Superstition" like the
best song EVER, and it's all angry and political and such (it's about Richard
Nixon! I AM NOT A CROOK! BRRRDSHFDJSHFGGFG!!!!!), but it sticks out
like a sore thumb on the album. Doesn't fit at ALL. I'd bet it was
the record's lead single, too, since it's stuck in the Stevie hit single
position of first song on side 2. "Superstition" and
"Higher Ground" occupied this spot on the last two records, and
"I Wish" and "Master Blaster (Jammin')" are there on the
next two. Now, I'm not saying it's a bad song, by ANY means. A
"Superstition" rewrite still sounds like "Superstition," remember.
However, I'll still GLADLY take Stevie's other uptempo tune here, "Boogie
On Reggae Woman," which just rules so mercilessly it doesn't even KNOW how
mercilessly it rules. It's probably got the stupidest and weirdest Stevie
synth riff ever layed down on record, accompanied by sparse piano overdubs and
a rhythm section, and that's it. So simple, yet so PERFECT. Hoo-ah. Good stuff, here. I'll
dance to this simple little synth groove 1,000 fucking times before I'll dance
to any of the computer-processed fake R&B crap splattered all over TRL
nowadays. What's the MATTER with people? Don't they realize that
Ashanti feat. Ja Rule (Ashanti by herself DOES NOT EXIST) just sucks giant
donkey testicles? Blargh.
Anyway, back to the rest of the album, since those two songs are nothing but excursions from the general feel of it, even if one of those excursions slaps me silly with a dead fish carcass of catchiness. The album is MELLOOOOOOOOOWWW. Even more so than Talking Book. It's got like 500 "slow, boring, sparsely arranged ballads that depend on Stevie's voice to be good." Or actually two or three, but it seems like that much. "They Won't Go" is my favorite boring slow Stevie ballad of Stevie's career. It's just like a piano and some female backup singers. And Stevie. And it's VERY sloooooooowwwwwww. And it's cool. And now I've emasculated myself again. Eh. "Too Shy To Say" isn't as good, but it's neat, and I'm gonna stop describing it there because I'm tired of emasculating myself. "Heaven Is 10 Zillion Light Years Away" is about god and has the dumbest title in the history of the world, and so I don't feel like talking about it, but it's damn good as well, and look! There's a few more slow Stevie ballads on here. "Creepin'" and "It Ain't No Use" are both mellow ballads that, like everything else, are exquisitely written, arranged, produced, played, and sung, and in the hands of just about any other R&B artist, past or present (but more so present, since it'd be like fucking R. Kelly singing them) would probably blow and make me reach for a Van Halen record (DAVID LEE ROTH era, not Van Hagar), but they're enjoyable because they're just done so perfectly by the happy little blind R&B genius.
The record actually ends on a (relatively, for this album) upbeat note, with "Bird Of Beauty" and "Please Don't Go." I guess Stevie got tired of doing so much slow stuff, so he turned up the tempo a bit for these two. Other than that, there's not much difference between them and the rest of the record. They're still ballads, but I guess they would qualify as "midtempo" instead of slooooowwwwww. I especially love "Please Don't Go." That's got some cool harmonica work. "Boogie On Reggae Woman" has cool harmonica in it, too. I just forgot to mention it before. Why? Well, because I'm an idiot. Hadn't you figured that out already?
Geez. That’s no way to end a review, is it? OK, how about a mathematical equation instead: Talking Book (high 8) + better lyrical content + two years more maturity = FFF (low 9). There. Now I feel like splurging onto my computer screen as I attempt to describe an hour and forty-five minutes of PERFECTION!
Songs
In The Key Of Life (1976)
Rating: 10
Best Song: “Sir Duke”
And by “an hour and forty-five minutes of PERFECTION” I, ofcourse, mean this record here, Stevie’s magnum opus, his great, big, giant, messy, nonsensical, and beautiful career-defining splurge, two years in the making, the end result of which rendered Stevie pretty much incapable of producing music of this quality anymore. And why would he want to? How could you top THIS? A double LP – plus EP (the EP is now stuck onto the end of disc 2 in CD release…I think) hour and forty-five minute extravaganza of all things Stevie. This was a GARGANTUAN project. I looked at the credits on the All Music Guide, and do you know how many people were credited on this album? Not counting Stevie himself, ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY TWO. Ofcourse, most of them were backup singers, including one Minnie Ripperton! You know, “loooooooving youuuuuu is EAAAAASY ‘cus…you’re beautiful!” She sings the four minute coda to “Ordinary Pain” that’s more-or-less needlessly stuck on the end of a two-minute pop song.
That’s one trick Stevie uses to make this thing so damn long. If he had cut off the codas to, like, half the songs here, the album would be about half an hour shorter, and he wouldn’t have had to stick twenty more minutes of material on that “bonus EP” this thing had. But you know what? The codas are GREAT, for the most part, because the songs they’re attached to, for the most part, ARE FUCKING AWESOME. There is absolutely NO reason for “Love’s In Need Of Love Today” to be seven minutes long, yet I couldn’t imagine it any shorter! If someone came along and lopped off a few minutes of “As” or “Another Star,” I’m afraid I would have to GET MEDIEVAL ON THEIR BUTTOCKS. And “Isn’t She Lovely?” That is the GREATEST CODA OF ALL TIME! The whole second half of the song is just a harmonica solo and sounds of Stevie’s baby girl taking a bath. But without those three minutes, what would the song be? Just a random three-minute pop song? BAH! It’s a love note from Stevie to his daughter! IT NEEDS THE CODA!
