The Wonder of Stevie - 5 - Songs In The Key Of Life | 1976

Episode Date: October 3, 2024

This is everyone’s favorite, right? Sure is and for good reason. Now a master at his own craft and sound, Stevie Wonder drops a double album. More songs. More players. More genius. It’s no wonder it’s everyone’s favorite. On the fifth album of the streak, Songs in the Key of Life, Stevie delivers his ultimate message of love.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

One of the perks of making this show is that I get to talk to great musicians. Musicians like Greg Fillinganes, master keyboardist, one of the coolest guys ever to walk the planet. He's played for Michael Jackson. He's played for Eric Clapton. He's played for Barbra Streisand. Stevie Nicks. He's played for her, too. The list could go on forever.

But before all of that, when he was still practically a kid, he played in Wonderlove. But before all of that, when he was still practically a kid, he played in Wonderlove. And he was in the studio for many, many months during these legendary sessions as Stevie made his magnum opus, Songs in the Key of Life. The day I sat with Greg, he was at this keyboard, kind of like impromptu scoring our conversation as we spoke. Okay, so let's just go back to 1975. Let's go back, shall we? The year was 1975. Greg Fillinganes, one of the greatest studio musicians of all time,

one of the great keyboardists of all time, is 19 years old. Yes, just barely. You're now in Wonderlove. One of the great things to ever happen to you in your whole life is that you get to play in Stevie Wonder's band. Yes. And he's putting some songs together for a new album. It's taking a little bit of time. A little bit. But he's got this one song that he's trying to work out, and he comes to you and asks. Oh, I see what you're saying. No, he absolutely did not come to me. It was a... It was more of a necessity. I just happened to be in the room.

I happened to be in the control room while Mike Cimbello was laying down that insane guitar part. The jazz guitarist Michael Cimbello had just joined Wonderlove, too. And the song we're talking about here is Contusion. The instrumental 3 minute and 46 second celestial jam on site one of songs in the key of life sandwiched right between Village Ghetto Land and Sir Duke. Contusion is one of Stevie Wonder's most musically complex songs.

It's wild, dizzying jazz fusion. And remember, Greg is playing it right in front of me. For the bridge section of Contusion, you know, the part that goes... Yeah. That's what Stevie came up with, you know. I'm melting. So Michael Cimpello put this.

That's playing it on guitar. That's crazy enough, right? Mm-mm-mm. Try doing that on a keyboard because it... So Steve was attempting it. And by the way, he hates when I tell this story. I'm just going to apologize in advance. Okay.

But the truth is he wasn't able to quite, you know, facilitate it. So I was in the room and I said, well, I can. He said, all right, well, you do it. So that's how I ended up doing. See, I can't do it now. Oh my God. Do, do, do, do, do, do. I love the story about Stevie trying this

and not being able to quite pull it off. Because for one thing, it illustrates something about the level of collaboration going on in Stevie's world. He writes some really difficult music. And then somebody like Michael Cimbello comes along, a masterful musician himself, and adds to that. And then Stevie goes to do that more complicated thing on the keys. And it's like, uh-oh, can't do it. Like, even this genius has a limit. But then, and this is the thing I love about Greg's story, there's no ego getting in the way of creation in this moment.

He just turns to this crazily talented 19-year-old kid in the room and is like, you can do it? Okay, man, go ahead. And just to be clear in case you didn't catch this, this incredibly complicated run Greg's doing, he's doing it on his keyboard in front of me. There we go. Oh, my God. So, yeah, on and on and on. And so that's the deal with that. So, this is what genius sounds like.

When there's nothing in its way, and it can go wherever it wants, and it can do whatever it wants with whomever it wants, and be not just anything, but possibly everything. I'm Wesley Morris. This is The Wonder of Stevie, and we're here, y'all. It's the people's favorite. Stevie Wonder's 21-track magnum opus,

Songs in the Key of Life. I'd like to start by saying something perfectly obvious here. Most people consider Songs in the Key of Life to be Stevie's greatest achievement. And the charts and greatest of all time lists back these people up. It debuted at number one on the Billboard Pop Albums chart, only the third album ever to do that at that time. It then proceeded to spend 13 weeks at the top of the chart. It came in at number four on the 2020 Rolling Stone list of the greatest albums of all time,

right between the Beatles' Abbey Road and Joni Mitchell's Blue. That's a 53-spot leap, by the way, from the 2003 poll. Critics and fans also consider it to be the last stop on Stevie's streak of unmatched genius. Which I'll tell you right now, I don't like that. I do not agree. I don't believe the streak ends here. And we will get to that next week. In the meantime, songs in the key of life.

