Episode: 143: Eli Lake / Stevie Wonder [Part 2]

Summary

Political Beats: Episode 143 – Eli Lake / Stevie Wonder [Part 2]

Release Date: February 5, 2025

In the second installment of their deep dive into Stevie Wonder's illustrious career, hosts Scot Bertram and Jeff Blehar, accompanied by guest Eli Lake, explore the transformative years of Stevie Wonder's music from 1972 onward. This episode, part of the "Political Beats" series by National Review, offers an engaging and comprehensive analysis of Stevie Wonder's artistic evolution, technological innovations, and enduring impact on the music industry.

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1. Introduction

The episode opens with Scot Bertram setting the stage for a continuation of their discussion on Stevie Wonder, picking up where Part 1 left off in 1971. Guest Eli Lake, a Free Press columnist and contributing editor at Commentary, joins Bertram and co-host Jeff Blair to dissect the pivotal moments in Stevie Wonder's career.

Eli Lake (02:10): "Just a pleasure to be here to talk about one of the great geniuses of our time. Thank you for having me."

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2. Stevie Wonder's Artistic Evolution in the Early 70s

Jeff Blair outlines the critical juncture in 1972 when Stevie Wonder secured unprecedented artistic freedom by renegotiating his contract with Motown. This newfound autonomy allowed Wonder to experiment and define his musical direction independently.

Jeff Blair (03:08): "Stevie was essentially the Lone Ranger. He had finally his artistic freedom. He renegotiated [his contract] to give himself complete creative freedom."

3. Music of My Mind: A Breakthrough (1972)

Music of My Mind marked Stevie Wonder's first collaboration with synthesizer innovator Malcolm Cecil and Robert Margouleff. The album showcased Wonder's ability to humanize synthetic sounds, blending them seamlessly into his soulful melodies.

Eli Lake (04:11): "Eva, why have you engulfed so many hearts? Eva, Eva, why have you destroyed so many minds?"

Notable Quote:

Jeff Blair (07:01): "Stevie Wonder was the first person that kind of translated this new technology. He made it sound human, even though this was the height of something that was synthetic."

4. Talking Book: Reaching New Heights (1973)

Following Music of My Mind, Talking Book solidified Stevie Wonder's position as a musical powerhouse. The album featured iconic tracks like "Superstition" and "You Are the Sunshine of My Life," blending funk, soul, and innovative keyboard work.

Jeff Blair (07:19): "Talking Book is where Stevie comes into bloom. It's nearly perfect, except for that one song where he gets hung up on a really annoying groove."

Notable Quote:

Eli Lake (14:21): "Jesus, Children of America, fantastic song."

5. Innervisions and Political Engagement (1973)

Innervisions marked a significant shift as Stevie Wonder delved into more politically charged themes. Songs like "Living for the City" and "Big Brother" offered poignant critiques of societal issues, reflecting Wonder's growing political consciousness.

Jeff Blair (14:47): "What do you think of this first part of Stevie Wonder's Imperial Phase?"

Notable Quote:

Eli Lake (36:58): "We're going to get to that. But Big Brother is more of a critique of the failures of post-LBJ Democratic big city machines."

6. Fulfillingness' First Finale: A Versatile Masterpiece (1974)

Fulfillingness' First Finale is lauded as one of Stevie Wonder's most versatile and emotionally resonant albums. Tracks like "Please Don't Go" and "Sir Duke" showcase his mastery in blending heartfelt ballads with sophisticated musical arrangements.

Jeff Blair (15:02): "There's no artifice. It's just his pure expression of love."

Notable Quote:

Eli Lake (40:15): "They've been covering Stevie Wonder's songs all over, but nothing compares to the original here."

7. Overcoming Adversity: Stevie's Car Accident and Comeback

The discussion takes a somber turn as Jeff Blair recounts Stevie Wonder's tragic car accident shortly after the release of Innervisions. Despite severe injuries and a coma, Wonder's resilience led to a remarkable comeback, fueling his creative drive.

Jeff Blair (61:38): "He survives it all. He comes out of it a week and a half later, and there is a long recovery period."

8. Intervisions (1974): An Outlook for the Future

Intervisions is praised for its ambitious musicality and the seamless integration of synthesizers with traditional instruments. The album reflects Stevie Wonder's continued experimentation and commitment to pushing musical boundaries.

Eli Lake (46:42): "It's such an accomplishment. I mean, everything he touches is gold."

Notable Quote:

Jeff Blair (47:07): "It's taking too high chord for me."

9. Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants (1979) and Its Reception

Contrasting the previous high points, Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants is critiqued as an experimental venture that didn't resonate as strongly with audiences. Despite its innovative approach, the album is considered a departure from Stevie Wonder's classic sound.

Jeff Blair (116:43): "I couldn't give up on it because people were just wanting Stevie Wonder content. And to put it up against what was right before it, it's not fair."

10. Hotter Than July (1980): A Mix of Classics and New Directions

Hotter Than July blends classic Stevie Wonder hits with contemporary sounds influenced by the burgeoning disco scene. Tracks like "Master Blaster" and "I Wish" highlight his ability to adapt while maintaining his signature style.

Jeff Blair (132:53): "But he was everywhere. And the 'Woman in Red' has..."

Notable Quote:

Eli Lake (156:30): "Twinkling. I'll be gone, Excuse me, I have so much more to do."

11. The 80s and Decline: Less Acclaimed Works

The hosts express disappointment with Stevie Wonder's forays into soundtracks and less cohesive projects during the 80s, such as The Woman in Red soundtrack. These works are seen as lacking the depth and innovation of his earlier albums.

Jeff Blair (145:28): "But it's not that much of a drop off. I still think you still have some of that classic Stevie stuff."

Notable Quote:

Eli Lake (161:38): "Love's in need of love Today and knocks me off my feet from songs in the key of life."

12. Influence on Other Artists: Prince and Beyond

A recurring theme is Stevie Wonder's profound influence on contemporaries and future artists, notably Prince. The discussion highlights how Wonder's approach to music set the stage for Prince's eclectic and boundary-pushing style.

Jeff Blair (31:32): "He has a lock, stock and barrel hold upon great romantic songs."

Notable Quote:

Unknown Guest (94:13): "Prince clearly based his entire career off of this album. It was something we didn't really hit on nearly enough."

13. Conclusion: Stevie Wonder's Legacy and Impact

The episode wraps up with reflections on Stevie Wonder's enduring legacy, emphasizing his unparalleled ability to blend musical innovation with heartfelt expression. Despite the ups and downs of his career, Wonder's contributions to music and culture remain monumental.

Jeff Blair (155:24): "People have been learning how to live together in perfect harmony. And in perfect harmony on my keyboard."

Eli Lake (160:04): "Love from songs in the key of life, Songs in the key of life, and intervisions, they're all timeless masterpieces."

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Key Takeaways:

• Artistic Freedom: Stevie Wonder's renegotiation with Motown in the early '70s was pivotal, granting him the autonomy to explore and innovate musically.

• Musical Innovation: His collaboration with synthesizers introduced a humanized synthetic sound, setting new standards in music production.

• Political Consciousness: Albums like Innervisions marked a shift towards socially and politically charged themes, reflecting the societal issues of the time.

• Influence on Peers: Wonder's work heavily influenced artists like Prince, who drew inspiration from his eclectic and boundary-pushing approach.

• Legacy: Despite facing challenges and creative dips, Stevie Wonder's contributions to music remain influential and celebrated.

Recommended Listening:

• Albums:

  • Music of My Mind (1972)
  • Talking Book (1973)
  • Innervisions (1973)
  • Fulfillingness' First Finale (1974)
  • Intervisions (1974)
  • Hotter Than July (1980)
  • Songs in the Key of Life (1976)

• Songs:

  • "Superstition" (Talking Book)
  • "You Are the Sunshine of My Life" (Talking Book)
  • "Living for the City" (Innervisions)
  • "Please Don't Go" (Fulfillingness' First Finale)
  • "Sir Duke" (Fulfillingness' First Finale)
  • "Big Brother" (Innervisions)
  • "Master Blaster (Jammin')" (Hotter Than July)
  • "I Wish" (Hotter Than July)
  • "Knocks Me Off My Feet" (Intervisions)

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Stevie Wonder's journey through the 1970s and beyond showcases a blend of musical genius, innovative spirit, and a deep connection to the societal currents of his time. This episode of Political Beats not only celebrates his achievements but also critically examines the nuances of his evolving artistry.

Transcript

[Eli Lake]

Foreign.

[Scott Bertram]

Hello again everybody, and welcome into another edition of Political Beats, a presentation of National Review. You can find us on X at politicalbeats. Also over on Facebook as well. Subscribe to our feed for new episodes through Apple Podcasts or elsewhere or find them right [e-mail] click on the podcast tab. We're there along with all the other fine National Review audio. We ask you to join us@patreon patreon.com politicalbeats there you can support us, help the show stay ad free as it has been. We have entry level for support and some voting privileges mid level for early access to our shows. And you get them at a higher audio quality and that our upper level bestest friends early access, the higher audio quality monthly exclusive content shows, remastered episodes, playlists, lists and more. All of [e-mail] politicalbeats My name is Scott Bertram. You can find me on X. Scott Bertram, my tag team partner. Standing by as always, Jeff Blair. Jeff, how are you?

[Jeff Blair]

Not so great, Scott. Do you happen to have $750 for bail money? Okay, listen, let me explain. Let me explain. I just got off the bus. Somebody asked me to run this across the street if things. I don't know what happened, but I mean, it's either this or I'm not going to be able to continue living for the city.

[Scott Bertram]

And you were only here for what, like 20 seconds before that happened.

[Jeff Blair]

If that, if that is possible.

[Scott Bertram]

Find Jeff on X at Esoteric cd. Our guest returns for part two of this Stevie Wonder episode, a Free Press columnist. And since the last episode, his new podcast has debuted. Check out Breaking History. He's also contributing editor at Commentary on X, Eli Lake. Yes, Eli Lake is back. Eli, hi.

[Unknown Guest]

Just a pleasure to be here to talk about one of the great geniuses of our time. Thank you for having me.

[Scott Bertram]

Thank you for coming back. We appreciate it. If you missed part one, well, go back and listen. Part one of Stevie Wonder brought us all the way up through 1971, and we pick up where we left off, which is, I often say, is the best place to pick things up directly where you left off. And I mean, we've done the introductions, we've talked about what Stevie Wonder means and all that. We can get right into the music this time. Jeff, do you want to set us up for what we're about to hit here in 1972?

[Jeff Blair]

I mean. Okay, yeah, it's really, really easy and pretty quick way to do it. So in 1972, after where I'm coming from, which we Know, if you remember from the last episodes where we ended things, Stevie Wonder was essentially the Lone Ranger. He had finally his artistic freedom. You know, he. He. He basically renegotiated where you're going.

[Unknown Guest]

I see where you're going with this.

[Jeff Blair]

Yeah, you know where I'm going. Eli, this man was the Lone Ranger. He was out galloping upon the plains of music on his own. He had renegotiated his contract with Motown basically to give himself complete creative freedom. Said, like, from now on, I'm going to write what I want, I'm going to release what I want, and I'm going to do what I want. But the thing is, he needed a friend. He needed a partner. So what's the Lone Ranger going to do? And, Eli, this is where I'm asking you to take it up. He found a friend. He found Kanto.

[Eli Lake]

Eva, why have you engulfed so many heart? Eva, Eva, why have you destroyed so many minds? Leaving room for darkness where lost dreams can hide?

[Unknown Guest]

Okay, so Tonto stands for the original New Timbrel Orchestra. And it is really. The early synthesizers were like the kind of first computers. These were things that took up an entire room. And you can go online and see photographs of Tonto, as it's known, and you will see these illuminated LED screens with lots of colored cords going, okay, because.

[Jeff Blair]

Does anybody remember the film Alien? Alien, yeah. My favorite movie of all time, where he goes into Mother, where, like, you know, Tom Skerritt sitting there and asking mother, like, what are my eyes? And you see all lights on the screen in the background. That's Tonto. That's. That's old school computering and old school synthesizers as well. Right.

[Unknown Guest]

So this is like an old school synthesizer. It was developed by this weird English bassist by the name of Malcolm Cecil and someone named Bob Marguleff. And Bob Mar. And these were. And they were like. And they had put out music on Tonto, which sounds like bloppity bloop stuff, kind of like a little bit like, what, Stereo Lab. But like, Stereo Lab is much better in my view. And the other thing you sort of have to understand is that in this period, like, starting really with the Doors and the prominence of the E3 organization in their music, you've got like, a huge kind of organ jazz scene in the 60s around people like Jimmy McGriff. And so you have the development of keyboards and synthesizers are kind of a new technology. And Stevie Wonder meets Tonto. And then I would argue and correct me if I'm wrong, he's the first Person that kind of translated this new. He made it sound human, even though this was the height of something that was synthetic. And we take for granted what the keyboard sounds of Music of My Mind and Talking Book are. But that was revolutionary. That was like Stevie Wonder had the advantage of alien technology or something.

[Jeff Blair]

Okay, so the difference here is this. There are two people who kind of go hand in hand, and they're very different in my mind as sort of pioneering popular music synthesizer experimentation in the early 70s. One of them, of course, is Stevie Wonder. And the other one, slightly earlier, it's actually Pete Towns of the who.