Codas aside, the main reason this gets a 10 from me is just the utterly messy sprawl of it. I mean, a bunch of songs here just aren’t that good. I like Stevie’s angry political side more than his lovestruck goofball side, but I also like subtlety, something which neither “Village Ghetto Land” (the only weak link on disc 1) nor “Black Man” possess. ESPECIALLY “Black Man,” and ESPECIALLY its coda, with those “call and response” sessions between teachers and pupils that sound like military training audiotapes. “Who was the founder of blood plasma and the director of the Red Cross blood bank?” “DR. CHARLES DREW, A BLACK MAN!!!!” Yeesh. “Joy Inside My Tears” is the boring slow ballad, and the fact that it also has like a three minute useless coda just makes it more annoying. “Ngiculela – Es Una Historia – I Am Singing” is just a dumb excuse for Stevie to sing in three languages. “If It’s Magic” sounds like Stevie tossed it off in about ten minutes, with NO other instrumentation besides a harp. “Saturn” is naïve and stupid, yet I guess charming in a dumb, idealistic way. Blah.
But, you see, this record is made BETTER by these dumb and semi-dumb songs. It just adds to the giant messy sprawl it creates, and makes the highlights light that much higher! Every Stevie record prior to this, even Innervisions, had at MOST two songs that went beyond “really really really good” to the plateau of “FUCKING UTTERLY ORGASMICALLY INCREDIBLE.” This record here has SIX songs that do just that, “Sir Duke” (nearly singlehandedly got me through exam period last month), “I Wish” (later ripped off note-for-note for that Will Smith song on the Wild Wild West soundtrack), “Knocks Me Off My Feet” (my favorite love song of all time by anyone), “Pastime Paradise” (later ripped off note-for-note for Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise” – by the way, these last four songs ARE ALL IN A ROW on disc 1), “Isn’t She Lovely” (which you know), and “Another Star” (try not dancing to THIS). I know he had like two hours of time to work with, but to stick six songs of this caliber on the same record is just astounding to me. I don’t think there’s another album not called The White Album I’ve heard that can boast this many songs of this caliber. Ridiculous.
OK, now I’d like to bitch about modern rap and R&B for a bit. See, I have no problem with “sampling” a piece of a song and integrating it into one’s own material. I find that to be pretty neat, actually. I have problems with the Puff P. Diddy Daddy Snoopy Doopy Daffy Duck definition of “sampling,” where you take an existing song, change like 2% of it, add a rap over it, and then market it as your own. I don’t CARE if the original artists give their consent. It still bugs the HELL out of me, and this is what we have with BOTH “I Wish” and “Pastime Paradise.” For “I Wish,” Will Smith changed the line “I wish those days could come back once more” to “We’re going straight to the wild wild west,” added a rap over it, and that was it. For “Pastime Paradise,” Coolio apparently couldn’t be bothered to rewrite an entire line. He simply changed the word “pastime” in the chorus to “gangsta’s,” wrote a rap, and that was it. God, that violin line is so cool, isn’t it? Yeah, it was cool in 1976, too. I recall a conversation I recently had with my sister after she had listened to this album for the first time:
Marion: “You know, when I heard that song, I lost a lot of respect for Coolio.”
Me: “You had respect for Coolio?”
Coolio’s “sampling” actually bothers me more than the Will Smith one. First, Will Smith has done other stuff, and Coolio, well, hasn’t. Second, it’s not like Will Smith marketed his tune as anything other than corporate stupid pop ready for mass-consumption. On the contrary, Coolio took his lone hit VERY seriously, and got downright OFFENDED when Weird Al parodied it with “Amish Paradise.” If you want to be taken seriously, Coolio, WRITE YOUR OWN MATERIAL. And get a haircut. You look fucking ridiculous.
OK, I’m done. Got worked up there for a bit! Mother of fettuccini alfredo, this album is
AWESOME. It’s seriously one of my four
or five favorite albums of all time, PERIOD.
And I don’t even like R&B!
Hotter
Than July (1980)
Rating: 7
Best Song: “Master Blaster (Jammin’)”
In between SITKOL and this one, Stevie actually released a weird mostly instrumental conceptual double-album called Journey Through The Secret Life Of Plants in 1979 for a movie that either never got made or no one saw, I’m not sure. Needless to say, I don’t have it. This was his REAL follow up to SITKOL, and in the four years between the two albums, a new genre of music was born, became VERY popular, and heavily influenced this record. If you guessed punk rock…you are CORRECT! And so, with song titles like “Anarchy In Compton, L.A.,” “Fuck You, You Dirty Old Sod,” and “I’m A Punk Because I Have Spiky Hair And A Nose Ring,” this album rips, rocks, and roars with messy, noisy, unbridled, fuck-the-system PUNK RRRRROCK ENERGY!!!