Oh my God. An album so big, you need to take a personal day to finish it. An album full of so much musical imagination, it's not in anyone's style. Well, okay, I'm sorry. That's not true. The style is Stevie, a genre unto himself. But first, I think we should back up to the summer of 1973 when Inner Visions comes out. It goes on to win Album of the Year, and you'll recall three days after it hits stores, Stevie nearly dies in a car crash. In the aftermath of that near-death experience,

he makes Fulfillingness his first finale, and that also wins Album of the Year. That brings us to 1975. More or less, the entire musical world is waiting to hear what Stevie's going to do next, because they had gotten used to him putting out an album a year. But what Stevie does is, well, he kind of puts his talent, his imagination, all that musical fertility in a safe. And he threatens to leave all of it there. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Stevie says he's not going to make music anymore. For real. Instead, he says he's headed to Africa, to Ghana, his ancestral homeland. He criticizes the U.S. government for its policies in Africa and in Ghana specifically and says that

he's going to devote his time and his energy and his money to helping disabled Ghanaian children. And then he does the wildest thing. He announces a farewell tour. Farewell to the music industry. Farewell to Motown. Farewell to America. So, for the first time in 10 years, since he was 16 years old, Stevie doesn't put an album out. And his fellow major musicians are like, thank God. Now, they're thirsty because they do want more, but, you know, they're grateful at the same time. Here is a very grateful Paul Simon in 1975 winning his Album of the Year Grammy for Still Crazy After All These Years. Well, I'm very happy to win this, and I want to thank Phil Ramone, who co-produced this with me, and Phoebe Snow, who sang along with me on the album,

and Art Garfunkel, who sang with me on My Little Town. And most of all, I'd like to thank Stevie Wonder who didn't make an album this year. If you're also wondering what the head of Motown, Mr. Barry Gordy, thought about Stevie's plans to stop making music and move to Ghana, he was not happy. There were plenty of people at the time

who suggested that the whole farewell tour was pure strategy. Stevie's contract was up. Remember, five years earlier, he'd negotiated with Barry to get more financial and creative freedom than any artist in Motown's history. And now it was time to get back to the bargaining table. And I got to say, if it was a strategy, it worked. Because in the summer of 1975, Stevie didn't move to Ghana, but he did sign a contract that was far and away the biggest deal ever made by any artist in the history of music. A seven-year contract, more than $35 million. In today's money, that's about $194 million. That's way more than Elton John and Paul McCartney's Stevie Superstar peers are being paid in their deals

with their labels. After that, Barry gets to keep Stevie and the corporate family and Motown's sales and marketing team start planning for the next album to come out later that year. And then they wait. And they wait. And oh my god, they keep having to wait. The story of how Songs in the Key of Life eventually got made, of the endless hours in the studio, Stevie's relentless perfectionism, of the dozens, possibly hundreds of songs that

got recorded and never made it onto the album, that's legendary. There was pretty much nothing Barry Gordy could do except wait for Stevie to tell him when it was done. What amuses me is that people look back on, in Stevie's case, two albums, Music of My Mind and Talking Book, coming out in the same year with astonishment

because today artists take three, four, five, eight years to, you know, come up with another album. Remember Suzanne DePass? We talked to her in episode one. She was running the creative division at Motown at the time. But in those days, two albums a year was like mandatory. Mandatory. It wasn't even like noteworthy. Barry Gordy did not want to hear about delay or not making release dates or going over budget or any of that stuff. By the mid-1970s, the Motown machine was starting to sputter a little. Taste had changed. America was in the midst of a long, grueling recession. Money wasn't raining down on Barry Gordy's empire like it used to. And the company's relocation from Detroit to Los Angeles might have put the company on a Hollywood map, but it was an

expensive move. So a big part of Suzanne's job was to harass Stevie, whose album sold well. And what she was harassing him to do was, please hurry up so we can get a new album out into the world and start selling some records, Stevie. He was sick of me because I was not only calling him, I was calling his people, you know, why can't we get it done? Let's get this done. When is the cover shooting? Blah, blah. And so he had a t-shirt printed up that he wore into my office and it said, we're almost finished. that he wore into my office. And it said, we're almost finished. So he didn't have to hear my mouth at all. And I have a picture of us sitting together on a couch with Steve in the t-shirt and me.

Actually, I'm laughing because it was like his way of saying, do not ask me about this anymore. It'll be done when it's done. Leave me alone. Ask me about this anymore. It'll be done when it's done. Leave me alone. I have to say here that I feel for Barry and Suzanne.