[Unknown Guest]

Okay, totally fair. You're absolutely right.

[Jeff Blair]

But.

[Unknown Guest]

But the thing who's Next is. Is exactly who's Next.

[Jeff Blair]

But it's a very different kind of an approach because what Townsend was doing was working with loops. Okay? Now the. The essence of these things is that you can make any sorts of crazy things, as long as you just say, give him, like five seconds to repeat. Yeah, Baba O'Reilly. All right. Or, you know, Won't Get Fooled Again. But what Stevie Wonder was doing was taking these, at that point, wildly futuristic sounds. And I think this is the point that's not as appreciated now is that you hear the sounds on Music of My Mind, 1972's Music of My Mind. This is the album that begins the period that we're going to talk about here. And you'll be like, oh, that's a really cool sound. But you probably will not appreciate how it's the first time anybody really ever heard those sounds. The first time you heard them was on something like Superwoman or on Evil, which is actually secretly my favorite song on this album. But it is that sort of. There's. There's a laser like sound, a tonality to these synthesizers that has a vocal quality that's got to be why Stevie was fascinated by them. It wasn't a bleep. It wasn't a bloop. What you could get with these with Tonto was a voice, and it was just another voice that he added to his instrumental mix.

[Eli Lake]

Why have you taken over God's children's eyes before they could really want to see that your way is not the way to make life what it should be what have you destroyed? You destroyed so much of this double world.

[Unknown Guest]

And I would also say that the other thing about Tonto and the early synthesizers is that it wasn't just like these technologists come up with a machine and they can give you a pallet of sounds. Stevie found the sounds by just spending, like, days on end playing with literally flipping knobs, right? No, no, no, I want it like this. No, no, no, I want it like that. And then you get it. And by the way, when you listen to musical My Mind, it doesn't sound like complete. It doesn't sound all over. It's a very specific voicing to what the keyboard is and it sound. And we take it for granted now. But it's as I said, I think he took the machine and made.

[Eli Lake]

When the summer came, you were not around now the summer's gone and love cannot be found where were you when I needed you last winter, my love when the wind came.

[Jeff Blair]

And so of course, that brings us to this first album of what we consider the Regal period, the Imperial era. And as a phrase we've used on a podcast once before with Eli and About a. About a. A very different artist who actually has a lot of common qualities named Prince. And it's really going to all come into focus during this part of the episode. But this is music of our mind. This is the beginning of sort of the self contained phase. And I will start by qualifying. I say, oh, you know, of all these peer Stevie wonders 70s, we treat them as kind of like a decade. It really is kind of can have its own quantum of all of these albums. And it's sort of inevitably so since this is where he was first finding his legs, this is the weakest of them. But again, it is still fascinating when you see him finding that voice. And it all comes with the Moog programming. And there are still flaws, I think, you know, like he has this tendency to run on long jams. This will always be a problem of his, a quality of his. Also quality of Princes, I might point out. So like songs like Love having you around I'm not how I'm not certain how much I need to love having Love having you around Is same for Keep on Running, which could run about two minutes longer, two minutes shorter than it runs. But nevertheless, there are moods here that are just qualitatively different than anything we talked about on Where I'm coming from or even Science Seal Delivered or, you know, for once in my Life, any of the earlier Stevie stuff that we talked about. There are hit singles. I'll leave those for some of you. There are songs here that are just album tracks that show me a different side of where Stevie Wonder is coming from. And a lot of them actually come on clavinet and synthesizer. So there's a song that open side two on Music of My Mind called Happier than the Morning Sun. Okay, so, like, happier than the morning sun is probably a minute too long. And this is early Stevie in the 70s, so he hasn't quite figured out some of the, you know, that he's going to learn to edit himself a little better, learn to throw some more things in. But that thing is run entirely by harpsichord, of all things, and it just sounds so gloriously innocent and beautiful.

[Eli Lake]

If I gave you a chance to come inside my life I. I am happier in the morning sun that's the way always Ever since the day you came inside of my life I love.

[Jeff Blair]

And then it fades into this very dark and bluesy track called Girl Blue, which actually, to me, is one of the secret, you know, kind of like, you know, hidden tracks on this record. Has all of the soul and. And sort of jazzly soulfully blue chords that otherwise had been hidden on the rest of this album. But, of course, I've left the most famous ones to discuss to the rest of you. What do you think of this first part of Stevie Wonders Imperial Phase?

[Unknown Guest]

Well, I love it because I love Stevie Wonder. And in my view, it's not as strong as the other albums that are coming, but it has, in my view, the most perfect and my favorite Stevie Wonder song, which is. I love every little thing about you.

[Jeff Blair]

Dang it. This is mine, too, Ashley. It's very close. Very, very close. Eli.

[Unknown Guest]

It's just. That song is so. There's no artifice. It's just his pure expression of love. He is talking about Sarita Wright, who he's in this relationship with. Unfortunately, that relationship is not gonna last, but it's like that song right there is. That's what we love about Stevie Wonder. He is channeling a kind of joy that almost feels like it's coming from God. And the way that he does it is so intimate. He starts it off by, like, saying sugar. Like, he's like, kind of like doing baby talk into the microphone. He's doing, like, kind of breathing exercise thing where he's establishing. It's such an intimate sound that he gets you in there. And then the sound of the keyboard, it's like, wow, where's this been in my entire life? And you listen to it now and it's like, oh, yeah, I've heard that a million times. But that was kind of like the brilliance of Tonto at the moment. And it's just. I could.

[Jeff Blair]

It's like watching a beautiful flower unfold. The way those choruses finally unfold into I love, I love, I love, I love every little thing about you, girl. And it kind of. It takes its time to wind its way there and then. Well, I mean, this is why. This is. This is a. Gonna sound a little bit cheesy here, but I danced to this one at my wedding.

[Eli Lake]

I'm here to say I love you more each day. And I just wanna tell the world that I love you.

[Jeff Blair]

So.

[Eli Lake]

They put me down because I love you as much as I do. But they don't know what you've done for me. You made such a happy man out of me. And I'm here to say love you every day. Yeah. And I just wanna tell the world that I love you so, baby, I love, I love, I love, I love every little thing about you, baby. Oh, yeah. I love, I love, I love, I love every little everything about Jesus. Yeah.

[Jeff Blair]

It was on my playlist. I selected. I selected this one years.

[Unknown Guest]

Yes.

[Jeff Blair]

It's pure.

[Unknown Guest]

It's just like a pure expression of love. It could be about a child, it could be about your lover. It's just. I love it so much. And it comes right after. Super.

[Jeff Blair]

I was about to say, what do you think of the contrast between.

[Unknown Guest]

That is like superwoman is like, where.

[Jeff Blair]

Were you when I needed you?

[Unknown Guest]

Yeah. But it's also like you're this, like, you know, you're. You're. We're. We're. You know, you love women's rights, feminist. But, like, what about me? But on the other hand, it's the frustration of being in a relationship with somebody who kind of has their own life is maybe going in a different direction. And then it comes back to the pure joy. I love every little thing about you. I think those two things really work so beautifully together.

[Eli Lake]

Mary wants to be a super woman and try to boss the bull around, but does she really think she'll get by with a dream? My woman wants to be a superwoman. And I just had to say goodbye because I can't spend on my hours time to cry. But very well. I believe I know you very well. Wish that you knew me too very well. And I think I can deal with everything.

[Unknown Guest]

But the. It's that. It's that third track that for me is. I mean, it's. It is. It feels like a gift from heaven. I love it.

[Jeff Blair]

Scott.

[Scott Bertram]

No surprise that I. Yes, I love that track too. It's one of the very best on. On the record. This is. This album is essentially a oneman band. There's a trombone and a guitar in two parts, and everything else is played by Stevie. Wonderful. And I think that that you know, once he has a hold of Tonto and he's able to experiment and, you know, I think Jeff was saying, you know, he's gotta figure this all out. Knobs, buttons. I tell my students here that I teach as we're doing audio production, we work with Adobe Audition and there's, you know, it's. There's all these settings and all these things you can do with delay and echo. And I say I can't teach you necessarily how to get the thing that is inside your head because I don't know what's inside your head. Only you know what's inside your head. You've got to. It's all trial and error to get the sound that you want to come out. And with Tonto, he finally has the ability to do that. And that's what makes Music of My Mind. So such a breakthrough is that I think Stevie Wonder finally feels like he's able to take what's inside his head and put it down on tape and deliver it to an audience. And that's what makes it really special. Happier Than the Morning sun that Jeff mentioned, I love that track too. What I like about it is it's almost the way he turns that clavenet into. I compared it to in my notes, like a James Taylor song where the clavenet takes the place of like a finger picked acoustic guitar. The way that brings the melody throughout the entire thing. He's having fun with his vocal ticks and vocal percussion both on Every Little Thing about you and on Happier Than the Morning Sun. And then Girl Blue, which you also mentioned, that's one where that transition from his head to the tape from. From his head, what's with the music in his mind to the tape is most important. How he's able to use all these new. All of Tanzo and all these new things to get what he hears that everyone else can hear. I mean, there's such a wide palette in that song. Harmonica and drums and synth. And there's even like a pedal steel esque sound in there. And there would be pedal steel soon in a future album. But all of these different sounds come together to create exactly what he's looking for.

[Eli Lake]

Leaves on branches for your pleasure A soothing dance Little girl It seems in all my dreams your happiness is due but still they last they're in your past Events that make you through.

[Jeff Blair]

Thoughts.

[Eli Lake]

Of love.

[Scott Bertram]

I was gonna make this point later, might as well make it now, right? If there's one critique of Stevie Wonder in this era, and it's a small One, it's that he can sort of get stuck in a groove for a little too long.

[Jeff Blair]

Oh, yeah, we're gonna get to that one. On the next one in particular.

[Scott Bertram]

Right. Particular songs. He really likes it and just keeps going for six, seven, eight minutes. I actually don't think that's the case on the first track here, which might be my favorite on the album. I love, love having you around. Even if it is seven and a half minutes. I think the flow is really good. I love his expression, too, about the simple pleasure and the quiet happiness of being around someone and being with someone. This is actually what my wife, my then, I guess, then girlfriend now wife, said when she realized that something special was happening is that she didn't really care. She just wanted me around like I'm folding clothes and I want you to be there. You know, I'm making dinner and I want you to be there. So, like, this sentiment of not some crazy, passionate, wild sort of thing, but just the simple, everyday quiet happiness of having you near me, having you with me, having you in the same place. I relate to that. So I like the sentiment and I love the song. That's my. I think it's my favorite on the album.

[Eli Lake]

And when the day is done Nothing to do Spin all my time around Just love you.

[Jeff Blair]

Sounds. It sounds like Scott sounds like she might be the sunshine of your life. Am I. Am I right about that?

[Scott Bertram]

Oh, indeed, yes.

[Jeff Blair]

Okay. One thing I wanted to point out is that, you know, despite the fact that we're talking about synthesizers and Tonto and all this Moogs and whatnot, nothing about this music sounds programmed.

[Scott Bertram]

Yes. Yes.

[Jeff Blair]

There's nothing. This is all very organic R B. And of course, what's most amazing about that, he's mostly doing it on his own. Do you have any idea how impossibly difficult it is to make a song swing when you're the rhythm section yourself? Like, you're not only the drums, you're the bass, you're the piano. You're everything. You invite some guy in to play a guitar solo, but you're the one who creates the groove. You've got to be gifted. Which is why this was a singular act in its time. And, in fact, was a singular act during the 70s. And would be one that. I mean, it does feel very much like there was a passing of the torch from Stevie to Prince in the 80s. And that brings us, I guess, to the same year. So Music of My mind is early 72. And then near the end of the year, he comes out with the sequel and this one. That one was a sort of a promising debut of the new Stevie. This is the meteor. This is when it hits earth. This is talking book.

[Eli Lake]

You must have known that I was lonely because you came to my rescue and I know that this must be heaven. I could so much love be inside of you. You, you are the sunshine of my life. Yeah, that's why I'll always stay around. You are the apple of my eyes.

[Jeff Blair]

Album that has his first number one. Well, actually, you know, it's his third number one single because remember, little Stevie had already had two of them. So he gets you are the sunshine of my life. This is the album that also has superstition. This is the album where full flight 70s regal Stevie comes into it's bloom. It's nearly perfect, except for that one song that we were already making a joke about it where Stevie just gets hung up on a really annoying groove. Maybe disagree, maybe your baby is a terrible song. By the way, I. I laughed when I looked it up and I found out the Ghostbusters guy was playing guitar on it.

[Scott Bertram]

Yeah. Ray Parker Jr.

[Jeff Blair]

I don't. I don't like that. I don't like that steal from Huey Lewis's I want a new drug either. But, man, this is the only song that I would object to on an otherwise nearly perfect record. An album that is his introduction into the sort of like, just forceful, permanent introduction into the land of major artistry. Now, Eli, you want to tell me why I'm wrong about the one crap track?

[Unknown Guest]

Maybe your baby is just a. I mean, no, first. It is. It is. Okay, first of all, like, Stevie is not considered, like, a funk pioneer because he's so many other things, but maybe your baby is. In my view, I'm hearing, like, so much influence on what Prince would end up doing, both in terms of what he's doing with the pitch fading on his voice. So you're getting Stevie kind of like doing like the female and the male, right? And the second, it sounds to me.

