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A
This message comes From NPR sponsor 1Password. Secure access to your online world, from emails to banking, so you can protect what matters most with 1Password. For a free two week trial, go to 1Password.com NPR hey there, all SONGS Considered listeners. I'm Daoud Tyler Meen. I'm an editor at NPR Music.
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B
I'm Ann Powers. I'm NPR Music's pop critic. We're here with the first episode of A brand New thing for All Songs listeners. Some people might call it a podcast, a series.
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A
Yeah, we've called it a couple of different things. Behind the scenes called it what is it about this song.
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B
Right.
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A
Old Songs Considered. Yeah. Cause most of what you hear on All Songs is about brand new music. But there is an entire world of older songs out there, too.
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B
Yeah. Old stuff is coming at you all the time. You know, streaming algorithms and TikTok and Instagram videos, the grocery store, whatever's blaring through the speakers. Or even like on radio stations where DJs even tell you the name of the song anymore.
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A
Right. So we got curious about a certain kind of song that you hear all the time, but you might not necessarily think of as like canon. And some of them are great and some of them are kind of puzzling, but they stick around. And that's the thing we wanted to talk about.
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B
But you know what, Dawoud, when you and I talk about this stuff, we come at it from pretty different perspectives. We're slightly different ages.
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A
You're a musician and you've written multiple books and one zillion articles looking at music history.
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B
So true. So we come to this with kind of different histories ourselves. But we kept running into the same question, which is why do certain songs stand the test of time? Why do they last?
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A
Right. So here's how the show's gonna work. Each week, one of us will choose one song, and together we're gonna try to dig into what it meant when it came out and how it has managed to survive and ev from one generation to the next.
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B
And you, dear listener, you may even be surprised by some of the songs we pick.
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A
I think. So one more tiny bit of business before we get to our first old song. We will have new episodes every other Thursday in the All Songs Considered feed. But after this episode that you're listening to right now, the series will only be available to NPR Music supporters.
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B
Yeah, it's a free sample or it's an amuse bouche. You know, it's like coming to you on a tiny little spoon.
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A
Exactly. You can sign up for NPR Music, wherever you listen to podcasts or go to plus.npr.org nprmusic and we hope you do.
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B
All right, dilute. Let's get started. You picked the first song, so get us going.
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A
I'm so nervous. Okay, here we go. So I am going to take a wild swing and presume that a lot of our listenership is familiar with the film High Fidelity. Yes, this is the 2000 movie directed by Stephen Frears, based on the book by Nick Hornby, starring John Cusack as a record store owner in Chicago. Kind of a foundational text for music nerds, something I've seen plenty of times. I'm guessing you have too.
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B
Oh, yeah, it's one of those aha moment movies where it's like, oh my God, they captured me and my people in a film.
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A
Yeah. So if you haven't seen High Fidelity, Cusack is this guy, Rob Gordon, who is having an existential crisis after his girlfriend leaves him, and in his distress, he decides to kind of gamify his dating history as a way to understand it. Basically in the same way that he and his vinyl nerd buddies are constantly making lists of like the top five songs about death or the top five track ones on an album or whatever.
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B
My Desert island all time Top 5 Most Memorable Breakups in chronological order are as Allison Ashmore, Penny Hardwick, Jackie Alden, Charlie Nicholson, and Sarah Kendrew. Those were the ones that really hurt. Can you see your name on that list, Laura? Maybe you'd sneak into the top 10, but there's just no room for you in the top five. Sorry. Classic, adorable, toxic masculinity.
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A
Yeah, so it's a comfort watch for a lot of people because it gets at something really honest about the way that culture obsessives center art in their lives and use it as a lens to understand everything for better and worse. As I think you're implying, that character can be a jerk just as often as he's, you know, quirky and cute.
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B
And I should say there was a remake of High Fidelity starring Zoe Kravitz that kind of flipped the gender script too. So it is definitely possible for a person of any gender to be that obsessive music nerd who avoids emotions by.
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A
Making lists so light spoilers. We do end on a redemptive note with Rob making a mixtape for his partner Laura, and he hits record on his tape deck. Play and record with two fingers like you do. And then after having been this kind of spiraling narcissist for most of the story, he gives the last word to Stevie Wonder.
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B
I believe when I fall in love.