The label's in a tricky spot at this point. I'm trying to imagine how it must have been hurting all these personalities. Keeping them happy without going completely broke. Stevie, Diana Ross, The Temptations, The Jacksons, Marvin Gaye. He loses Gladys Knight and the Pips to Buddha Records because of neglect, basically. The artists want to make big art. And I'll say, charitably, that on some very basic level, Barry just wanted to keep the lights on. And so Suzanne begged and begged for this new record. Of course I asked him a hundred times, but you know, the rules of engagement for delivery and for finishing and all of that were understood, but he held all the cards essentially because

there's no way to demand an artist, you know, you don't stand behind Picasso and say a little more blue and finish the painting. You know, it's like you have to use whatever's at your disposal in terms of persuasiveness. And, you know, Steve, it would mean a lot to me if you would just hand it in, okay? You know, that kind of thing, you know, somewhere near begging and pleading. You know, that kind of thing. You know, somewhere near begging and pleading. The stories of Stevie calling musicians into the studio at all hours, re-recording, trying out new songs,

they're music world legendary. He was feeling like the balance of the album wasn't yet right, and his methods for how to strike that balance, they could be mercurial. He wrote Village Ghetto Land with the New York DJ and poet Gary Bird, who told a Stevie Wonder biographer that they started writing the song in New York, and then Stevie went to LA. And quote, I didn't speak to him for three months. Then suddenly he calls at 2 a.m. Stevie has no idea the time or time zones, and he never sleeps. And he says, hey, I got to add a new verse. I'm in the studio. Call you back in 10 minutes.

Stevie's pouring hours into this thing. And one thing that's clear is that Stevie was working with new talent like Gary Bird, among many, many others. There are like 130 plus people credited on this album. But despite the massive success they had with the previous four albums, Bob Margalef, Malcolm Cecil, and Tonto are not among them. We were unstoppable, and I didn't know why. I didn't think about my creative process or anything. All I thought about is, you know, how am I going to get to the next chorus, the next verse, the next bridge? What's going to be a great sound here or there? What can I do to make the roads more compelling? It's hard to say why things ended after fulfilling this first finale.

It's one of those things where memories and opinions probably differ. Bob mostly just sounded wistful when he talked about it. We were all individuals. Me, Steve, and Malcolm were all individuals, and I likened them to three comets all crossing together. And for one minute, they all crossed together at the same time, and there's a brilliant flash, and then it's over. But for those four or five years, nothing could touch us. And up to that point, Bob was right. Nothing could touch them.

But now there were new sounds Stevie wanted to explore, sounds that required new tools and new players. One major component in the Stevie, Bob, Malcolm triumvirate was their giant console synthesizer named Tonto. That was what allowed Stevie to make the music of his mind. But no Bob and Malcolm meant no Tonto. So Stevie moved on to something called the Yamaha Electone Polyphonic Synthesizer GX1, or as Stevie called it, the Dream Machine. And using the Dream Machine for songs in the key of life, Stevie was even more squarely in the driver's seat. If you look at a picture of Tonto, it's huge. Like, takes up a whole room huge.

The dream machine, even though it was more than 600 pounds, was three keyboards stacked on top of each other. Stevie could sit in front of the stack and draw even more sounds from it than he could get with Tonto. It's really hard for me to articulate in words the frequencies and the textures, but I will say that Stevie is able to now reach these sounds, not only in record time,

but there's a whole bunch of other sounds that he's able to channel in record time. That's Questlove, host of the Questlove Supreme podcast from iHeart, giving us some examples of where we can hear the Dream Machine's magic. Songs in the Key of Life is known for its quality and its quantity. And so, you know, the fact that he's able to churn out 20 plus songs of magic is, you know, a lot, like, especially with the futuristic programming of like the second half of Black Man, when he's like taking the solos, they're able to like program things. So like when you hear those little, like, little chirpy noises.

His keyboard work on Black Man is a great example of the future. In the fall of 1976, a whole year after it was supposed to be done, Songs in the Key of Life was finally wrapped and ready for a big, attention-grabbing release. Okay, you have to understand that Newsweek and Time Covers were the apotheosis for an entertainer. Maureen Orth was a young entertainment reporter at Newsweek in 1976, which meant she was on the receiving end of a flood of calls and letters and pleas from publicists trying to get her attention. For an entertainer to make the cover of either Newsweek or Time was a gargantuan deal. So you are besieged in your office.

And some labels just sent you every single new release that came out. So I had hundreds and hundreds of vinyl records stacked all over the place and tons and tons of press releases all over the place. But of course, I kept an eye on Stevie because Stevie hadn't had an album for a couple of years and this was a double album. And so obviously you're going to go cover it. Yes. To promote songs in the key of life, Motown arranged to fly a bunch of reporters to a farm in central Massachusetts. It does not get any less Motor City than that. It's an important event, but to be flown up to a hayseed kind of a farm with horses and everything in Massachusetts, where it was kind of a drying out place, I think, for a lot of musicians and stuff.