[Jeff Blair]

Like a Prince outtake, like something off of crystal ball, like chlorine bacon skin or something like that. I don't want that.

[Unknown Guest]

Stevie did it first. And second of all, I'm sorry, that groove, I know it's seven minutes. It's infectious. You can't get enough of that. I mean, like, that's so good. And the whole album is just banger after banger after banger. Let's note one thing on this, and this is, to me, one of the more remarkable things about Stevie Wonder. It's the range because you start off with you Are the sunshine of My Life, by the way. What a flex. He kind of knew he wrote a masterpiece. And he lets his band. He lets the backup singers get the first verse pretty much right.

[Jeff Blair]

Okay, so talk about Prince. Do you see the parallel between 1999 and this where Prince, like his two backing vocalists swap off their lines first before he finally comes in? Who do you think he based it off of? Clearly, it's. It's clearly based off of you are the sun of my life.

[Unknown Guest]

Right. But anyway, so you are the sunshine of my life. Like in the hands of a lesser artist, it's like, it's. I love that I came up with this concept of it's a Carole King.

[Jeff Blair]

Song in the hands of. Well, I mean, I don't want. I don't mock her. She's a good.

[Scott Bertram]

I like.

[Unknown Guest]

I love Carol. But I'm saying it could go in a very different way. There is this kind of just like ever gentle soulfulness to it that makes it just. It couldn't be anyone, anything else but a Stevie Wonder song. And then maybe youe Baby, which is hard edge funk. Then a traditional ballad, you and I, which is quite beautiful. Oh, yeah. And then we've get. Then we get like almost something that could be a Weather Report song in Tuesday, Heartbreak with David Sanborn on the sax. So there's like this like. Like kind of ambitious that, you know, that could. That sounds like it could be some jazz fusion.

[Jeff Blair]

It's Young Americans to me. Okay. Like that. I was listening to it again. I was like, oh, what's that? That sounds like a David Bowie young American sing. Okay. Because it's David Sanborn who plays the same saxophone on Two Years Later. Right.

[Eli Lake]

I want to be with you when the nighttime comes I want to stay with you. Juicy Hardware seem to be a drag when you know that you love a. Specially.

[Jeff Blair]

Catch a baby.

[Eli Lake]

Catch a baby.

[Unknown Guest]

Then you get superstition, which is, you know, funk classic Big Brother. What a. What a sophisticated political critique.

[Scott Bertram]

Yes.

[Unknown Guest]

Later on Stevie would kind of go in my view into like, you know, less sophisticated politically critiques. Lyrically, Big Brother, love it. The over promising, you know what I'm saying? Like that to me is so great, you know, more balladry and then like ending it on like what is almost a psychedelic ballad of I believe all in one like 43 minute album. That is incredible.

[Jeff Blair]

It was a statement of purpose that he actually would just continue to keep following. He would improve upon it.

[Unknown Guest]

Yeah. That's just remarkable. So I like it all if I had to pick one that maybe your baby I love But I would say you've got it bad girl or looking for another pure love But I love them all so I can't really, I can't complain I love it all I.

[Jeff Blair]

Got so many things to add. Scott.

[Scott Bertram]

Jeff made a great point about music of my mind that I think is even more important or more at the forefront here, which is how Stevie Wonder is humanizing the synthesizer. And everything is organic. Nothing sounds electronic or produced or. It all sounds normal. It sounds natural. And I think that's even more true here on Talking Book than it was on the first album. To piggyback very quickly on Eli's comments about Big Brother, this is an album with superstition on it, which is an all time banger. Big Brother still might be my favorite song on Talking Book. I think that is a monumental achievement. It's a fantastic song, both lyrically, as Eli was alluding to, you know, I live in the ghetto. You just come to visit around election time. Like, that sentiment is so cutting, but also that that rhythm he's able to achieve on Big Brother and the way that the playfulness of the rhythm cuts the message hits harder because the playfulness of that rhythm makes you pay attention to what he's actually saying in the song itself.

[Eli Lake]

Your name is Big Brother. You say that you got me all in a movie day. Your name is. Your name is. I'll change if you vote me in as a pr. I live in the ghost. You just come to visit me round election time.

[Scott Bertram]

And then, of course, after hearing it eight, nine times, I realized one of the reasons why my favorite band in the whole wide world. And this is something that I have a few notes in here.

[Jeff Blair]

I didn't notice this until you pointed it out. Okay.

[Scott Bertram]

Yeah, I have a few notes throughout my. Throughout this episode about people. Here's how I phrase it. People initially say, wow, I guess they were influenced by Stevie Wonder. And then you realize, well, duh, of course they were influenced by Stevie Wonder. My favorite band, the Black Crows, of course they were influenced by Stevie Wonder. And they have a song on Amorica. It was not a single called nonfiction.

[Unknown Guest]

Love it.

[Scott Bertram]

And it's a great song.

[Unknown Guest]

One of my favorites.

[Scott Bertram]

And that's clearly influenced by Big Brother.

[Jeff Blair]

Clearly. After you pointed it out.

[Eli Lake]

Yeah.

[Scott Bertram]

I mean, the Robinson Brothers were clearly influenced by Big Brother in that song.

[Eli Lake]

I don't know my telephone number I don't babe, I pay I don't water if we had a child I'D like a son, not a daughter. No. She'd be just like you, you know? That will not do.

[Unknown Guest]

Can I say one more thing about Big Brother that I love is that later on, Stevie pens some of the greatest anti Nixon songs. Fine. And it's great. We're gonna get to that.

[Jeff Blair]

Yeah, we're gonna get to that.

[Unknown Guest]

We're gonna. But Big Brother is more of a critique of, like, the failures of post lbj Democratic, like, big city machines. It's a great society. It is a great society critique. It's like you keep coming. You know what I mean? Your name is. I'll see you. Like, that's perfect. I mean, anyway, so it's. It's, It's. It's. It's the Stevie Wonder neocon phase. I love it.

[Jeff Blair]

I just think it's hilarious that we've talked about this album now, and we. We've just mentioned in passing the song Superstition without ever looking it straight up in the eye. Maybe we're superstitious ourselves. We don't want to get turned to stone, you know, like Magusa would. But this thing is like one of the biggest bangers of the entire first half of the 1970s. And it's open side, too. That drum beat is just like. The second you hear it, you just move. It's just like a compulsive rhythm. I think it was. It was Jeff Beck, the guitarist from the Yardbirds, now in his whole career, who came up with it. They were jamming in the studio, and this is the hilarious person. Stevie and Jeff Becker jamming. Jeff is on drums, of all things. I think Stevie Wonder's playing the keyboard, and he comes up with that great riff. He said, yeah, that's great. You know what? I'll let you have that. Then all of a sudden, like, Stevie Wonder's manager and his friends come rushing, and it's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You can't give that song away. That's so.

[Unknown Guest]

It was. It was Barry, Barry. Barry Gordy heard the demo and he's just like, no, no, no, no. Steve Motown's still paying for these sessions. This is what I was talking about.

[Jeff Blair]

At the end of the day, we're not letting you give your gold all the way away.

[Eli Lake]

So he gave something.

[Jeff Blair]

I mean, Jeff Beck did his own version of it, but that's where you get the incredible drum beat, the incredible Clavinet funk, which the rol the next two years trying to rip off using Billy Preston playing Clavinet to recreate you Know that that funk that you hear on songs like Superstition and On Higher Ground. We're going to hear from Intervisions and things like that, but it's never better than it is from the original here.

[Eli Lake]

Very superstitious Writings on the wall Very superstitious let us fall 13 month old baby when you believe in things that you don't know, understand.

[Jeff Blair]

And of course the thing is that Beck actually, you know, did well enough. He has an incredible wonderful solo spot playing guitar. Really kind of like not a. Like a guitar flaming hero spot on. Looking for a pure love on the second half of this record, but just a glorious little moment that I'm like, oh yeah, that clearly had to be. I was like, that clearly is a guest player. And I'm like, oh no. Yes, of course, that's Jeff Beck. Now the one last thing I have to say about this before we move on to Intervisions is I don't know about you, but I've been to a lot of weddings and there's only one song that I have heard more than one married couple walk down the aisle to. There's a reason this song has come up multiple times and that's because I believe when I fall in love it will be forever. It's gotta be one of the most spellbindingly romantic songs ever recorded. Boy, you know, Stevie Wonder has like he. He has a lock, stock and barrel hold upon great romantic songs. But I mean you could argue there are few. There's one about. About your little kid that we're. That's going to come up later that's just as good. But in terms of pure feels, there's just this great like sort of. It's. Again, the synthesizer is sort of resonating in and out of the guitar lines, you know, and this big sort of like portent. Portentous prelude. And then he goes into the pre chorus. I can't remember the words. And then he gets into the. I believe when I fall in love with you it will leave forever. And then it finally breaks down. Come on, let's fall in love. And then the wedding procession breaks into a dance party which is when the second half of that was played. At least one of our weddings that I went to. And that was actually really great fun. But if you can write a song like that, conclude your album, you're doing well.

[Eli Lake]

Life be was done. Now I stare into a cold and empty world the many sounds that meet our ears the sights, our eyes before well open up our merging hearts and feed our empty soul I believe when I fall in love with you it will be forever I believe when I fall in love this time it will be forever Where.

[Unknown Guest]

Yeah, what's the number one? Is it. Is it Always and Forever by Heat Wave?

[Jeff Blair]

I could not tell you. I think it would be Breaking Promises.

[Scott Bertram]

That one thing about I Believe When I Fall In Love that I've always, always noticed about it is Wonder doesn't. He doesn't over sing it right. Especially on the choruses when you'd expect. Like there's this great buildup in the verses as Jeff described, like this great love song. And you get to this verse which is. Or the chorus which. This is great sentiment. But he doesn't like. He doesn't go over the top. He doesn't try to oversell in the choruses. It's just matter of fact, like this is going to happen. This is the way it's going to be. Which makes that last minute or so when it flips and the Come on, let's Fall in love part. And then that kicks in, that pulls all the energy. That delayed energy is then released in that last minute or so, which I think makes it even more effective.

[Jeff Blair]

And unless anyone else has something to say about talking Brooke, we should just go on to can even greater triumph. This is him, probably. Well, it's funny. We're going to talk about how someone's momentum can get interrupted, but this is before that momentum got interrupted. Stevie Wonder at a creative peak and on a winning streak comes out in the middle of 1973, six months after talking book with what I think there are most people I don't know. There's. There's going to be an argument between this one and Songs in the Key of Life. But this is probably his greatest album. Intervisions is a record that is represented on the boxed set that I first encountered Stevie Wonder from. With all of its songs minus one. And the song they. They didn't put on. Intervisions is still great. Jesus, Children of America, fantastic song.

[Scott Bertram]

That's a good song.

[Jeff Blair]

Every other song's on that record. And that was my introduction to a record that was simply presented to me basically in sequence. Because how can you improve upon it? I'm not sure this was one that I remember. I only discovered this, you know, again, you know, at. With. At the close of a century. This would have been 2,000, you know, something like that. I was stunned and never heard a note of it until then. I had never heard a note of Inner Visions, not one note. Despite the fact that even the Red Hot Chili Peppers had covered one of these songs. Blessedly, I had been spared that cover up until this point. Every note of Intervisions was new to me when I heard it that time, and I'm so happy it was because it's like, how could this have existed for over a quarter century as one of the most perfect albums of all time? And I just got to experience it afresh. And if there's anybody listening to this that hasn't already, hey, this is. You're going to enjoy what we're about to talk about.

[Eli Lake]

I'm too high but into the sky I'm too high too high but into the sky she's girl in a dream She's a full eyed cartoon monster on the TV screen She takes another puff and says It's a crazy scene that red is green She's a tangerine.

[Jeff Blair]

Zambia. Eli, you want to. You want to take it with one of the great albums of all time.

[Unknown Guest]

I mean, there's not much to say. You're right, it is. It's such an accomplishment. I have nothing bad to say about this record. I want to just note here that Stevie is getting like. There's a certain kind of thing. We almost would call it the Stevie Wonder chord, where there's a lot of diminished notes, there's like sevens and nines.

[Jeff Blair]

It's taking too high chord for me.

[Unknown Guest]

Exactly. The two high chords, right, which are not something you hear in pop music or R and B. And it's very easy to make that kind of esoteric and inaccessible. But Too High is a bop and the whole thing's a pop. And that, like, we just associate that now with Stevie. Another one where I just. I love the ambition of this record because again, look at the range. I want to talk about the second to last song.

[Jeff Blair]

Oh, you did it again. It's the same thing. I love this song too. Okay.

[Unknown Guest]

I know. So good. Okay, so this is the period of like what you would say is the goal golden age of the Fania label, which is making incredible salsa in New York with people like Celia Cruz. And this is like, Stevie, I think, like heard some of this and it's like, hey, you know what? I'm gonna try that. I'm gonna try to make a little bit of a salsa kind of.

[Jeff Blair]

I'm gonna try my best Spanish and see how I can impress the girls on the corner. Yeah, yeah.

[Unknown Guest]

Photo champion. Chevre.

[Jeff Blair]

Chevre.