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A
With you it won't be forever. The song that plays over the end credits is I Believe When I fall in love it will be forever. It's the final track on the album talking book from 1972. And it's a turning point for Stevie Wonder as well. It's the moment when he starts to really embrace synthesizers and all of their possibilities. It kicks off this unassailable run of albums that he made in the 70s that are thought of now as his kind of do no wrong classic era. It's a transitional moment in his personal life, some shakeups in his own household. And even though Talking Book is the album with, like, superstition on it, this is the song that I wanted to talk with you about because it really uniquely commands my attention and my emotions every time I hear it. And I've never totally put my finger on why.
- [06:07]
B
I was excited when you said you wanted to bring in a Stevie Wonder song. But this is not one that would have made my top 20, really. And I'm a huge, massive Stevie fan, so I was a little grumpy. When you're like, dive into this one. But then not only listening to it, but doing a little research, a little behind the music type action. I think I figured out why you chose it. But why don't we go back to the beginning, where and when this song even happened?
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A
So it is 1972, and a young Steven Morris, who has been Stevie Wonder for most of his life because of his extraordinary proficiency with instruments and songwriting and what have you, is out of his first Motown contract. Do I have that right so far?
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B
Right. He got out of it when he turned 21. So we just have to remember Stevie Wonder had been recording since he was a child. He'd been having hits since he was a child. He was an anchor artist along with others like Marvin Gaye at Motown at that time. And he's like, I am an adult. I'm taking control of my career. And I think the first record after he changed his contract to have full creative control was actually Music of My.
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A
Mind, which is the same year.
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B
Yeah. I mean, this is crazy. This is, like how prolific and on fire this kid was. Right. And I'm calling him a kid because he was 21 years old, you know?
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A
Sure. But you can tell it's one of those moments where, like, maybe it takes a second. Maybe he has to drop the trial run record first for people to be like, get out of his way. Whatever. He's doing. We want him to keep doing it.
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B
Absolutely. This is the first full flower of Stevie Wonder's genius, I think. And this album, Talking Book, sets up the incredible trilogy that he made that completely dominated the 1970s. Intervisions in 1973, fulfilling this first finale in 1974, and Songs in the Key of Life in 1976, incidentally, all of those albums won the Grammy for Best Album of the Year, which is just, like, blows to your mind, right? So there's a way in which Talking Book is. I wouldn't call it a manifesto, but it's definitely him showing, you know, mapping out his future for us. And that makes, I believe, all the more poignant because of its structure, because of where it starts and where it ends up.
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A
And it is the last track on the record, which is not to be all kids these days, but in a streaming landscape, you know, the last couple of tracks on a record, like, who knows if people are gonna get to that? And this was so much presented in the way. That was, like, more the style at the time. But it was also, I think, very much a hallmark of this era of his career is, like, this is a complete body of work.
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B
Yes, it was an album album. And 1972 was an incredible time for album albums. I mean, we had Ziggy Stardust from David Bowie. We had Neil Young's Harvest for a Heart of. We had Elton John's Honky Chateau. Just so many different amazing artists creating these album works. But you're absolutely right. Like, even for an album album, how many people get to the end? And I've seen descriptions of the song we're focusing on today. I believe that call it like a solo fantasia. So this song, like, he recorded everything on this song by himself.
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A
And so there are other musicians on this record, but this is the one that is pure Stevie.
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B
Oh, man, that's so crazy, because for one thing, it's not just one song. It's like, three songs.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Three songs in one. I mean, maybe we should break it down. I want to have that moment with you, my friend, the musician, where you can tell me what the hell is going on.
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A
And I don't know. I honestly, I don't know a lot of the time how he pulled a lot of this off. We can just start with the sound of the thing. I mean, the way that we start feels almost out of time in terms of rhythm, right? So, you know, we've got some synth and we've got some guitar, and everything is sort of spacey and loose. And he comes in as if in mid thought. It does not sound like he is hitting the first line of the song, but he is. He sounds, I would say, a little tired. It's an incredible performance, but his voice is a little bit hoarse. And it's almost as if we have been following along in real time throughout the creation of the entire album. And he sounds like, you know, a little worse for wear, but ready to take on the future.
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B
Shattered dreams Worthless years here my encased inside our shell yeah, and you know, I'm glad you brought that up for two reasons. One, there is a strong echo in the beginning of this song. What I believe echoes is Lucy in the sky with Diamonds, the Beatles song towering over your head.