In late September of 1976, reporters and music writers show up for Stevie's launch party. The wackiest thing is, okay, so we're all waiting for Stevie, and we're in this rural kind of hayseed place. And he comes out dressed like a cowboy, like Tom Mix or something. He's got a cowboy hat on and he's got this gun holster that says number one with a bullet on both sides where the holsters are. He's all dressed in this beige cowboy outfit with boots. And it's like, what? Stevie, you're a cowboy? Why? We haven't heard the songs yet,

but there aren't any cowboy songs on the record. She's right. There are no cowboy songs on Songs in the Key of Life. And yet, there's no way in the world Stevie Wonder doesn't know what it means to dress like a cowboy. He knows what he's signaling. It's this old idea of the American West and being an American.

And at the same time, there's also something so innocent about it. In this story Maureen eventually wrote for Newsweek, she describes Stevie saying to all of these reporters, I hope you enjoy this, but it really doesn't matter. I gave it my all and all is the best I can do. All is the best I can do. Songs in the Key of Life was released on September 28th, 1976. Officially, it's called a double album, but there are 21 songs, almost half of which run longer than four minutes,

and most of those are well over six. To get America all these songs at that length, Stevie added a third mini-disc. Two songs on each side. He called it a little something extra. And depending on how you handled the packaging, discovering it could be like getting the toy in a Happy Meal. And how did all those critics respond?

Well, it was weird. They couldn't deny its greatness, no one could, but they also couldn't just give him his props either. Some called the size of it that it was a double album, indulgent, even though by then there had been plenty of other double albums by white guys and white bands that nobody called self-indulgent when they did it. Newsday announced in its headline

that Songs in the Key of Life was, quote, as big as his ego. Ego. That's a word that appears over and over in that review and in other people's. Wayne Robbins wrote it, and he goes on to say, what an ego. Stevie Wonder's ego makes

Henry Kissinger appear to be the incarnation of Mr. Modesty. He went on to praise the album, but still, ego? They would take these little digs, not at the music, but at Stevie's worldview and at his ambition. That wasn't the headline for Bob Dylan or the Rolling Stones. Artists who have really always been given the space to be complex, to be geniuses. An ambitious white person is a serious artist. An ambitious black person risks being seriously full of himself. But that very ambition is what makes this album the album it is. Hey, everybody. Smokey Robinson here, and we're talking about Stevie Wonder.

I hope you're enjoying this. I am. That run of albums that Stevie had, you know, he'd go to the Grammys and he'd get seven or eight Grammys in the same night. As far as I'm concerned, you know, Stevie is the musical man. And his music has proved that. Stevie Wonder's music covers everything

from gospel to blues to jazz, classical, whatever you can think of, you can find some of that element in Stevie Wonder's music. I don't know how music, period, would feel if there was no Stevie Wonder. Stevie Wonder has made a tremendous contribution to music around the world, not just here in the United States. His music is internationally profound.

This is another thing that I love about Motown, man. We go places in Europe and all over the world, and we're singing these songs. And probably 60 to 70% of the people in our audience don't even speak English, but they sing those songs. And they know them verbatim. Now, Stevie and I have been traveling on the road all over the place. And you might be a person who does that too. And your home may be just sitting empty. Why let it be empty when it could be full? Turn it to an Airbnb and earn some money while you're traveling.

So if you're curious about this, just go to Airbnb.com slash host and find out more about it. and find out more about it. Ask most people, and they'll say Songs in the Key of Life is their Stevie album. It's the one that's doing the most. It's certainly the longest, the most far-ranging stylistically, with the most songs that do the most stuff. The only comparable achievement from the standpoint of big deal mostness is the Beatles' so-called White Album, which came out about eight years earlier

and had 30 mostly shorter songs in a buffet of styles. The White Album is all you can eat, and I have eaten my weight in White Album. Songs in the Key of Life is all you can feel. Whether you were a lunch lady or a lawyer, a journalist or a judge, or just a little kid trying to figure out who, or really how, you wanted to be,

this album was ready to show you. I love this album. It's the culmination of everything Stevie's been working on artistically since before he got to Motown. Songs in the Key of Life is thematically dimensional. It's in 5D. The journey of this album, the diversity of these songs, the particular richness of each track, it's astounding. But some of what's astounding about it is that it lasts for 104 minutes, and that takes a minute

to get to the depths of. If you ask anybody what was special about Songs in the Key of Life, one of the first things they'll probably mention is the amount of music. A double album ensured that the normal ritual of putting a disc on the player and removing it took on a deeper meaning. When some people had to get up to change their records on Songs in the Key of Life, it's something they never forgot. It made their living room feel holy. I believe, my sense of memory is that my first understanding of Stevie Wonder came to me through my uncle, whose name is Clarence Eastman.

That's Thelma Golden, the art historian and a major steward of American art who runs the Studio Museum in Harlem. And she got her compass for what was cool through her Uncle Clarence's record collection. Uncle Clarence was younger than my mother and father by a decade, which made him my younger, cool uncle. And he lived in the upper duplex of the Brownstone and Bed-Stuy, where my mother and her five siblings were raised on Jefferson Avenue. And this house was the center of our family life. And on the top floor of the house was my Uncle Clarence's den. And Uncle Clarence had a bookshelf full of albums. They were in alphabetical order. Division tabs separated one artist from another in his impeccable handwriting.