KIDDING! Ofcourse. The OTHER musical genre which came up between SITKOL and this one is, unfortunately, DISCO, and so a lot of this album sounds like random disco-fied dance music. Ofcourse, it’s better than run-of-the-mill disco-fied dance music, since Stevie wrote and produced everything, and he’s the man, but at this point it’s clear Stevie had splurged out all he was gonna splurge, and so this album presents a DRASTIC drop in quality. It’s just better-than-average dance music, basically, but since when was a Stevie Wonder album about better-than-average dance music?
Of the disco-fied songs (which is like all but two), “Did I Hear You Say You Love Me” is by FAR the best. It’s VERY peppy and VERY uptempo, and Stevie obviously stuck it at the beginning of the album to set its tone as fun, lightweight dance music. Ofcourse, being me, I’ll pass. Is there really any reason for “All I Do” or “Do Like You” to exist, especially compared to everything Stevie did in the seventies? Not really. His songwriting hadn’t yet gone to shit, so they’re fine and upbeat and enjoyable, but they’re so, I don’t know, EMPTY, compared to his top-level stuff. There’s so much DEPTH to stuff like Innervisions and SITKOL, and, despite coming out thirty years ago, those albums don’t really sound dated at all. This album sounds dated. VERY dated. Because it’s full of those dumb disco violin flourishes and random dance beats that anyone could have written and that pinpoint something to the disco era.
Again, that’s not to say it’s bad. It doesn’t sound fake and computerized, for which I will give Stevie his “props,”and he did manage to stick one more Stevie classic on here, “Master Blaster (Jammin’),” which sticks out because it’s a REGGAE song, and he hadn’t tried reggae before. It was the token hit single, I believe, and it definitely deserved it. It has these AWESOME descending (guitar? keyboard? I don’t know) lines throughout, and RULES despite not really sounding like reggae in the Bob Marley sense. He got closer than Led Zeppelin did, though. That’s for sure!
As cool as “Master Blaster (Jammin’)” is, however, “Lately” annoys me just as much. No Stevie album would be complete without the slow piano love ballad, and while they sometimes seemed tacked on in the past, this one REALLY seems so, like Stevie was in the studio and realized he didn’t have a slow, boring ballad yet, so he whipped it up in a day or two. It sounds heartfelt by itself, yes, but in the context of an album full of lightweight dance music it just seems fake and disingenuous, which is really how a lot of this album feels. It’s like he had to put out SOMETHING to quell people’s fears that he was turning all artsy and weird after that plant album, so he made this fun, lightweight dance music album, making sure to touch ALL the standard Stevie bases. He’s got the slow, ballad. He’s got the cool hit single. He’s got the love songs. Hmm, what else…oh, angry social commentary? CHECK! There’s “I Ain’t Gonna Stand For It” and “Cash In Your Face.” Oh, how about naively positive social commentary? CHECK! “Happy Birthday,” stuck at the end of the album, campaigns for Martin Luther King’s birthday to made a national holiday. It’s OK, I guess, but it’s too obvious! I STILL like subtlety, and this song doesn’t have it. He got worse, though. His next album has a song called “It’s Wrong (Apartheid)” on it. Yes, Stevie, you’re right, it IS wrong. GOOD FOR YOU! I don’t have that album, though. I don’t see any reason to. Do you?
This is an album that I would not
have under ANY circumstances if Stevie hadn’t made it. It’s fine, but the days of Stevie being
Stevie are over. From this point on,
he’s just another R&B guy now. As I
said before, after SITKOL, there was no reason to be groundbreaking
anymore, and so he isn’t.
Bree DeMoss (lbdemoss@yahoo.com) writes:
Hey,
I
was researching something on Stevie Wonder and came across your website.
And I don't know what your deal is, but I can't quite understand how - just
because a song is about love or somone's emotions - it is then disqualified as
a valid, artistic, or genius song.
Maybe
the "genius" of it is that he allows himself to feel things
and is not afraid to share them with the world.
You
claim that "Lately" is worthless, but it's not - it's a journey of
reflection and an expression of self analysis.......Am I crazy, does she still love
me, is she leaving or cheating, is it my fault, do I deserve her.....
Not
many men have the balls to lay that all out there. I feel sad that a)
you've never allowed yourself to get close enough to someone to feel that kind
of love/loss, or b) you're too afraid of forfeiting your manliness (or of your
own humanity) to express your feelings.
What
is there without love or the dream thereof.........politics? science?
research? intellectual pursuits?
You
have to satisfy all areas of your life to be truely fulfilled
- your mind, your body, your soul, and your heart.
I wish this for you in the future.
Epilogue:
As I’ve implied several times, Stevie stops being musically
relevant about this point, and, since I have no interest in obtaining average
lightweight R&B pop albums, here is where I jump ship. You can get the rest of his catalog besides
the seven I’ve reviewed here if you want to for some reason, though. It’s a free country.
Just because a record has a groove don't make it
in the groove!