[Unknown Guest]

Yeah. I mean, that's. So that song has that same energy as. I love every little thing about you. It's Just pure love. And it's flirtation and it's like this guy who, you know, I'm unaware that Stevie Wonder had tried to write a salsa song based on the kind of rhythms of Cuba. But he does it, and it's amazing. And that's like, you know, everything he touches is gold.

[Eli Lake]

A chance to check out the new but you're the only one to see the changes you take yourself through but don't you worry about a thing don't you worry about a thing Preaching, mama. Cause I'll be standing in the ways when you take it out don't you worry about a throne don't you worry about it don't you worry about that.

[Unknown Guest]

The only thing I would just say is on the political Stevie, he's Mr. Know It All. Almost as good as Big Brother, right, Scott? Like, it's right there.

[Scott Bertram]

Yeah.

[Unknown Guest]

Similar message.

[Scott Bertram]

Yep.

[Unknown Guest]

Another one of these. Like, you politicians promise the world and you haven't fixed anything. I love it. Although, Eli, I.

[Jeff Blair]

You steal in all my notes here. These are two of my favorites. So he's Mr. Know It all is a song. Both that one and don't you worry about the thing. In college sent me running with my Discman to the piano. Like, literally. I worked out how to play Dum bump bum bum bum bum. You know, like doing that, getting all the little bits there. And then, like, working the vocal out. And then he's Mr. Know It all, which is. If you play it on the piano, it's like simple block chords. It's very simple. It's almost. I think it's a C shape, actually. Very easily flowing thing.

[Eli Lake]

He's a man with a plan Got a counterfeit dollar in his hand He m playing hard, talking fast Making sure that he. He won't be the last he know it all Makes a deal with a smile Knowing all the time that his lies a mile.

[Jeff Blair]

I mean, these are the songs that would inspire me. I was. I was. As I just said, it's the intro. I couldn't believe I hadn't heard this music before because it was just so elementally perfect and so right. And I was wondering why. Why my friends didn't know Living for the City or didn't know a song like Golden Lady. Golden Lady. That's the one. Okay. The trick about golden lady that always throws me off is that it keeps modulating keys. Okay. And not in a cheap way. It just. It doesn't. It just keeps going up and up and up. And this golden lady is becoming platin before your eyes. As it keeps ascending into more precious metals with that key change. I love that. And by the end, it's like, Golden Lady, Golden Lady I like to go back. I don't know how he makes it sound so effortless. That's the effortlessness of it. It doesn't sound labored. You know, sometimes when you hear a band saying, okay, we gotta make this sound more exciting for the playout key change. Meanwhile, Stevie just sort of, like, slinks his way through, like, different keys. And you don't know how. You don't know why. You just feel like you've kind of been seduced by a blind man. It's really amazing stuff.

[Eli Lake]

And it's so clear to me that you're my dream come true. There's no way that I'll be losing and Golden Lady, Golden Lady I like to go there Golden Lady, Golden Lady I'd like to go there Golden Lady, Golden Lady I'd like to go there Golden Lady, Golden Lady I'd like to go there.

[Scott Bertram]

I wrote that's. I think that's one of his most Marvin Gaye moments. Golden lady is such a Marvin Gaye track. It's. It's. It's all joy. It's wonderful. And, yeah, Jeff mentioned all those key changes. It's so fun. This album. This is a very 70s album to me, because for sure acknowledges the bad stuff. It acknowledges that, you know, it's dangerous out there.

[Jeff Blair]

You're living for the city, right?

[Scott Bertram]

Things aren't great and. And yet, as is at the core of most of Stevie's work, there's still good. There's love and God and faithfulness and all that stuff. We have to preserve to sort of make it through the hard times. So, yeah, I want to talk about living for the city. So I've mentioned a few times I've taught this course here at college, which was Songs of Patriotism and protest from 1960 to present. And those songs take many different forms. And I, of course, used. Could have used any number of songs, but I used Living for the City in that class. And I think it's really a tremendous work. It's almost like an art rock song and a soul song and all that stuff all wrapped into one has those neoclassical vibes at the end and the way the story is being told. Because this is the album in which Malcolm Cecil started pushing Stevie Wonder. Because Steven, he didn't really, like, enjoy writing lyrics. He thought Superstition was, like, his first great lyric. And he was handing things off to, say, Rita at points. But this is the one where Cecil pushes him to write more about the world and maybe a little less about other stuff. Maybe a little less about romance in places too. But Living for the City, you know the story about. In a way, I connect it up to one of what I. What I think is one of the greatest accomplishments of music in this decade, which is Randy New Newman's Rednecks, the title track. And the way that there is this expectation perhaps from some black men in the south that if they can just get north, right, if they can get to the enlightened north, that everything will be okay. And Living for the City, as we alluded to in the very intro of this program, told you in 15 seconds, 10 seconds, that that dream can go away. Maybe it's a different kind of cruelty and a different kind of. Of racism that you experience in the north, but it's still there. And that's why I think Rednecks is such a monumental achievement by Randy Newman. But that's also why Living for the City is such a monumental achievement by Stevie Wonder. And then dressing all that up in this great funky sound that he's able to find on Living for the City. And his vocals change, especially after the arrest where he gets such a hug husky edge to close the track. I mean, Living for the City is such a snapshot of what people really were going through at this point. 1973. It's a fantastic song.

[Eli Lake]

His hair is long his feet are hard and frizzy he spends his life walking the streets of New York City he's almost dead from breathing in air pollution Sh. He tried a thought but to him that not solution Living in just enough Just enough for the. I hope to hear inside my voice sorrow and that motivate you?

[Jeff Blair]

I also want.

[Unknown Guest]

It's a cinematic song too. It's like a movie within a song.

[Jeff Blair]

Okay, so Eli, the point about the cinematic aspect of it is well said because this is a well themed album. There's something. This is the best sequence Stevie Wonder album of his career, I would say. Like, because there are ups and there are downs, right? I mean too high comes down divisions Living for the City it's like this little rock song, but it's obviously ends in this sort of like ghastly operatic note where like the women are going oh no. And there's all the seats are going in and it's like sad. We have this broken man. But then you hear the piano coming in softly and then you go into golden lady and it's a happy thing. And then flip the Side Higher ground. And that higher ground backed with Jesus. Children of America. Son of a more cynical take on it. So higher ground is that search for God. God is going to take us to our higher ground.

[Eli Lake]

Eyes ground.

[Jeff Blair]

Well, I'm proud of this fact. I'm so happy to tell both of you and everyone listening. I had never heard the Red Hot Chili Peppers version of this song before I heard the Stevie one. So I was never polluted. I. I mean, I'm. I am a Stevie original. I loved it in two. And only later did I hear the early Chili Peppers Massacre. This thing don't like that version. This is the one to hear. You need to hear the real funk. And that is probably one of the greatest inspirational tracks ever written in its own, like, like, less appreciated way. There's so many things we could spend all day talking about. Intervisions. But unless anyone else has anything they want to add, I just need to say one final thing about. He's Mr. No at all, which is very close to being one of my favorite Stevie Wonder songs of all time. And, you know, like, I don't know if I can mention it because this whole album would go on to my end of the, you know, end of the episode list. But, gosh, they're just the most simple piano chords. That little descending and happily resolved thing. In a weird way, this. It's not a children's song, but this is the song that if you ever wanted someone who was a young child, child to understand Stevie Wonder's appeal to you, play them that song. Because by the time he breaks into the end, he goes in and the whole, like, it sounds like it's a crowd of people, but of course, it's just him. He's playing with himself, to himself. And there's like a couple of backing vocalists and it sounds. He sounds like he's always got a crowd surrounding him, even though he works almost entirely alone, which is just the most remarkable thing on the planet. Because he doesn't ever present himself as being like a weird shut in or a stranger. Like Prince, self consciously an arty freak, right? Stevie Wonder, his entire message was for the world. He was of the world. He was just a man of the people. The openness with which he can do this all on his own. It's never better represented than on Intervisions.

[Eli Lake]

Any place he will play his only concern it's how much you b. He's mistrust know it all if he shakes on a bed he's the kind of dude that won't pay his debt oh, he's mis. When you say that he's living wrong. They tell you he knows he's living right and you be a stronger man. If you took Mr. Nordall's advice. Oh, he's the man with a plan. Got the Confed dollar in his head and he.

[Jeff Blair]

What does that do? Well, that brings us to something awful. I mean, absolutely awful. So he releases this. He records it, I think, in the early. Actually, Stevie Wonder kind of like a lot of these. Kind of like Prince would have a thing where he'd record in bits and bobs and, you know, maybe over a span of a year or so, he'd bring it together. But he basically had this thing in the can and wrap by early 73. It's about to come out, I think, in August of that year. Year. And then, like days later or days before, I can't remember, he gets in a terrible car accident. I mean, he's driving behind. He's not driving, obviously. He's in the passenger seat asleep. And someone is driving for him behind, like a lumber truck. And there is an accident, and he is grievously injured. And he goes into a coma. How many weeks? I don't know how many weeks he was in a coma.

[Unknown Guest]

I forget. But it's. It was a very serious, like.

[Jeff Blair]

Like a week and a half or something like that. Something terrible. And you're like. And anytime somebody gets a brain contusion and goes into a coma, you know, your odds are just to, like, have a functional life afterwards, you know, it's not a question. You know, the worst thing is. And this is a joke, I think I actually recall him making. He's like, I went into this coma. And the worst thing of all is that when I woke up, I was blind. Because Son of a gun, he survives it all. All right? He actually survived it. He comes out of it a week and a half later, and there is a long recovery period, as anybody would imagine. The physical injuries, the mental scars, just finding. Finding it within yourself to make music again. But Stevie managed to do that, and in a. This is a funny thing, because I think the next album in his career falls between, you know, Taco About A. A incredibly great album that falls between even taller stools. People love songs in the key of life. People love intervisions. But over time, I've come to believe that we don't talk nearly enough about one of Stevie Wonder's greatest records, which is fulfilling this first finale. Maybe because it's a mouthful to say it. I hate the title. The title's impossible to spit out. But this comes out in mid 74. And it's kind of forgotten in the Stevie Wonder King Cannon for no reason at all. Because, man, this is as good as anything he has ever done or will do. That's my opinion. And if you don't believe me, I'm willing to listen to why you disagree. You guys go.

[Eli Lake]

We are amazed but not amused by all the things you say that you do. So much concerned but not involved with decisions that are made by you. But we are sick and tired of you. Sing a song telling how you are going to change right from wrong. Cause if you really want to hear our view, you haven't done nothing.

[Unknown Guest]

Oh, I'm going to go one further, Jeff. Okay, this is the hottest take I've ever had on political beats. My third. My third, my third. I think fulfilling this first finale is even better than Intervisions. There, I said it. I think it's like so great and it's. I agree. It is like the overlooked record in this period. And not a bad song on it. The Stevie Wonder jazz influence diminished. Ninth and seventh chords are all over the place.

[Jeff Blair]

It's creeping on. This one is the quintessential version of that. I love every chord on that song. They all just sort of like diminish Minish away.

[Unknown Guest]

It feels like he is like recording this from the astral plane. It's almost like this is like, okay, I've hit the slipstream. You know what I mean? It's like what Van Morrison does in astral weeks. He kind of figured out he ventured.

[Jeff Blair]

To the slipstream, right?

[Unknown Guest]

Yeah, right. And it's incredible. And there's the other thing that's on this record that is so prominent. It's the gospel element.

[Scott Bertram]

Oh, yes.

[Unknown Guest]

It's. You hear it on Smile please, heaven is 10 zillion light miles away. And of course, the finale, Please Don't Go, which, okay, there's a genre in especially R and B music. I call it the songs about the begging hour. Right. And like, please Don't Go is one of the greats of that genre of songs that basically are a man pleading with a woman not to leave him and bed him instead. And that's what Please Don't Go is. I love it so much.

[Eli Lake]

And I'll do everything you want me to if you promise that you want me tonight Cuz I'll break down and cry My still just a part of you D Here in my life down low no, no, no, you. I did that and lose so I. No, no no, no, no way. Yeah.

[Unknown Guest]

I can't say enough about. About this album. I mean, it's like everything is so good. Think about the innovation just on a song like Boogie on Reggae Woman, like how the bass is established. It sounds like. You know what I mean? And.

[Jeff Blair]

Or well, even the drum machine, which in 1974 you were not hearing. Okay. I mean, that was a new element in that year. We take it for granted. Everybody takes so many of Stevie Wonder's sonic innovations for granted nowadays, but they were new at the time and that was new.

[Unknown Guest]

Yes. And then kind of continuing on his political themes, he brings in the Jackson.

[Jeff Blair]

5 nick on Nixon. Yes.

[Unknown Guest]

Yeah. And then this one is just about Nixon.

[Jeff Blair]

This is.

[Unknown Guest]

This is all Nixon.

[Scott Bertram]

So good too.

[Eli Lake]

Cause if you really want, you.

[Jeff Blair]

Would.

[Eli Lake]

Not care to wake up to the nightmare that's been.

[Unknown Guest]

I know. It's so good. And, you know, it's got it all, like, it's got the dance numbers, it's got like the balladry, you know, I think like the weirdness of a song like Bird of Beauty, which is like, dealing with like, almost kind of like Brazilian sounds. The palette is everywhere. You mentioned creeping. I can't say enough about it. Again, again, for me, this one is like slightly even, edges out intervisions. Although I have nothing bad to say about interventions. So there you go.