And he treated these albums with this great reverence. My grandfather, who we called Southside, was a lover of music. He had a jazz collection that would rival anyone. That's Michelle Obama, former first lady, author of Becoming and the Lightly Carry. And her grandfather's record collection played a very similar role for her as Uncle Clarence's did for Thelma. He was also a carpenter, so he built these shelves where he had two turntables, reel-to-reel. I mean, this was a man who didn't have a lot of money, but he invested a lot in his record collection and having music all over the house.

a lot in his record collection and having music all over the house. Uncle Clarence had a stereo system of components, and he would listen to his albums. That was an activity, right? What's Uncle Clarence doing? Listening to his albums. He had his whole house wired, every room, even the bathroom, with sound, with speakers, all jack-lay. None of it new. It was all used, old, from the trash can. What I remember specifically about Stevie Wonder is hearing Stevie Wonder's music

coming out of Uncle Clarence's speakers. But I also remember seeing, looking at, and studying those album covers. In the dining room, he had the turntables enclosed in glass doors. As young people, we were not allowed to touch them. He would take them out and hold them between his hands. What you couldn't do is take the needle off and play things in the middle of the song. Because first of all, it messed up his records. It messed up his needles. But I remember him showing me the covers of these various albums. And I found it to evoke in me the same things that would happen when I would look at paintings and feel that the experience of looking at them was endless. I would always see

new things. I was sitting in a little chair that would allow me the right kind of position so I could put the needle on properly. I would set it down, then I would sit at the dining room table with the album. I would open up the jacket and it would start and I would play it over and over. So, taking inspiration from Michelle Obama and Thelma Golden, I, Wesley, am about to lay my ass down on the floor with a beverage of my choice,

maybe have a little incense lit, and I'm going to listen to songs from the key of life on vinyl. Now, there's a host cut of this episode somewhere where we luxuriate in all six sides and 21 songs of this album, but today I'm going to try an abridged version where I work the arm on the record player. I'm going to pick it up, put it down, and then pick it up and move it to some other song. I'm going to lower the needle right down here in the groove. Side one, track three, and I'm going to ask Michelle Obama to introduce the song.

Village Ghetto Land Would you like to go with me Down my dead end street Would you like to come with me To Village Ghetto Line? Our guide is leading white people, white people who voted for Nixon most likely, on a guilt trip through the poor black neighborhood of their fantasies.

Village, ghetto land. It's as sharp as glass. It's got that synth sound, the dream machine standing in for a whole orchestra, convincingly. And it fooled a lot of people and impressed a lot of people at the same time because it was new. I used to think that Stevie's hit, You Haven't Done Nothing from Fulfilling This Is First finale, was like the meanest, most ruthless indictment of Nixon's America. But no, no, no, no. It's this.

Stevie's using this synthesizer to create a kind of satire of propriety and stateliness as he sings about sores and roaches and dog food in this generic white nightmare scenario of Black American life. Who gets this? Who is really listening to this? I know Stevie is speaking directly to an audience, to the people, to Big Brother, to the man, but they're not listening to Stevie. And if they're listening to Stevie, they're not listening like this. I think Village Ghetto Land kind of could be the song that could sneak in on them, you know, because it doesn't start out with a funk and a beat. It's not growly in that way, right? So it's like, maybe I can sneak this in on you because this feels classical. The street. Babies die before they're born.

Infected by the greed. You'll tune into it and you'll think you're getting one thing and I'm letting you in on the world you care nothing about because you don't even care about this music. Tell me, would you be happy? Village Ghetto Land. The song that comes after Village Ghetto Land is Contusion, the first song we heard Greg Fillinghain's master

at the beginning of this episode. If contusion is jazz fusion, then what comes next is a study of jazz's origin. So, excuse me, I'm going to, if you don't mind, turn the party up and move that needle to... if you don't mind. Turn the party up and move that needle to... Four horns

to do some of the happiest blowing I have ever heard. Brass, now, sir, this here is gold. Side one, track five, Sir Duke.

Music is a world within itself with a language we all understand stevie's re-establishing here the center of american popular music not just for sir duke sir duke ellington after whom the track is titled but for ella fitzgerald and louis armstrong and count basie how generous is stevie Wonder that in that list of people, he also includes Glenn Miller, the white band leader, who for a lot of Americans during the swing era was jazz.

Huh, they can feel it all over, he sings. It's a kind of legacy work that music's best student might be uniquely suited to make. We've talked a lot about gospel music, but another pillar of the Stevie Wonder experience is everything he's done with jazz. You can feel that all over too. Okay!