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A
Oh, wow. Oh, you're so right.
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B
Thank you. I know what the Beatles sound like. It's an incredible achievement after so many years as a music critic. But what you're saying actually reinforces that connection. Because if you think about the vocal, the way John Lennon's voice is processed on Lucy in the sky with Diamonds, Stevie doesn't process his voice that way. But it also is a very strange effect. It's spacey, obviously. So I wonder if he was kind of going for that connection. But then the second reason that I think you're noting that Stevie sounds a little tired is important is because there's a story that's running through this record which is Stevie's divorce from Sarita Wright, who is his frequent co writer, frequent collaborator, and briefly was his wife during this time. This song is not co written with Sarita Wright. She co wrote a couple of the other songs on Talking Book. It's co written with Yvonne Wright.
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A
Okay, this is. Help me out with this because I felt like I was losing my mind. I didn't hallucinate that. There's two different women from this time in his life that are both named. Right. And they both wrote with him and.
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B
They'Re not related to each other either.
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A
No, I'm just glad to know. I've had moments like that and was just like. There was a Van Damme movie from the 90s called Double Impact and another one called Double Team and they're both buddy action movies. And I was so certain until recently that I had made one of them up. But no, it do be like that sometimes.
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B
It's totally. There's a Sarita and there's an Yvonne. They both collaborated with Stevie. Sarita was a very significant collaborator with Stevie. And even before they were married, before they had a relationship, they collaborated on several of his hits. And then after they broke up. He produced her two wonderful albums from the mid-70s. One of which is called Sarita and the other one, which is called Stevie Wonder, Sarita Wright. So they maintained their friendship after they broke up. I've read up a little on this and it seems like she says combination of his incredible work ethic. Where he would like jump out of bed in the morning and immediately start making music. And possibly his tendency to rove were the two reasons for them splitting up.
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A
Diplomatically said.
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B
Now sticking in the gossip zone right now. Yvonne Wright, she continues to collaborate with him after this record too. And there is a point where I think they dated as well. So it's definitely a soap opera.
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A
Great.
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B
And that's related, I think, maybe to the weariness you hear in the song. Because I think so. It's funny cause I read a lot of reviews of this record. And they're like, it's about love. It's like, well, it's about love. But I think it's also about maybe a couple breaking up and somebody trying to start again. And that's the arc of this song for sure.
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A
I mean, that's kind of the magic, right? Is that it is taking place at the moment of a fracture. That is also this sort of opening to new possibility. And we get this first line or this first set of lines. That is the sound of a 22 year old who has done some living. What do you make of here Am I encased inside a hollow shell? Not here I am, but sort of. That kind of like archaic. What say you?
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B
Here am I. I love that you call that out. Because that is one of the things I love about some of my other favorite Stevie songs. Like I never dreamed you'd leave in summer. He sometimes enters into this baroque language. And I don't know if that's particular to him or kind of works with the moment. You know, early 70s, we're in the Prague rock era. We're in the era of maximum pretentiousness, which I love, by the way. But there is this sort of. I don't know, he's like a Luteinist at the court. The way the song starts.
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A
So my ears are perked up. He's got my attention. And then he hits this pre chorus and it's like this is the moment where he gets me. Actually not even the chorus, which is so gorgeous. Do you know what I'm talking about?
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B
Yes.
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A
And we've established this chord structure that is sort of descending underneath it. But he's hitting this same set of notes over and over again. And something about that suspension of the familiar thing over this changing thing. I don't know what. I'm just a sucker for it.
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B
Yeah, I think that's really true. And it also kind of brings us out of the Beatles and into something else, you know, into, I don't know, my sharia more. We're back in like, Stevie territory for sure. That sweet side of Stevie where he can just like give you a melody that just like lifts you up. It's so buoyant that that happens. Right.
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A
So the album started with a U. You are the sunshine of my life. And now when we hit the chorus, now we're at an I. And he says, I believe when I fall in love with you, it will be forever.
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B
Right. This is so intriguing to me because, I mean, my immediate question is, who is the you? Right. Which is often. This is kind of a basic question for pop songs. Like, you know, I was just reading something about another Beatles song, I've got to get you into my life. You know, Paul McCartney was the main writer behind that song. And one of his friends from the time was saying, well, everybody thinks that's about a girl or whatever, but you know what? No, it was about pot. It was about weed. It's like, I gotta smoke more weed. So you never know for sure who the you is. And I think in this song that's kind of fundamental. And I'm going to quote one of my favorite philosophers right now, Josh Groban.