[Jeff Blair]

I just have to point out that you have to remember in July of 1974, where Nixon was at politically, like, it just must have been like, you know. You know, the. The straw that broke the camel's back to have like. No, not only Stevie Wonder, but Stevie Wonder and the Jackson 5 are making fun of me. They're clowning on me on the radio. And it's a good song. That was what did them in that. That's why he resigned. That you can straight line between. You haven't done nothing to the helicopter on the White House lawn.

[Unknown Guest]

Yeah, for sure. All right, Scott, I'm sorry if I stole your thunder, but the fulfilling. This is so great in a way.

[Scott Bertram]

Yes. But that's fine. Of course. Yeah. I thought I might be the oddball here because. Yeah. I mean, until you begin to dig deeper into Stevie Wonder's work, like before I did that, I hadn't even heard, like, the title of this album. But again, it could be because it's a mouthful. As Jeff pointed out previously, it's smackdown dab in the middle of this run. It's post crash. So you have a different kind of outlook, I think, in many ways on this record from Stevie. And. Yeah, it's amazing. It's a really tremendous album. Eli spoke about a number of things. The phrase I wrote here is this is like. I think it's a texture album. Think about Bird of Beauty, like that squiggly line that's of holds things together or the spookiness on Creepin or just the way that bogey on Reggae Woman is put together. Heaven as ten Zillion Light Years away is just has an unstoppable groove. It is so infectious, which is one of those races.

[Jeff Blair]

It's just the boom boom, boom, boom. And then it just becomes that inexorable gospel background to it.

[Eli Lake]

Why can't they say that they light is 10 zillion life years away? Why can't the light of good shine God's love in every soul? Why must my color fly? Make me a lancer man I thought this world was made forever man. He loves us all that's what my God tells me. And I say it's taking him so long cause we got so far to come.

[Jeff Blair]

Yes.

[Scott Bertram]

Which is one of those great qualities that. That Stevie has in a lot of his songs. Boy blown away by a song like they Won't Go When I Go.

[Unknown Guest]

Oh yeah.

[Scott Bertram]

How he gets it to sound like this very, you know, substantial piece of classical music, in fact. And there's a number of like spine chilling moments through that song. It's a real tour de force. And then you sort of step back and look at the lyrics a little bit and what he' talking about, right. Is. Is like the sinners, the. The painful cries, the saddened eyes. They're not going to go where I'm going. Which is, I mean, I think we have to say, a bit presumptuous. We don't know what our final judgment will be. Right.

[Jeff Blair]

Well, let's not be so certain about that.

[Scott Bertram]

Right. You say that a little bit. But at the same time, the fact.

[Jeff Blair]

That maybe he's a Calvinist, I don't know.

[Scott Bertram]

But I mean, like people sit in just for fun. They will never see the sun. Like they. There's always a message in a lot of his best work. And this again, post crash coma, realizing he can still play, he can still write, he can still sing, there's joy in places, but there's also this sort of reckoning with what the ultimate prize or the ultimate price might be. And you put that sentiment with something as beautiful as they won't Go When I Go. I mean that's a show stopping. That's an album stopping moment. It's just outstanding.

[Eli Lake]

People singing just for fun they will never see the sun but they can never show their face yes, there ain't no room for the hopeless sinner who will take more than he will give he will give he will give he how you going to give? Oh yeah.

[Jeff Blair]

There's show stopping moments all over this album. Hey, hey, how about when they bring in the Flying Burrito Brothers? Pedal steel guitar.

[Scott Bertram]

Sneaky Pete.

[Jeff Blair]

Sneaky Pete Klein out playing on Too Shy to say. And oh my God, he is the featured star on that song. Which by the way, has James Jamerson just on Motown, just sort of filling in on bass because, you know, it's Motown so we can call in him whenever you want. But that pedal steel, it's a piano ballad of very soft. I mean it, this, the title says it all. It's like, imagine that guy who's in love and he's. He's too shy to say. But it's all said through the pedal steel, which is almost as eloquent as the vocal. And it's funny because, boy, I love the burritos. But Sneaky P never played anything quite like that on a Burritos track. And I'm like, why did it take Stevie Water to bring that amazing sound out of them? Something about the production.

[Eli Lake]

More than a friend until the end of an endless end and I can go this way but it's stronger and every day but being too shy to say that I really love you.

[Jeff Blair]

You guys have mentioned so many of these songs and there's one that in particular always stick with me for the stupidest reason of all, which is Bird of Beauty.

[Unknown Guest]

I love it.

[Jeff Blair]

I think it's a great song. But it's also funny because it reminds me. Does anybody remember those Monkey island games? Did anybody play the Curse of Monkey island and the Secret of Monkey island on. On the computer when they were kids? PC adventure games. Well, I'm just telling you, it's about Caribbean adventure with a 17th century, I guess, 18th century pirate. And Bird of Beauty is that. It's the tropical kind of resort theme song. It's very happy and upbeat.

[Eli Lake]

Time, Take a chance and ride.

[Jeff Blair]

But then on the second half of it, it just develops into this wonderful arrangement, this wonderful melody line backed by the by. I'm always one of these things we really haven't spent any time discussing. Stevie Wonder has a particular knack for vocal arrangements, which is not as easy a thing to do as you would think. You just hear them on his songs and you think, well, that's natural. That's why I'm saying that if I were doing it. No, you wouldn't. You have no idea how to arrange song. The only reason you're singing that is because you have the guide track there to tell you what to do. He puts voices together in ways. He treats them as instruments and so they will cover melodic ground that his instruments are laying off of. He knows where to leave the spaces for the voices. You hear that in songs like Bird of Beauty. You certainly hear it. I mean, you hear it on. You Haven't Done Nothing. Where he literally calls out, he says, a Jackson 5. He left the space for him. He knew there would be a doo doo wop doo what I do do up. He thought those things through. And I. I'm just constantly impressed at sort of being hermetic in that respect. You know, he obviously has collaborators and he has friends. He's not doing this entirely on his own. But every one of these conceits is developed out of nothing and turned into something that doesn't sound hermetic. We make these comparisons to Prince, but we talked about how Prince often does sound like a guy who's up at 3am at midnight, working alone. Every Stevie Wonder track sounds like it's a party. Sounds like he's had seven friends over to do it altogether. Even if it was him alone and fulfilling this, his first finale, is, in a surprisingly underrated way, that peak of that, nobody gives it credit because, again, as I said, it falls in between the really, really famous ones. But this is every bit as good as anything Stevie Wonder ever did. And unless anybody has anything to say, do we want to talk about the long creative delays that led up to the next record?

[Unknown Guest]

Well, this is the end of Tonto.

[Jeff Blair]

Yeah.

[Unknown Guest]

The collaboration with Mark, Olaf and Cecil is over at this point. And I think, you know, listen, sometimes this is just sort of like, okay, well, that's creative partnerships. You know, they have a life lifespan. I think it's.

[Jeff Blair]

They run their courses.

[Unknown Guest]

They run the course. My theory, though, is that, like, at this point, that's when you're starting to see, like, Korgs and other keyboards. And you didn't need an entire room filled with, like, alien, you know, like, you know, spaceware or whatever.

[Jeff Blair]

It was easier to get to these places. Yes.

[Unknown Guest]

Yeah. And also he meets a guy named Greg Fillinganes who is, you know, one of the great kind of session men and is in Quincy Jones's orbit. And in some ways, like, that's his, like, new keyboardist collaborator type at that point. So, you know, again, but you can't really tell because, well, we're going to talk about the next album. You know, he reaches heights that, you know, I think very few. You could say Songs in the Key of Life is one of the greatest records ever made, so.

[Jeff Blair]

Well, that's an interesting question now, Eli, Is it one of the greatest albums ever made or is it his version of Elton John's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road?

[Unknown Guest]

I'm a big fan of Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, so I don't know.

[Jeff Blair]

As am I. But my theory about Goodbye Yellow Brick Road is this, which is that if you had boiled it down to a single disc, it would far and away be Elton John's greatest album. Who could deny it? Right.

[Unknown Guest]

We're going to have a fight about this.

[Jeff Blair]

But the problem with Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, as I will say the problem in quotes, in very, very scare quotes with Songs in the Key of Life, is it's probably a little bit too long for its own good. All of that said, what we're talking about is an album that, in theory, should have come out in 1975. In theory, Stevie Wonder had it done by then, but at the last second, he pulled a Neil Young and he yanked it back and he said, no, no, no, no, no, no, it's not done yet. And in fact, he didn't take. He didn't get it out for another full year. In the meantime, which justifies this, he wrote a number one single that went on the record, so maybe he knew what he was doing. But it didn't come out until, I think, November of 1966 or October 1976.

[Unknown Guest]

Late 76.

[Jeff Blair]

Late 76. And this thing had been more anticipated. What was the joke I already mentioned in our first episode where in the. In the interim, Paul Simon got the Grammy for Still Crazy after all these Years, and he thank God that Stevie Wonder didn't release that album. He said, thank you. Otherwise I'd be screwed, you know, because we already knew who this Grammy was going to. It finally comes out in 76, and everybody agrees it was worth the wait. What do we say about the title alone is iconic? It's Songs in the Key of Life. And what a Stevie Wonder sentiment that is.

[Eli Lake]

Love with me making one as lovely as she. But isn't she lovely?

[Jeff Blair]

That's probably one reason why we do think of it as the quintessence of his art. This is a long, indulgent double album. Not only a double album has an extra bonus 45 that might as well be an EP thrown on it.

[Unknown Guest]

Something's extra. Have the original Vinyl with the. With the 45.

[Jeff Blair]

With the 45 thrown on there. I mean, this is an infusion of song. It is a generous release. It is very much in the spirit of like, I just got all this music within me and I want to get it out to you. And again, the thing was recorded, you know, with like a guest artist here, backing vocalists there, a drummer sitting in here. This thing was recorded alone. I can't even comprehend how Stevie Wonder writes some of these songs and records some of these songs alone. And just sort of imagining in his.

[Unknown Guest]

Mind, Gaines, he had Ray Parker Jr. And Michael Cembello, he had people with him. But yeah, it was, you know, from. From his head.

[Jeff Blair]

But. But this is a record that, that, you know, from Sir Duke all the way to. Isn't she Lovely? All the way to Another Star is just packed with one enormous track after another, another. And it feels very difficult for me to hold its more indulgent moments against it. I'll still contend it would have been better as a single album.

[Eli Lake]

So good. I love you, I love you I love you I don't want to fall.

[Unknown Guest]

Blasphemy.

[Jeff Blair]

Blasphemy. Well then tell me why I've. Tell me why I'm committing heresy. Eli.

[Unknown Guest]

Okay, well, I'm just start with the something's extra 45.

[Jeff Blair]

Yeah. So you're really an all day sucker, aren't you?

[Unknown Guest]

Yeah, I'm just going to say like it's often overlooked, but in particular, Saturn. Gorgeous, gorgeous song. And then right into Ebony Eyes, which is like one of my favorites. It's like that. It's got that same infectious joy that's from the early or Motown stuff. It feels a little bit like I was made to love her in the spirit of it. But it's like now this fully matured art and it's like it's got that nostalgia to it. So that's just. I. So I just been saying that's the stuff that was like, didn't make the two pieces of vinyl. Like that's like for the 45. And that stuff is like all time classic material.

[Eli Lake]

Day. With a rhythm that is made of love and the happiness that she only brings she is a girl that can be. She's a devastating D A.

[Jeff Blair]

You should have held it for Secret Life of Plants in my opinion.

[Unknown Guest]

Fair enough. I mean, we can talk about that. But I like even the stuff that's a bit indulgent. Like I will acknowledge that the song Black is too long.

[Jeff Blair]

Okay. Yeah, okay. Go for it long.

[Unknown Guest]

Okay, that's too long. Okay, fine. But I really can't. I don't regret any of it. Like, I like the non hits as much as I love the hits. I love. Like I am singing, which has Swahili and Spanish in it and is very like, in that. Steve. There's a great scene in Stevie in the We Are the World documentary where Stevie Wonder is like, insisting, like, they have to have a verse in Swahili. And at one point someone says, you know, when he Ethiopia, they don't speak Swahili.

[Scott Bertram]

Okay.

[Unknown Guest]

Anyway, but like, I'm just saying I. I don't care. Give it to me. So I can't, like, I don't know what I would. I would take off and some people might say contusion. I love contusion.

[Jeff Blair]

No, I like them. I know exactly which ones I would remove.

[Unknown Guest]

Okay. I love and I love. Again, like, okay. The orchestra that he creates with synthesizers for Village Ghetto Land is incredible. Yes. And like, as an accomplishment in of itself, I would point out the first track side. You know, song one, side A is Love's in need of Love Today. It's one of my favorite songs of all time.

[Eli Lake]

Don't delay, send yours in right away Star love people, you know that love, you know that. Hey, it's going round.

[Unknown Guest]

That song. I said it on the Prince broadcast. If you listen, it starts with a chorus of his own voice. I believe that Prince heard that and then said, okay, I'm gonna one up you with for your. Which is also a song built on the chorus of like, you know, even more layers of Prince's voice than what Stevie does on Love Song.

[Jeff Blair]

Eli, come on. Speaking of one upping. I mean, this is an album. It is impossible to listen to songs in the key of life. And if you any familiarity with Prince, not think, well, Prince clearly based his entire career off of this album.