That's it. I'm going to flip this bad boy over. The fun dissipates, and Stevie's laying down a different song about nostalgia. So I'm going to move the needle to side two, track three, Pastime Paradise. Pastime Paradise, an either-or song about what it's going to take to move this country beyond its past, a song that also gave Coolio one of his hits. It's also a song where the percussion makes it seem bejeweled, but also kind of grim, because the synths are doing this sort of orchestral work that you

might hear in a Halloween movie. But when Stevie is doing his list, proclamation of race relations, consolation, integration, verification, listen to the bass. It's responding to Stevie's call with melody.

Are you and me proclamation It's responding to Stevie's call with melody. Pastime Paradise is asking whether we're going to live in Jim Crow's America or in some more collective utopic realm, like what some people thought Barack Obama's America would turn out to be. That question culminates in the most surprising sounds, utopic realm, like what some people thought Barack Obama's America would turn out to be. That question culminates in the most surprising sounds, a multi-denominational convergence. First, here come the Hare Krishna, chanting Hare Krishna. Future paradise, they've been spending most of their life living in a future paradise. Now, it's the yearning of the West Angeles Church of God Choir. Let's start living on life.

Living for the future paradise. We're ready to allow life. Living for the future paradise. Saying to anyone's life. Living past time paradise. I mean, on anybody else's record, the harmonization of these two ideas, like a strain of Hinduism that was really a big thing in the 70s and the entire African-American gospel tradition,

it would be laughable to put them together. But on Stevie's record, it sounds divinely right. The song would be perfect without this finale, but every time I get to the choirs, oh my God, the belief in the symbol of their harmony always gives me chills.

I envisioned there being this whole section of dashiki wearing black sisters with their heads tied up, you know, with the tambourine. Michelle Obama. I didn't see them as regular gospel choir choir. I saw them as black women in African garb singing their hearts out. Especially that last, would she hold that note? I'm like, I envision her. She's like auntie such and such, right?

Yes. You know, and the beads and all that. That's what I was picturing. That's what I see too. I mean, I did not know there were Hare Krishnas. I knew that the chanting was something that wasn't gospel oriented, but the gospel part is clear. Yeah. But wouldn't that be just Stevie?

That's just what he would do because he so believes in the power of everyone seeing everyone, everyone's voice, everyone's music. Let us all hold hands, unite the Hare Krishnas with the Gospel Sisters, with the African drums, because that's the vision of the world he's trying to communicate to all of us through his music. It's like we are all a part of the struggle and our voices uniting and ringing together layer upon layer. It's almost like the way that song crescendos. It's the power of what he's trying to tell us. Hear me say this through this music. If you could feel this and if we could just be this, you know, it would be okay. Right?

I'm getting chills. But I know I feel that at the end of this song. I feel the power of that message. And if you study Stevie, you go on along that way with him. And you're left chilled by the experience. The song actually ends with the shiver of a freshly smacked gong. And crickets rubbing their legs together or whatever it is they do. This is the sonic brilliance of this album.

A war between cataclysm and salvation ends in the chirp of nature. What else? Let's see. All right, I'm going to take the first record off. I'm going to put it back in its sleeve. Now that I've listened to Thelma and Michelle Talk about how important it is I'm going to take the second one out of its sleeve And put that on

Yes Side three, track one. Isn't she lovely? Oh, the cry of this baby and the tumble of those drums. It's like something falling into the world because the tumble's rhythmic, the falling's on purpose. Someone's being born. His daughter, Aisha Morris, to Stevie,

and his partner at the time, Yolanda Simmons. The keyboards get real springy. You've heard of baby making music, right? Well, the baby's already been made on this song. This here? This is baby bouncing music. Isn't she

fragile? Less than one minute old. I never thought through love we'd be Making one as lovely as she But isn't she lovely, made of love You never get off Scott Free with Stevie. After this song and the song that follows it, Joy Inside My Tears, he doesn't put another love song. Instead, side three ends with him giving you what else he could be singing about.

Side three ends with him giving you what else he could be singing about. Side three ends with Black Man, a funked up vocoded education lesson about the contributions to the building of the United States that non-white people have made alongside the contributions white people have made. He needs you to be reaching your higher ground with your heart, your hands, your hips, but also your head. It would have been so easy just to make a song full of the uncredited stuff that black people have done for this country, but he wants to celebrate the idea that we've all had a hand in building this place. Even if most of the hands belong to men,

I'm just saying he mentions two women in the whole song. Nonetheless, it's a musically bountiful statement on the collective ingenuity that united these states. Ingenuity from all of us. You're listening to the wonder of Stevie from Pineapple Street Studios, Higher Ground Audio, and Audible. And do you want to hear more? There's a very special bonus episode only on Audible featuring me, Wesley Morris, and former President Barack Obama in an enlightening conversation with Stevie Wonder himself.