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A
No, I think I read this quote too.
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B
So Josh Groban, who recorded a quite majestic version of this song and had a pretty big hit with it in 2013, he said, my interpretation is that it's a you that hasn't been discovered yet. And that's powerful to be open hearted like that. And I love that. See, I think this is like the Beatles song I will or just my imagination by the Temptations. Like, I'm not sure the you is identified. I think the you is just hope.
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A
Yeah, I think so too. I think this is envisioning a future and sort of speaking it into possibility or singing it.
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B
Yes, yes. And let's stick to with the song for a while. So we've moved into this middle part where we have the kind of like basic, you know, quintessential Stevie melodies, you know, kind of recalls a lot of his other songs. What's happening musically in this middle, like in the chorus, in that part.
- [18:29]
A
I'll tell you, this is the. The most staggering choice to me in the entire song. There's so many things that I think are more fun to listen to, more interesting, more majestic, more beautiful, whatever. But the thing that I think is the bravest is we get through the first chorus, we return to the verse, and the beat is gone.
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B
Oh, my gosh.
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A
Every. Every. Every pop songwriter, I feel like now, if you were, like, taking a class on pop songwriting, they would say, give us a little bit of backbeat in the second verse, because things are building, and we don't want to reset. We don't want to go all the way back to where we came from. And he just lets it completely cut out, and it is. So. I mean, I don't even know how to describe what that does to me, except to say that, like, damn, dude, you pulled it off. And actually, speaking of Josh Groban, his cover of this gives us a little bit of backbeat. He sticks with it, and it's just like, I don't fault him for it because that's what Josh Groban does. But you can hear me struggling because I don't even really know how to describe what that does, except to say, just follow me. Right?
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B
Trust me.
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A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's an amazing thing to say in any case, but especially at the end of the album, to be like, this is actually the beginning of the story. Like, you and I are embarking on something new here, so just follow me.
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B
It's something, again, that we see in other Stevie songs. I mean, I guess what I'm thinking about is how some of his greatest songs, they really are like mini plays or mini movies, and they have many different parts. You know, thinking about Living for the City, another of my favorites. They kind of move through these different phases, and they ask you to, like, follow the story as if it were more like a narrative than just a groove, you know? I mean, the man is king of groove. Like, don't get me wrong, you know, a song like golden lady or whatever, where you're just. You're just writing it and it's beautiful. But this is not that kind of song. These are like kind of his more orchestral kind of song. Well, while we're talking about the musical construction of the song, Daoud, I think we gotta talk a little bit about Tonto. And I love early synthesizers. I love the way that artists were using them at the time. But this was a special case. I mean, this was like, the most extreme case of a megastar falling in love with a synthesizer.
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A
Sure. I mean, and it was kind of an innovation in itself. So Tonto stands for the original Neo Timbrel Orchestra, which is a little bit of a mouthful. But these two producers, Malcolm Cecil and Robert Margula head, developed this system where they took a bunch of existing synthesizers and managed to figure out a way to get them all to talk to each other, to control each other. There's Moog stuff in there. There's all of these things that had been sort of early parts of the synthesizer world. And they figured out a way to sort of wire them together and they actually made an album together. Stevie heard that record and he showed up one day with a copy under his arm and he was like, you and me. You get what I'm trying to do.
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B
Oh, my gosh. It just occurs to me, do you think the you in this song is actually tonto?
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A
That would be the ultimate plot twist.
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B
And then after that middle section, we get to this totally different third section of the song.
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A
Yes, I want to get to that, but really. But we're not there yet. Well, I just want to point something out because again, it's something that didn't really stick out to me until recently. There is so much personality in the way that he says this time in the chorus. Do you know what I'm talking about? So he really hits it. That vowel is sharp this time.
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B
Yeah, yeah.
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A
He kind of.
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B
That was a good Stevie impression.
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A
He sort of turns into a clavnet for a section and it does a couple of things. One, I cannot verify this, but I don't think that the backing vocals actually follow him there. You know, whatever. How many stacks of Stevie you have on that 2 inch tape are just saying with you. And he's sort of breaking away and saying, oh, but also. But also it's this little like, you know, it's like a watermark. It's a way to sort of christen this future classic and say, like, this song will be interpreted and listened to for years to come. But this is the version that you only get with me.