[Unknown Guest]

Yeah, no, there's something to it.

[Jeff Blair]

All of it. All of it.

[Scott Bertram]

Every.

[Jeff Blair]

Every single different angle. Even the indulgence stuff, the long jams that should be edited. That's Prince too. I think every aspect of Prince was encoded within this record. It was actually something we didn't really. We didn't hit on nearly enough. We should have emphasized more when we were doing our Prince episode. But if you want the blueprint, I mean, every aspect, this sweet, perfectly sincere ballads, the Christian Witness, everything goes. It all fits together. You know, the only thing you don't get with Stevie is like the Dirty Sex. And that was the different thing with Prince because he was Stevie.

[Unknown Guest]

Still pg. It's still.

[Jeff Blair]

Stevie is a Very PG rated guy. But yes, this entire album sonically, which is a way. It's more difficult to sort of convey that with one words. But I can't emphasize enough. Sonically, this album sounds like Prince and it was clearly what he was is into. You guys said Village, Ghetto Land. I actually don't like that. That's one of the ones I would prune there. There are two. Two songs on this record that have the very classical synthesizer tone to them. And I'll go with the other one, which is of course vastly more famous, which is Coolios or actually I think of it as really kind of a Weird Al Yankovic Amish Paradise. Yeah. You know, of course this is a song that's now been loved twice over pastime. Paradise, which was great on songs in the key In Life remade by Coolio as Gangsta's Paradise. Remade even better in my own opinion by Weird Al as Amish Paradise. But that's the classical one, you know, that has this sort of like it's. There's no funk in it, even though it has the funk beat. It's. It's an amusing and really effective fusion.

[Eli Lake]

Their lives living in the past time Paradise Been spending most Their lives living in the best time Paradise Been wasting most that time Glorified days long on the high Been wasting most their days in remembrance of ignorance so dispraise Tell me who I live will come come to be how many of them are you and me? Dissipation, consolation, segregation, Dispensation, Isolation, Exploitation, mutilation.

[Jeff Blair]

Again, this is an album that there are two number one hits on it. There's a song that I sung to my kid every single day, every single night I put him to sleep, you know, like for the first two years of his life. But I think maybe in quiet ways, the single most underrated track on it is something called Knocks Me Off My Feet.

[Unknown Guest]

Oh, yes, absolutely. That's the. That's the height of the Stevie Wonder ballad right there. Yes, that is a perfect ballad. It's so great.

[Jeff Blair]

It's a subtle ballad. It's a snake ballad. This is. This is what I mean when I say that Stevie Wonder had this unique ability in the 70s to write a ballad that was sort of like. It insinuates its way into your mind and heart. You think, well, that's going to be a little lame and maybe like low key soft touch there. But by the time he sneaks his way into. I don't want to bore you with it, but I love you, I love you, I love you, you're just like, how did I get here? Why am I dancing? Why am I so happy? How did this man make me so happy? That's the Stevie Wonder magic. And you find it on that song.

[Eli Lake]

And words from our heart Told em only to the wind spelled Even without being safe I don't want to bore you with my trouble but there's something about your love that makes me weak and that's me all up my feet. Yes, something about your love and makes me weaken.

[Unknown Guest]

I mean.

[Jeff Blair]

And by the way, neither of us even talked about Sir Duke or I Wish, which.

[Unknown Guest]

Yeah, those are the two.

[Jeff Blair]

Big Number one. Hey, Scott, you want. You want to tell me about two of the greatest hits of the late 70s? Do you have any thoughts?

[Scott Bertram]

Yeah, I can do. I can try. They're back to back. They're back to back on the record, which is crazy. And they're both just. Just towering examples of both Stevie Wonder's talent and, of course, some of the best music of the decade. Sir Duke has those just spectacular horns. I mean, goodness gracious. And it's. It is a tribute, of course, to these great musicians of the past that Stevie wants to recognize in song. Miller and Satchmo, and the king of them all, Sir Duke. And a voice like Ella singing along. There are hooks all over the place. And it has that line. Music is a world within itself with a language we all understand. And as I was listening more and more to it leading up to this today, I also considered that, yes, he wants to pay tribute to these great artists, but it's also, you know, a tribute to music itself, because, look, he's a blind black boy from Detroit, and look what he's done with his life. I mean, this immense amount of talent that he's able to pour into music from a tender age of, you know, 11, 12 years old on Motown, a number one song at 13 years old. And how he has taken his ability and filtered it through this world of music. And what a gift. What a gift to us as listeners. And what a gift to Stevie Wonder that he could do this with his life. That's due to music and his influences and all of that. And so it.

[Jeff Blair]

It's so inclusive, too. Everybody there. You are part of this party. Everyone else is. You can feel it all over all.

[Eli Lake]

I do. And with a voice like G ringing out, there's no way the band can lose. You can feel it all. You can feel his love of people. You can feel his power. You can feel his power, people. You can feel it. My love. You can feel us. I love our people. You can feel it all over.

[Jeff Blair]

And the universality of it is what kills me. And just again, as I mentioned, really, at the beginning of our first episode, I didn't even hear Sir Duke, not a note of it until like 1999 or 2000. And it made me embarrassed. I was like, I should have been dancing to this when I was five. I was like, what the hell business did I have not knowing this? But it just did it. And then for it to immediately be followed up with that keyboard, which is the mischievous little kid. You just see him like climb. And he's climbing down the ladder, out his window, hopping off the roof, down to the car, he's sneaking out the back door, he's getting into trouble. Like, I was obviously clearly not a nappy headed little boy when I was a kid, but every note of this song fills me with nostalgia. Man, I knew, I knew that. I knew, I knew it got into the same hijinks as he did, even if they weren't. And mine. It's such an effortless summoning of youth and innocence. I wish those days could come back once more. And then, of course, he just breaks. We actually did this pretty recently, I think on a Political Beats Patreon episode. Scott. But I just. It's just one of the hardest, smartest funk breaks in a pop song of any era. And that's why it's been sampled to death.

[Eli Lake]

Mama gives you money, my neck for Sunday school. You trade your ST K. Have to turn the screw smoking cigarettes, writing something nasty on the wall. You nasty boy. Teacher send you to the principal's office down the hall. You grow up and learn that kind of thing right While you are doing it, it's dropped out of where you go.

[Scott Bertram]

Speaking of which, I was not as lucky as Jeff, who did not hear the Red Hot Chili Peppers version of Higher Ground. I did hear the Will Smith Wild Wild west theme song, which borrows liberally from. From I wish, but is nowhere near as good.

[Jeff Blair]

Eli, were you saying something?

[Unknown Guest]

No, no. I mean, I. I wish. This is like a classic. I like. It resonated so much that, like, Lauryn Hill did a version of it for her breakthrough miseducation of Lauryn Hill, which is like a similar concept of like, you know, thinking about, like, the fun you had and the trouble you got in in childhood to an infectious beat that is impossible not to dance to. So it's great.

[Jeff Blair]

I mean, there's. The thing is, it's like the universality. There's a reason this album is so well loved and has become kind of legendary. And I, I, I worry that people who come to it in the CD era don't understand it the same way they ought to. Or cd? What, am I even kidding? The digital year. Now, Eli, you said you had the vinyl with the extra 45. Is that the first way you heard the album? How did you first encounter it?

[Unknown Guest]

My parents had the vinyl, and so I heard it that way as a kid.

[Jeff Blair]

You heard it proper, which is to say I got it on cd, which had those four extra songs thrown on just sort of as an afterthought. Had no formatting sense to me. I didn't know where things began, where they ended. It all felt like it ran on too long. You know, being older and sort of having a sense of structure now, I get what was intended, but that was lost on me. And I just. I just fear that there are things that. That can get lost on people my age because they've faded into the background or they sort of become part of our cultural topography. A song like Isn't She Lovely Is to me. To me, that's like a Sesame street song in some ways. I can remember them. It probably wasn't Sesame street exactly, but.

[Unknown Guest]

Like, he did release that as a single.

[Jeff Blair]

No, he did. Crazy album play. But he put it on his greatest hits, though, because he knew. Because how much everyone loved it and.

[Scott Bertram]

Because he didn't want to cut it down for a single edit, I think.

[Unknown Guest]

Right.

[Scott Bertram]

Because he's got. Half that song is bathing his kid, and he didn't want to cut it down.

[Jeff Blair]

But let me get to that. It's not that half that song is bathing his kid. Half of that song is him going into the most purely perfect rhapsody on harmonica I've ever heard. And so what is this? Isn't she she Lovely? Which, of course, is the song that Stevie wrote about the birth of his daughter. And as I already told you, like, I sang that to my kid when he was like a little crybaby life.

[Unknown Guest]

Is Aisha the meaning of her name?

[Jeff Blair]

Yes. It's just so beautiful. He's the pure joy of, like, my God, look at my sweet little baby girl. And then he goes into a harmonica solo that says vastly more than his lyrics. Could you. You mentioned Eli. Stevie didn't really like writing lyrics. And it shows up, you know, like, you know, he always is. It's about music for him. That's where he invests the effort, the emotion and the feeling. And I think it's just almost like he's Been free to actually say exactly. With all of the poetry within his heart, how he feels about his sweet little girl. When you hear that harmonica open up for three minutes over and over, and it's like, well, I thought this would be the end. Nope. One more cycle. Why? Because I'm just so happy that my little girl is alive. Yeah. And it just makes me feel it, too. Like it's one of those songs where it's like six and a half minutes, like, what I eliminate. No, I don't want to hear an edited version of it. I've heard that they released it in Britain. They released a Isn't she Lovely single edit. And it cuts out as the harmonic is about to go. And I'm like, well, that's. That's not what I'm here for. I'm here for that. I'm here for that pure expression of just love and that. That nobody, have nobody ever just made me actually feel like just happiness, warmth and love better than that song. And the irony is, I mean, I don't know if. Does anybody else have anything else to say? Because I actually really haven't focused on how well this album ends. Because I think the last two albums of this last two records, songs on this record are basically at the peak of Stevie Wonder's entire career. I don't know what you guys think of as. Or Another Star.

[Unknown Guest]

Oh, incredible.

[Jeff Blair]

Well, you know, we talked about, you know, earlier, we talked about how Stevie Wonder heard some Cuban music on don't you worry about a Thing. And he's like, yeah, I'm gonna see if I can recreate that on my record. Well, on Another Star, he goes gangbusters for eight and a half minutes of just this great Cuban dance fusion. This is really the way the album was supposed to end. And that's why I think I didn't appreciate it much as much as I ought to have when I got it on cd. Because this is the way it goes.

[Eli Lake]

Long ago my heart without demanding him for me There nowhere the lost could do but listen did I not so understanding I fell in love with one who would break my I There can be another storm but through my eyes the light of your Is all I need for you There might be another.

[Jeff Blair]

But it's actually the penultimate song. It's as. It's a song that no one really talks about, but again, just sneaks its way into that top five greatest ballads he ever wrote. It finds its way into a chorus where you don't know. I did not know until I heard it the first Time. And this is what I always fixate upon when I put it on. It carries you into that always. Chorus. That I'll be loving you always. Until the ocean covers every mountain high Always. Until the dolphin flies in Parrots live at sea always. It is a musical moment where you get shifted on the waves. This is what Wonder could do. And he would still do this, I think, on, on later albums. He let you accept that you were going to be taken along wherever he wanted you to go, and you would be happy when you ended up at the terminal conclusion as in another star. Each of them was like a seven and a half, eight minute long song. But as the ending to songs in the key of life, they're proof of concept that this guy knows what he's doing and if you trust him, you will be happy where you end. Because they're both perfect songs.

[Eli Lake]

Just as hate knows love's a cure you can rest your mind to sure that I'll be loving you always. Now can't reveal the mystery of tomorrow but in passing we'll grow older every day Just as all that's born is new do know what I say is true And I'll be loving you always until the rainbow always.

[Unknown Guest]

Yeah. Well, I would just say one thing, is that it's very rare that you see a great record like this and something like this that actually has four, the most part, an incredible critical reception as well. That said that everyone was waiting for Stone critic Vincetti kind of trashed the record when it came out, which is amazing and like, you know, good for you. Vincetti, like, you know, you, you, you screwed up one of the greatest records of all time, you know, sort of saying, oh, the lyrics aren't that great and blah, blah, blah, blah.

[Jeff Blair]

Well, I mean, this is. Okay, listen, if we want to be. Want to be fair, you know, Stevie Wonder's greatest deficit as an artist has always been his lyrics. They're a bit songy, they're a little bit too pat. Well, we may talk a little bit later about not driving drunk and whatnot, but that's not what you're here for. You're here for everything else. You're here for the music, but also the spirit. Because even if his lyrics aren't, they're not like texts that you would scan, like Bob Dylan or Lou Reed. The sentiment is pure and it's never fake in that respect and always comes through to me. But I guess that brings us to. I mean, after this incredible success, Songs in the key life universally praised once again. Album of the Year, as if you hadn't known. So winning streaks top the top.

[Unknown Guest]

The Village Voice pass and drop poll.

[Jeff Blair]

Which is the hipsters version of the Billboard charts. The Billboard charts had chopped for 16 frigging weeks.

[Unknown Guest]

Even Chris Gal, the dean of rock critics, like, was like, this gets an A. This is amazing. Okay, you know, everybody loved it. Everybody except the Vinceletti of Rolling Stone, except for you.

