Stevie Wonder creates some great funky and soulful grooves on electric piano, clavinet, and Moog synth, around which he’s crafted some really good tunes, certainly some of his best. This album builds on what he’s established in Talking Book, and it’s part of an amazing output from one man – I think he’s still in his early twenties here, and going through a very productive time. Not long after this he was in a car accident and suffered head injuries, which in the end didn’t seem to affect his songwriting and playing, fortunately.
There are some famous tracks on here – Higher Ground, or the optimistic Don’t Worry ‘Bout A Thing that feels initially like it’s going to be a bit mawkish and naive, but builds up so nicely that it’s hard not to get swept up in the infectious spirit. (Not to be confused with Bob Marley's Three Little Birds, which features the same lyric).
The other big ones, however, address darker subject matter. He’s Misstra Know-It-All is thought to be about Nixon, but a song addressed to people in power with an inflated sense of their own intelligence is just as relevant today. As is Living For The City, a song about systemic racism and the various micro- and macro-aggressions faced by black people in everyday America. Beyond the radio-famous tracks, Jesus Children Of America is a gospel-based jibe at fake religiosity and the use of Christianity as a blanket to cover a lack of empathy with an acceptable face. Also highly relevant today.
Wonder doesn’t completely step away from his earlier love songs, with some nice work on Golden Lady and All In Love Is Fair, soulful without much of the triteness that can affect a lot of love songs. Visions, meanwhile, is a kind of acoustic jazz-folk piece that rounds out the sounds nicely and means that not everything relies on a clavinet riff to sustain it.
I really liked this one; I wouldn’t class myself as a massive Stevie Wonder fan, but this album allowed me to really listen to his music and get a lot more out of it. It does also include one of my favourite superficial bits though, that part near the end of Misstra Know-It-All where he suddenly does the low vocals; I don’t know why that’s always appealed to me. It’s a bit like the end of Big Yellow Taxi where Joni Mitchell does a really low voice and makes herself laugh.
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