Visit audible.ca slash wonder to listen now. Getting bogged down by how much new music there is out there? There's a lot. Consider a daily dose of the All Songs Considered podcast. It's the easiest way to get tuned into the music world. We spend hours combing through the new music universe, from emerging bands to time-tested icons, to bring you your next favorite artist.

To get up on your music know-how, listen to All Songs Considered from NPR. It's right about here that I'd like to offer some thoughts about love songs. Love is an experience everybody has. Stevie knows this. He can hook you with besotted feelings and heartbreak. Love, he knows, can be an equalizer among all peoples, an utterly universal emotion. I'm not saying anything new here. A writer takes his pen and writes the words again. Stevie knows. But anytime you hear a black American singing about love,

what you're hearing is a choice not to be singing about a dozen other things. Being poor, getting ripped off, going to court or prison, driving your brother or your cousin to court, visiting them in prison, talking about how affirmative action doesn't need to end, talking about voting rights and why that's important, living for the city, village ghetto land. Those are about what else Stevie could be singing about. In its own quiet way, a black love song says, here.

Here's my heart. And despite all of this other shit, betrayal, neglect, struggle, rage, lunacy, the pernicious old status quo, despite the odds feeling eternally against us, despite it all, I'm going to sing about the joy brought to me by you. And I won't stop singing because I also feel love.

by you. And I won't stop singing because I also feel love. And that brings us to side four, track one, Es Una Historia. He's basically asking, would you look at the world? How is it that I can know all of this and still make this gorgeous, contiguously gorgeous sound that is this whole album? This is the story of us all. So he sings this song in three languages, Zulu, Spanish, and English. I am singing, he announces. He's choosing to sing. There's a way the industrial part of making music can make you feel like you need to take a break from the art of making music. But Stevie evidently loved making music. This album could have been 42 songs and six

records long. He loved singing that much. Stevie had to threaten to leave the music business and consider a new career in philanthropy on another continent to be reminded of that. Because believe me, work will wipe you out, wear you down, make you doubt your own heart. And even then, people can misconstrue your generosity. That's the spirit of this album, though. Abundant affection, warmth, plentitude, hope. It's a heart refilled.

I might have been one of those people who never considered what it might take for a person like Stevie to keep writing love songs. The emotional centerpiece of Songs in the Key of Life is a seven-minute, eight-second celestial sermon. It's track three on side four, and it's called As. Just as hate knows love's the cure You can rest your mind assured That I'll be loving you always This has never been my favorite Stevie Wonder song. It's in a key I never thought was for me. It comes on so soft and light. I'm not a crepe person.

I don't like souffles. So the melody, it never got to me. And I heard this song a lot at weddings, at barbecues, the mall. But I've been talking to some other people who know a few things about a few things, and I started to hear things and as that I hadn't really considered before.

Eight-time Grammy Award nominee, songwriter, actor. Janelle Monae, they're one of those people. Oh, the lyrics on that song. Today I know I'm living, but tomorrow could make me the past. But that I mustn't fear. Those lyrics in that song. But that I mustn't fear. Those lyrics in that song, I mean, I mean, we all think about the end, right?

Those lyrics actually comforted me during a time where I had been grappling with what's next after here. And there was just a comfort of just not fearing what is going to be next. Like live present. Be present. The musician and Stevie Wonder protege, Mareba, also finds the true beauty of this song is in its lyrics. So there's so many references to so many larger-than-life things happening. Until the ocean covers every mountain high, until the dolphin flies and parrots live at sea.

Like, there's all of these really whimsical, imaginative references that I think just points to how inexplicable love is when you really feel the depths of love. And it's like, okay, logic and sense, that's not going to cut it for me explaining this kind of love. I almost have to speak from this place of defying all logic and defying all sense to get across the way that I feel about you. And I feel like that's just so beautiful. It's just, that is just an ultimate expression of love to me is when you take sense out of it. you take sense out of it.

My neighbor's right. I was overthinking. I was trying to put sense into it. And what I was missing, what had eluded me all this time, is that as is in a way, I mean, in more than a way, it's totally, almost totally a gospel song.

So here's our resident gospel scholar, the musician Yolanda Adams. Oh my gosh, it's the gospel of love, unconditional love. And the way he makes the words just flow in brilliance, as around the sun, the earth knows she's revolving. Okay. Normal people say, oh yeah, the earth revolves around the sun, but no, Stevie takes it and he breaks it down. And then he makes it so like melodic and so inviting to anyone who's ever felt love or ever felt compassion or ever felt like they just couldn't do without, you know, family members, friends, whatever. You understand what I'll be loving you always means. I spent weeks learning every lyric. Michelle Obama again. I was more curious by the complicated nature of the words and the lyrics and the tongue twisting nature. And I think through trying to

learn it, I had to read it and I had to think about what he was saying. I was just like, well, this is long and I'm not hearing it. It did not hit me until maybe six months ago. Uh-oh. And it wrecked me. I heard it. I heard the signal. He put it out there in 1976. I'm just curious. Now, what do you hear? Now, what does it mean to you? It is unbelievable of all the things black people could be writing music about that we choose to write about love. It is a very deep choice to write a love song for a black person, given everything else. And I don't know why this particular Stevie Wonder song was so elusive to me. Maybe it was its ubiquity in my life.