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B
I wonder if focusing on the words this time, I wonder if he was partly motivated by the ubiquitous number one song of this year, which was Roberta Fleck's the first time.
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A
Oh, really?
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B
Ever I saw your face. Yeah, the first time ever I saw your face Under Bertiflec's an interesting study, kind of against Stevie at this point. Not against, but like, complementary to Stevie at this point, because she's also doing really interesting things with time in her music, with vocality, with stretching out what a pop song can be, you know?
- [24:00]
A
Yeah.
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B
So I have no idea how much they were in Dialogue with each other. I do know that other musicians I mentioned, Joni Mitchell, I am want to mention Joni Mitchell often like you did. And she often said that talking book and the other Stevie records of this period, that's what she wanted to be emulating with her own adventures, playing around with time, you know, stretching out her songs and challenging the confines of a pop song.
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A
So I'm sorry I cut you off earlier. I just had. I had to wait.
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B
Well, it's good because you're stretching this out like the song was stretching. So that's how it should be.
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A
It's just like sometimes it's just like. Yeah, only you say it. It's like. This is a bizarre comparison. But Avril Lavigne in Complicated has that line where she goes, laugh out when you strike a pose. And it's so weird, but it's just like, that's you. That's all you. Nobody who covers this song will sing it the way you do.
- [24:57]
B
Okay, now I have to make another wacky comparison because you bringing up Avril's fake British accent on that makes me think about the other song that was huge in 1972 that I wonder if Stevie was thinking about, which is a song by Gilbert o' Sullivan called Alone Again Naturally. Do you know that song?
- [25:16]
A
I don't.
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B
Well, okay, so it's Gilbert or Sullivan, kind of a one hit wonder. But this song, Alone Again Naturally is basically, I believe. But if the lover never finds that you. It's a very sad, miserable song about someone who, from childhood to the point where we leave him in the song, just never finds connection with other people. And it was a massive hit. So this, I think, and I'm not the first person to say this possibly relates to the moment we're in politically because of course, we're in the Nixon years, right? So there's a way in which the very dark side of this song, before we get to the redemptive end and are lifted up, connects with a kind of darkness in the culture. I think it makes the resolution sweeter, but I think it also that little ghost of Alone Again Naturally in the song, the idea that maybe this is all fantasy, that he never really finds that you. I mean, and I think this happens a lot in Stevie Wonder's ballads. You know, there's a kind of a loneliness. Even when he's at his most welcome, you know, his most welcoming or reaching out and most joyful, there's still a solitude to his music that it's reflective of the 70s, it's reflective of his own spirit, I guess.
- [26:48]
A
So you've mentioned it a couple of times. I'll stop delaying the payoff. We get a lot of repeats of the chorus because you kind of could just play that forever, you know, it sounds like the kind of thing that, you know, you'd want to have playing in a theater. As people are filing out. It's got that kind of, you know, uplift to it. And then. Come on, let's fall in love and that clavinet comes back hard, baby.
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B
Come on, let's fall in love yeah, it sure does. It totally does. We are leaving behind the psychedelic meadow we were in in the beginning. We're leaving behind the idyllic space of extending his hand holding the rose to his loved one. And we are, like, full on in church all of a sudden. Yeah. I'm gonna quote Petra Hayden, who also has covered this song in a wonderful version with Bill Frizzell. She says about this song, the minor part of the song is the lonely part. It's the sad part. But then in the end, love. It might not win, but it can heal loneliness, can be healed by love. And by the way, full credit, this is all from a New York Times piece that ran a couple years ago on the album Talking Book. But anyway, I think that's maybe what Stevie did have in mind. It's like, I need to get out of this hole. I have hope, I have desire, but I cannot achieve my goal. I cannot find love. I cannot heal without some help, without some help from God, without some help from my community. Even though there isn't really a community, it's imagined on this song. It's not like he welcomed in other performers, but when you listen to it, I mean, I always think, oh, it's like he's entered into again, like I said, a church. And there's, like, a lot of people singing. So I think it's turning desire and dreaming into action. That's what I would say.