[Jeff Blair]

But here's the fascinating thing, and this is going to then become the norm. He takes a lot of time off. This comes out in 76, and he doesn't return to the scene for another three years. Now the question there is why? What happens? Well, there's a lot of personal stuff and all that, but I've also also come to think over time that I wonder about the accident. I wonder about, like, what it takes to sort of come back from it and the kind of psychic energy it takes to recover from those messes. And can you. Can you keep it up forever? Because we now come three years later to a weird, weird project called Journey through the Secret Life of Plants. This is Stevie Wonder's next album. It's a double album. It is, as you would imagine, given the success of Songs in the Key of Life, an eagerly awaited double album. It is a complete failure and destined to be one. It is nominally, I think, a soundtrack to a movie, which I've never seen. I don't know if you've seen it, Eli Scott.

[Scott Bertram]

Nope.

[Jeff Blair]

It's some. Some documentary. You know, one of those, like, stop motion photography things where plants will grow and die. And whether the Secret Life of Plants and Stevie Wonder decided to write a soundtrack album to that. It became a double album. It became, I guess, kind of his tusk. Not quite as successful as his tusk. Scott, I remember you saying during the run for the show, this was your favorite Wonder album. This is the one that you were going to say was the. The peak of his career that you wanted to spend most time discussing. Do you want to take the lead here and tell us why Journey through the Secret Life of Plants is the number one Stevie album?

[Scott Bertram]

Nope. I.

[Jeff Blair]

You want anything?

[Scott Bertram]

I even gave it another spin this morning as I had reached out talked yesterday.

[Jeff Blair]

We were talking about it.

[Scott Bertram]

Yeah, it's hard to gin up any real passion for this thing either way. I mean, it's not terrible. It's Stevie Wonder. It's not. It's terrible. It's weird. I don't really love anything. And you pointed out a couple highlights and went back and listened. You know, he's handing over the Lyrics on this to a number of different people. Some people have written for him before. Michael Cevello gets lyrics and Sarita gets lyrics, gets to write some lyrics. The amazing thing, one of the most amazing things is despite what it was and the drop in quality, it still sold like crazy. And Send One your Love, which is an okay song, went to number four on the charts because people were just wanting Stevie Wonder content.

[Eli Lake]

I've heard so many say that the things are of romance are no more and people falling in love is so old fashioned but waiting on day the day they once let slip away Hiding need to fulfill their heart's desire for love passion Sing her your love with a dozen roses make sure that she knows it. With a flower from your heart show him your love, don't hold back your feelings, you don't need a reason.

[Scott Bertram]

It fell off the charts very quickly. The movie didn't do anything. And, you know, it's not very well remembered. I can't argue that you should remember it fondly. I can't argue that spending a moment with Secret Life of Plants is not a better moment you could spend with any of the previous albums we discussed on this show. And unlike Jeff, we know at least has one favorite track. I can't identify anything really in here. That, again, I'm really passionate about one way or the other.

[Jeff Blair]

I got four or five songs, man, but I'm a weirdo. Eli, what are your thoughts about this weird, unloved art project?

[Unknown Guest]

All right, I have a couple main points. First point is this album should have come with a marijuana joint because I really do feel like you have to be in a little bit of a different state of consciousness to appreciate it. And it's like, only play this record if you're smoking, if you're taking some bong hits or reading a book, that's me.

[Jeff Blair]

I don't have to focus on it.

[Unknown Guest]

Put a black light on. I don't know, do something. Get your head into a space where you can really dive into the secret life of plants. The other thing is it kind of reminds me a little bit of the John Lennon and Yoko Ono debut, Two Virgins, which is coming at the height of this incredible. The entire Beatles career is amazing. But, I mean, you could imagine that fans of the Beatles would have been eagerly anticipating something, anything, like any Beatles content, especially from the great John Lennon. And then they put that on they. That record and they're like, what is this experimental? What are we. What am I listening to? What is this?

[Jeff Blair]

How many times have you listened to Two virgins. Eli, I have a question, because I know for a fact I. How many times I've listened to that versus this, and I could stack the amount of times I've listened to Secret Life of plants like, 50ft over my head.

[Unknown Guest]

Okay, fair enough. Fair enough.

[Jeff Blair]

That's not music. This is.

[Unknown Guest]

I agree. It's not music. When I did a John Len, I did an episode of my old podcast, the RE Education, which was about John Lennon. And I did listen to it for that, for research. And I was like. And I tried to imagine, like, what your typical Beatles fan would have said after picking it up. And that's what I imagine a lot of Stevie Wonder fans, because Stevie Wonder had basically. He was the preeminent, like, pop songwriter of the 70s to that point, and there it really is, only one pop song on this album. And in my view, Send One Year Love is not even that good. So I would imagine that, like, a lot of TV Wonder fans are like, what am I listening to? That's a bit unfair, because if you were to. If you were to, like, judge this, if it didn't come after this amazing imperial run from Stevie Wonder and it just saw it out there, you'd be like, well, this is kind of a really interesting synthesizer thing where, like, you know, there is merit to it in that respect. But it's. Again, people are jonesing for any Stevie Wonder content. And to put it up against what was right before it, it's. It's not fair. So that's my. That's my take.

[Eli Lake]

I can't conceive the N begins inside a tiny scene and what we see as insignificant Provides the cure stare we breathe but who am I to doubt or question the inevitable? For these are but a few discoveries we find inside this secret life of.

[Unknown Guest]

Man.

[Jeff Blair]

I'm convinced he could have made a single album. We could have called it the Plant Album. All right. Kind of like the Wedding album, the Lennon and Odo wedding album. This would be the Stevie Wonder the Plants album, just the little songs. And we would have thought, what an interesting little interregnum. Instead of what a disaster. Now, it's funny, because Send One youe Love is the least interesting song on that record by far. But the other songs on this thing, they're. They're hidden between all these pointless instrumentals and sort of like, you know, mediocre stuff. But Power Flower, and I hate having to say it like that because Power Flower, Flower. Power, Power. Either way, it's lame hippie crap, but that music is the most beautiful music of the record. I mean, the, the lyrics by Michael Cembello you pointed out. Same guy, though Stevie Wonder was working with, the guy who would end up writing maniac, the early 80s. You know, he's dancing like he never danced before and all that. Some, some. Some hot flash dance stuff there for you. But, but at this point he was writing lyrics for this thing, which are dumb, don't worry about them. The music, those vocal arrangements. That nagging Little H Flower, ironically enough, is one of the best ballads that he ever wrote. After songs in the key of Life. I mean, you. I'll take that one over. I just called to say I love you any day of the week. Black Orchid, similarly, you know, that one I think was written by Yvonne Wright, which would be his sister in law, I think. And I don't care about the lyrics. I'm really not here for Stevie's music, for the lyrics, but the music is just a beautiful ballad.

[Eli Lake]

Twinkling. I'll be gone, Excuse me, I have so much more to do.

[Jeff Blair]

Outside my window. Also a really kind of fun kind of. Again, kind of a lusher arrangement that, that, that, you know, upbeat shuffle thing. There's a single disc here that people would like and it would end properly with the. The one that he played on his own. The Secret Life of Plants. So silly, so sad, so naive. It's him at a piano. People will never hear this song because it's too obscure on his least loved record. But the Lance is actually a very beautiful and haunting little tune. And of course he. He can't help it. There are two like six minute instrumentals that end the album after it. Because this thing is not well sequenced, it's not a success, but there are moments on it that's still kind of a get to me. And there's something, I guess I'll admit there's something about the premise that also touches me. It's so naive. Who on earth would decide to release a double album about being a house plant? You know, that's a Stevie Wonder idea if there ever was one. I'd like to be a flower. In fact, I'll come back to life later as a flower. Right. That's a Stevie Wonder idea. There's a certain innocence to it that actually just sort of makes me want to take it sincerely, take it on its own terms. Yeah. Flaws and all. It's not a great record, but there are moments on it that are good. But I have to say, and I don't know, this is the part that makes me feel a little bit Glum. This to me probably is the toll. This is where we toll in era. Because there's another album that comes after this, but it takes. Well, this one next one comes out in a year, but from afterwards, something happens before we get there. What do we want to say and how do we evaluate in the continuum of the Stevie Wonder 70s, the album that kind of all agree sort of ends it. What do we think about 1980s, hotter than July?

[Eli Lake]

I joined me for misfortune Put me in the right direction Victim of love and affection I danced them on the outside from you say you need me well, baby, show me the truth.

[Scott Bertram]

It's a different Stevie Wonder by this point. Different still good. There has been an entire shift in the music industry and he's been away since essentially 1976. And so he hasn't been driving it. And I don't want to say this is exactly a response to it, but certainly is influenced by the sound of disco and the sound of the late 70s, you know, funk, things like that. I like Hotter Than July. I don't think it's necessarily a continuation of that. Of that, you know, imperial period we. We talked about before. It's. It's an album that's good of its own merits and not necessarily a continuation of what had been happening before. I think it's slightly less adventurous musically. I think in too many cases there are a few songs on the record in which he gets locked in to that groove and doesn't let go. And that might be a residual of the error too, by this point. That's a lot of disco too. You find that groove and you lock into it. But something like All I Do, second track on Hotter Than July. That's a four on the floor beat, you know, that's a disco influenced song even though it dates back to 66. He wrote it long ago. Yeah.

[Unknown Guest]

Okay.

[Jeff Blair]

Have you heard the original Tammy Terrell version of it?

[Scott Bertram]

I don't know if I have.

[Jeff Blair]

It's an outtake. Okay. It was never released and so I like. I hadn't heard it actually until we did the run up to the show. I knew it was an older song and it's fascinating. This is what bothers me about the record is that I think All I Do is by far the best, best song on this album. And what worries me is that it's the one that he wrote back in 1966.

[Scott Bertram]

Right.

[Eli Lake]

You're getting to be all that matters to me and let me tell you, girl I hope and pray each day I live a little more Love I have to give a little more love that's deep and true. Cause I do think about you Think about you Think about you.

[Jeff Blair]

Right. And so I was like, well, you have to go all the way. But it's a great song. The Tammy's version is a slower, more dramatic ballad. Right. But it still has that basic hook. The All I Do. And Stevie's is great. That is the. To me the only successful compromise he ever made with 80s sort of synthy pop sounds.

[Scott Bertram]

Although I think as a much, I think that does have a case of 80s sax, which is one of the only blemishes on it. It's not the 70s sax anymore. It's the 80s, 80s, different.

[Jeff Blair]

Yes. But that to me is the only one here that really sets me on fire. And there are a couple other really good songs here, but that's the big one. And it, it worries me a lot. And I think it's telling that that's the oldest one as well. What were you saying though, Scott?

[Scott Bertram]

Yeah, so I like. That's a great song. I like the lead off track, which took a few, a few spins to grow on me. But by the end I wasn't really thinking about why I liked it. I just liked it. Right. That swinging bass line. There's a nice horns. It's just up tempo blast to start things off. And I do like that, that rhythm that they get locked into on that one. That, that is a great beat. That's a great beat. And then for. Is it the only, what I would call disco funk country song. I ain't gonna stand for it. Or you have all these different, really different styles clashing together. And Stevie tries to affect.

[Jeff Blair]

That's like me describing TVC1 5 as honky tonk Sci Fi Frog. You know, this same idea. But yeah, I like it. He's jamming them all up into a barrel.

[Scott Bertram]

Yeah, that's a pretty good, pretty good song. I think, I think do like you is pretty good too. So I mean, like I said. Okay, so I would say this. The one thing you don't have on Hotter Than July that I think we both appreciate from previous albums is there's two attempts at a ballad, Rocket Love. And Lately I don't think he really connects with either of them. They're. They're fine. They're okay. Stevie one Lately is better.

[Jeff Blair]

I don't like Rocket Love, but I.

[Scott Bertram]

Think, I think Lately is the better of the two. But I don't love either of them.

[Unknown Guest]

Classic.

[Scott Bertram]

Go ahead, Eli.

[Unknown Guest]

Well, I, I. Okay. Lately, in my view Is like, put that in the pantheon of great Stevie songs, Great Stevie ballads. I would recommend to the listeners, if you want to hear a good cover of it, Jodeci Kills it on the Uptown Live.

[Jeff Blair]

Jodeci, now, that's a name I haven't heard since 1993. That's amazing.

[Unknown Guest]

Jodeci is underrated, man, but they kill. They kill it on lately. But I think Stevie's version is great.

[Eli Lake]

Lately I've been staring in the mirror Very slowly picking me apart.

[Jeff Blair]

Trying to.

[Eli Lake]

Tell myself I had no reason with your heart Just the other night while you were sleeping I vaguely heard you whisper someone's name but when I ask you of the thought you're keeping I.

[Unknown Guest]

Mean, listen, I think the peaks of Hotter Than July stand up to the other great work from the 70s from Stevie. The problem is that it's not as consistent. Cash in your face. I ain't gonna stand for it. And then I just. I don't know. Like, I. I like that he's still experimenting. I like that he has a reggae track, Master Blaster, even though, in a weird way, it's celebrating the beginning of the dictatorship of Robert Mugabe. Okay, it's fine. Master Blaster is great. Okay.