Maybe it's the length. Maybe it's the fact that to me, the gospel choir, it's really only like four or five people. It's not that many people. I just felt like, could it have been bigger? But no, because the themes,

he does not want the themes overwhelmed by what a gospel choir can do. So keep it small because the ideas are big. I was not ready for it. And then when it hit me, it was like a truck ran me over. I've been trying to figure out as. I mean, as is like, that's, if you ever talk to Stevie,

that's what talking to Stevie is like on the phone. He's as. It's just like, there are a lot of thoughts happening. He's trying to get it all out at the same time. There's metaphor. There's power in it. And then sometimes afterwards,

you're like, huh? Because you're still not exactly sure. The date that eight times eight times eight is four. Until the day that is the day that are no more. So it's about love, but it's about a bigger love. It's not just a love song. It's love of people, humanity, the earth. It's a bigger love story than what we're used to getting.

And yet, Stevie never lost his mind or his faith. He knew, he believed that he could love this country's, this planet's problems away. I've already admitted that I'm ashamed. I'm ashamed that it wasn't until very recently that I heard these words, that I felt this song. I'll tell you where I was too. At the gym, standing at a squat rack, lowering weight down and lifting it up. I'm literal-minded. I have told you that.

And there had to have been something about the weight on me corresponding to the weight of this song. They were inversely proportional, yet talking to each other in this moment. I heard the labor of its love. that in twice its double If God knew exactly where he wanted you to be placed So make sure when you say you're in it but not have it

You're not heaven to me This is a place sometimes called hell Clean your head in the truth and then change that truth The weight that Stevie is lifting as a singer, as a musician as a black American as a human with a beating heart. I heard it. I felt it.

I had to put the bar down and I just bent over and I leaned on that rack and I wept in public at a crowded gym. I'd been talking for years about how I didn't get this song. I'd been talking with black people about it, who anytime I bring it up, jump 10 feet back, waiting for the lightning bolt to strike me dead. Well, here, right now, I am renouncing my heresy. It had taken my whole life, but at the gym that day, I was ready to give the rest of my weight to Stevie, who was there, ready to carry me.

This was the missing piece for me. The one I was, to quote as itself, in, but not of. the end of the streak. But me? I'm not so sure. And you know what? I'm not alone. When I think about black music, when I think about me wanting to be an artist, it's like, wow, we can do this too. We can be this. We can listen to the sounds that nobody hears but us and push it out. We can go from the pop hits to the more obscure, the more, you know, layered, nuanced ways of creating.

We can do it all. That's next time on The Wonder of Stevie. This has been a Higher Ground and Audible original. The Wonder of Stevie is produced by Pineapple Street Studios. Higher Ground Audio and Audible. Our senior producer is Josh Gwynn. Producer is Janelle Anderson. Associate producer is Mary Alexa Cavanaugh. Senior managing producer is Asha Saluja.

Executive editor is Joel Lovell. Archival producer is Justine Dom. Thank you. are Jade Brooks and Sharon Bardalas. Mixed and mastered by Davy Sumner and Raj Makija. Additional engineering by Jason Richards, Scott Gilman, Javier Martinez, and Lian Do. Score and sound design by Josh Gwynn and Raj Makija. Original score performed by Carles Music and Raj Makija. Additional music provided by Epidemic Sound. Hosted and executive produced by Wesley Morris. Higher ground executive producers are Barack Obama,

Michelle Obama, Corinne Gilliard-Fisher, Dan Fehrman, and Mukta Mohan. Creative executive for Higher Ground is Janae Marable. Executive producers for Pineapple Street Studios are Jenna Weiss-Berman and Max Linsky. Audible executive producers are Kate Navin and Nick

D'Angelo. The Wonder of Stevie is also executive produced by Amir Questlove Thompson, Anna Holmes and Stevie Wonder. Questlove is the producer of this show courtesy of iHeart and can also be heard on Questlove Supreme from iHeart Podcasts. Recorded at

Different Fur, Patches, The Hobby Shop and Pineapple Street Studios. Head of Creative Development at Audible is Kate Navin. Chief Content Officer is Rachel Giazza. Copyright 2024 by Higher Ground Audio, LLC. Sound recording copyright 2024 by Higher Ground Audio, LLC. I'll be loving you always. Always.

Always.