- [28:51]
A
Yeah. So look, there's other songs, even from this album, that we could have fixated on. Superstition, which is side two, track one of Talking Book, is kind of a fascinating counterpart because the central motif there is when you believe in things, believe in things you don't understand, then you suffer.
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B
Yes. That song scared the out of me when I was a kid. Totally.
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A
But I wanted to talk to you about this one because of all of the different things that I think it can represent. And in particular, it's the idea of sort of taking the road less traveled by at the last minute, you Know, we've got Stevie, 10 solid years into his career, deciding to make this turn rather than do the thing that, like, probably some people would have said at the time, like, would have been bankable to just stay inside of the hit factory and just keep cranking out those things.
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B
Seal delivered. He's ours.
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A
Yeah. And to bring things back to High Fidelity, like, what are we seeing at the end of that story?
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B
Well, we're seeing personal growth. We're seeing someone taking a risk, you know, that makes me want to say something more about the song. But before I say that, what do you see at the end of High Fidelity?
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A
I think we're homing in on the same thing, which is that it's a few scenes before the end of High Fidelity. John Cusack as Rob Gordon is in his store and he's got a local journalist who's sort of making eyes at him and he's making her a mixtape. And he has this sort of come to Jesus moment where he's like, actually, I don't know if this is actually what I want and why don't I put this level of dedication into the person who I actually never get tired of. And so just that feeling of the button that, you know you want to press and having the presence of mind to at the last minute sort of take a left turn and be like, actually this is a little bit more dangerous in certain ways. But I think this is the way that I want to go is. I think it is emblematic of everything that is represented in the song. And honestly, it is emblematic of why I wanted to do this series with you. Because I think that is a choice that you and I are going to confront over and over is like, sometimes it is going to be a down the middle pitch. We know exactly what we need to do. And other times we might say to ourselves, superstition seems like the move, but I think we will have the much more interesting and rewarding and enriching conversation if we turn at the last minute.
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B
Oh, wow. Wow. I believe if we talk about music, we'll go forever.
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A
That was his first draft. Not a lot of people know that.
- [31:43]
B
I believe when I fall in love with you it will be forever. I mean, I know some people think about it as just a really romantic song, you know, almost a wedding song. But Daoud, what you're saying makes me think about this song differently. It makes me think about it as a statement from Stevie to us, his listeners, and also to himself about his own art, about where he will go as an artist. Beloved listener, follow me, connect with me, trust me. I'm gonna take you somewhere. And where does he take us? He takes us to this incredible run of records after this.
- [32:21]
A
I mean, and this is all, you know, extratextual, right? This is stuff that, as a teenager watching High Fidelity, like, I didn't know any of this. I didn't know about his relationships. I didn't know about him hooking up with these two producer.
- [32:34]
B
That's what I'm saying. Like the trust fall. And I thank history because I feel like a lot of artists at this time were taking chances. They felt they could take chances like this. There was a certain empowerment that the top artists were feeling working in these incredible studios with these incredible technicians. And then ultimately, I'm just thankful for Stevie Wonder himself, that he exists, that we are graced with his presence, because the chances he took are unlike anybody else's chances. And the belief he shares in his music, it's like no other feeling in pop. So, yeah, in the end, I just want to, I just want to say thank you, Stevie. I believe in you, too.
- [33:16]
A
This is the sound of somebody who is singing his future into existence. And it makes you feel like you can do it, too.
- [33:22]
B
Exactly.
- [33:27]
A
Folks, that's our episode on I Believe When I Fall in Love, It Will Be Forever by Stevie Wonderful. We're gonna have a new episode in two weeks, but you'll have to join NPR Music to hear it. NPR Music is a really great way to support our work here at npr. And in return for your support, you'll be getting access to all of our upcoming episodes on Old Songs. And you'll get to hear every episode in this feed without any sponsor breaks. Sign up now at plus.npr.org nprmusic. Be sure to check out all the great writing from NPR Music at our website, npr.org find out more about our newsletters, podcasts and the tiny desk in our show notes. Our producer is Chao Tu. Our editor is Jacob Ganz. Our theme music is by me, Daoud Tyler Amin. Special thanks also to Otis Hart, Sonali Mehta, Soraya Mohammad, Leeta Merritts, and the great folks at NPR's research department and audio engineering department for their help. And if you love this show, please tell your friends we'll be back again in two weeks.
- [34:26]
B
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A
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- [35:14]
B
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