[Jeff Blair]

So, Eli, you know, my real problem with Master Blaster is, is that, okay, boogie on Reggae Woman, which, of course, mentions this 1974, mentioning reggae. Right.

[Unknown Guest]

But not a reggae song.

[Jeff Blair]

Not a reggae song, but, you know, like, has, like, a really innovative use of the drum track. Master Blaster. Master is derivative. I mean, he literally has it as a subtitle. He puts Jamming in the subtitle, which is, of course, if you know the Bob Marley song Jammin. It's what it is. But it was big hit single. And, of course, I guess it's because you have the Stevie Wonder commercial power production sound behind the reggae beat that would get it that high. Yeah, I don't think it's very. It's like his least distinguished single, precisely because, to me, it's like, Bob Marley already did this. He did it better. He did it more interestingly.

[Scott Bertram]

This is.

[Jeff Blair]

Okay, that's like. You know, that was the moment where I was like, okay, he's losing. He's losing steam.

[Scott Bertram]

He's.

[Jeff Blair]

There's not. There's not as much gas in the tank as there used to be.

[Eli Lake]

To you, we're predominant.

[Unknown Guest]

To the. I like. I like it. And I like Happy Birthday. Even though.

[Jeff Blair]

Okay, so I have thoughts on that, too.

[Unknown Guest]

To me, it's me.

[Jeff Blair]

It's a series of, like. Well, these sort of preachy songs between. Happy Birthday. It's a crime. It should be a crime not to have it be a national holiday. Then don't drive drunk. Let's go to the next one. It's apartheid, people. You know it's wrong.

[Scott Bertram]

Yes. And always the last track on each album.

[Jeff Blair]

Yeah, always the last track.

[Unknown Guest]

That's the thing, I think Rocket Love does connect and. Okay, I like it. I like. And so again, it's not. Is it as good as talking book? No, but. But it's not that much of a drop off. I still think you still have some of that classic Stevie stuff. And if you were to make a Stevie Wonder mix, you could put half this album on it and people would say, yeah, that's the classic, good old Stevie Wonder. And in that respect. And I love Lately, I think Lately's a gorgeous song. And by the way, I don't wanna steal the thunder, but we should talk for a second about original musicquarium.

[Jeff Blair]

Well, I was about to head right there, so let me set it up for you.

[Unknown Guest]

Set it up for me, because I would.

[Jeff Blair]

Yeah. So like Stevie Wonder. Okay. We have. We have this understanding that his. His production pace is slowing down immensely. Right. He comes out with songs in the key life in 76. Then he comes out with the Journey through the Secret Life of plants in 79. So three years later, Hotter Than July in 80 doesn't do another new album, I think, until 83. And in the meantime, he puts out in 1982, Stevie Wonder's Original Music Aquarium Volume 1. It's a two album. It's a double record greatest hit. It's his version of the Rolling Stones Hot Rocks. But the thing is, is like, I've wanted to love this Greatest hits forever and I don't really love it. It's not because the music within it isn't great. It's just that, I don't know, it feels like it. He spends too much time trying to introduce new music. There's a new song on every side of this double album precisely because he'd been out of circulation for so long. So there are four new. New songs on it when I'd prefer four of the older greatest hits. That said, two of those are two. Two. Okay, well, we might have. Which is your favorite? There are four new songs. I think everybody agrees that Frontline is kind of not that great.

[Unknown Guest]

Correct. And then the other three are still.

[Jeff Blair]

And then everyone argues over the other threes. Yeah, the other three are all great. They just don't belong on this.

[Unknown Guest]

That's your Critique, then I'm fine with it because I would have liked an. And I knew it. But okay. Ribbon in the Sky. Phenomenal.

[Jeff Blair]

Phenomenal.

[Unknown Guest]

One of his great ballads for me, Do I do that? Is like, oh, I'd like to introduce on my album Mr. Dizzy Gillespie. And it's like. It's like that. I know it's 10 minutes, but I could. I love it. That groove is so good. It reminds me. It's like Sir Duke Part two a little bit.

[Eli Lake]

Ladies and gentlemen, I had the pleasure to present on my album Mr. Dip Gillespie.

[Unknown Guest]

And that girl. What a. Like, what a little moody. Beautiful. And like, just another great groove.

[Jeff Blair]

I always like to. I always pair this boy with that Girl by the Beatles. You know, they make a nice pair.

[Unknown Guest]

It's just awesome. So I love those songs. And it's to me, what he's saying in 1982 with this is, oh, I can still do it, but I'm not gonna. It's. It's not. You're not gonna get it at the frequency as me in the early 70s, but I can still. I can still write these classics. And I think, do I do that girl, Rimin in the Sky? I mean, those are some of the best Stevie Wonder songs ever.

[Jeff Blair]

So, Scott, you have any thoughts on those? Or do we want to talk about everyone's favorite Gene Wilder movie?

[Scott Bertram]

I think we can. Well, I think we can. We have to make a brief pit stop at least to say that 82, which I think was the same year as Musicquarium, is the year of Ebony and Ivory, which at least should be mentioned.

[Jeff Blair]

Right? Yes. Yes.

[Unknown Guest]

By the way, your rated song, by the way. I know everybody like. Like, everybody clowns on that song, but.

[Jeff Blair]

I've always liked it. If you were here for my Paul McCarney episode, I will admit I was like, I've always liked Ebony and Ivory living together in perfect harmony Side by side on my piano keyboard over. Why can't we.

[Unknown Guest]

The vamp at the end, you know, Ivory, it's so good. So I love that we all know.

[Eli Lake]

That people are the same dream wherever you go There is good and bad in everyone. We learn to live. We learn to give each other what we need to survive together Life I rivalry Live together in perfect harmony Side by side on my keyboard. Oh, why don't we.

[Jeff Blair]

Think it's a. Yeah. You did a better song on that album. Tug of War. It's called what's that you're doing? Which is like kind of a really.

[Scott Bertram]

We talked about that.

[Jeff Blair]

Yeah. But you never think Paul McCartney could get funky. He kind of could. It happens on that one very quickly, too.

[Scott Bertram]

Before we get to the Gene Wilder, you guys know I host a different podcast called Wasn't that special? 50 years of SNL. And I have to at least insert in here that Stevie Wonder hosted one of the greatest episodes of the Dick ebersol era of SNL, which was in May of 1983, right near the end of the season. He was the musical guest and also the host. And as a host, he was excellent. He was excellent. There's the fake commercial for the Canon AE1, a camera so simple even Stevie Wonder can use it. There is a terribly prescient sketch called Cottonland Theme parks for white people to work off their guilt. And Stevie Wonder is the guy who presents this at a commercial. It is hilariously funny.

[Jeff Blair]

I'd have to go back and check this one out.

[Scott Bertram]

And there's another one, the story of Stevie, which tells essentially his life story in a very funny way. And it's an excellent sketch, but. And we'll skip around here, I guess, because it's also of note because it's the first time he ever performed Overjoyed Live. A song was from the Secret Life of Plants album. That was.

[Unknown Guest]

No, no, no. That's from In a Square Circle. Right, right, right.

[Jeff Blair]

But it's coming up.

[Scott Bertram]

Yeah, but didn't he. I thought he wrote it for Secret Life of Plants.

[Jeff Blair]

He might have, but. But it definitely wasn't.

[Scott Bertram]

And then it comes out in. In square Circle. So this is the first time he played Overjoyed live anywhere in 83, before people had even heard it in 85, two years away in square Circle. So it's a really great episode. Yep.

[Unknown Guest]

Gorgeous song. Great episode. You're right about that. Fantastic.

[Jeff Blair]

Now that. That just brings us to the punchline that I've been using for seven years on Political beats. You know, when I was like, hey, one day we'll do Stevie Wonder episode, and I guarantee you I'm not going to have a lot of good things to say about. I just called to say I love you because this is. This is the only way I knew this guy as a kid. I can't emphasize that enough. I. I brought it up briefly back at, you know, the beginning of our first one. It's like Stevie wondered me on television in my popular memory as a child was literally this song and part time lover. And like, I knew some of the oldest 60s Motown hits that like, you know, kid little Stevie stuff. I didn't know what came between and I did not like this Stuff, And I am fully confirmed, in my view, revisiting it later. So this is the problem. And we have to ask ourselves, what happens? So, like, you know, some. Some artists have a certain kind of, like, you have that much. Much in the tank, and. And then after that, well, not as much anymore. And, like, to me, I remember even noticing it when I got, at the close of a century, the box that I keep referring to, where disc four is basically mostly this stuff. And at that point, I just was like, this is no longer clicking the way it was. I don't know if he was defeated by the change in sort of fashions, in styles. I suspect, in fact, the real problem was the change in production, production aesthetics, because a guy like him seemed to always really, really depend on what was in vogue and sort of getting ahead of that curve, maybe even affecting that curve throughout the rest of the 80s and into the, you know, modern era. It feels like he's no longer riding that wave. He's underneath it. You know, he's been subsumed by whatever these trends are, and he's following them.

[Scott Bertram]

I have a note.

[Jeff Blair]

It doesn't resonate the same way. What are you saying?

[Scott Bertram]

I have a note here. That's exactly. Exactly. Previously, he was utilizing technology, and now he has been overtaken by technology. Well, there you go.

[Jeff Blair]

And that brings us to sort of, like what I consider just a giant sort of coda, even though it was a very commercially successful coda of Stevie Won his career. And it begins with, of course, his biggest hit, at least in my living memory, which is this very gloopy, drippy pop song from a reviled and forgotten Gene Wilder movie called the Woman in Red. And it's. I just call called to say I love you I just called the show how much I care about you and I mean it from the bottom of my heart. If you ever didn't like Stevie Wonder for his sing songy, simple lyrics, you're gonna hate him on this one, all right? Because it's just so obvious, and it doesn't have any sort of musical dynamism or excitement to let you forget about that or to leaven it. Yeah, this is where he loses me. But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe you guys want to make a stirring defense.

[Eli Lake]

To say I love you I just call to say how much I care I just call to say I love you and I mean it from the the bottom of my heart no summer's high no warm July no harvest moon to light One tender August night can.

[Unknown Guest]

We cute Jack Black and High fidelity yelling at the businessman in the record show shop saying, go to the mall. Go to the mall. You're like denying like your daughter doesn't like that song Anyway.

[Jeff Blair]

I. I've still never seen that film.

[Unknown Guest]

What's wrong with you, Jeff?

[Jeff Blair]

It's like everyone asks when it comes up.

[Unknown Guest]

That movie is made for you. I mean, you got.

[Jeff Blair]

Which is Eli. That's exactly why I've never seen that film.

[Unknown Guest]

Okay, all right.

[Jeff Blair]

Anyway, you're saying. But like this, this stuff. I don't know. I mean, Scott, like, what are your thoughts? First of all, do you have any deep thoughts on the big hit? Which by the way, I want to point out this one. Shock. I didn't realize this until I came back just now to review it. I just called to say I love you is six friggin minutes long.

[Scott Bertram]

Yes, it's long.

[Jeff Blair]

Like, I mean, aside from just being drippy, it's long and drippy. Like it doesn't even have the virtue of getting out of your way quickly enough. It lingers. It lingers. Do I sound bitter? I don't know. Maybe. Maybe I'm rambling. Scott, you have any thoughts?

[Scott Bertram]

It. It opened Stevie Wonder up for his. Not overexposure, but to be exposed in the. In the 1980s that this song did in Square Circle would have more hits, but Stevie Wonder was inescapable during this period of time. The Mid Lady. Mid 80s, late 80s MTV commercials for Kodak PSAs involving drunk driving, which we'll talk about in a minute.

[Jeff Blair]

And this album. Yes.

[Scott Bertram]

Yeah, I mean, but. But he was everywhere. And the woman in red has. I just called the I love you. But it's not even. It's a Stevie Wonder album, but it's not Dionne Warwick. He does two duets with Dion Warwick. There's one song that's Dionne Warwick alone. There's one instrumental. There's only eight songs on the record. The soundtrack, one of them is I Just Called to say I Love youe and four of them I just described. So it's barely a Stevie Wonder release and none of the songs leave a mark. The title track screams, you know, I'm from a 1980s soundtrack. Right? And he's again just being subsumed by some of the technology instead of being enhanced by some of the technology. And that's really the story with the Woman in Red. One giant hit single that I'm sure he's very happy to have. But artistically the rest of it leaves a lot to be desired.

[Eli Lake]

Gotta get your hold of myself Cause If I don't, I have nothing left. Imagine you're sitting at ringside and I'm standing. Standing on the inside. And approaching is miss.

[Jeff Blair]

I mean, that brings us to his next official album, a full digital recording. I might point out, during this era where people used to put that on the COVID of records as a selling point. And yet anything that describes itself as fully digital usually sounds like crap. Precisely because it came from 1985. 86. This one had another one of these songs that I have known my entire life because Part Time Lover was all over the radio. And I like Overjoyed a lot too, because that is genuinely well written song, in fact, I might argue. But maybe his last genuinely great song.

[Unknown Guest]

No.

[Jeff Blair]

No. Well, that's what you're here for, Eli. Because this really is where I have to say, you know, even though this is, ironically enough, where I first heard of Stevie Wonder was this album. You know, think about it. I would have been literally five years old when it was released. None of this is what stays with me after time. Part Time Lover is a fun little bop, right? You know, but there's nothing here that's substantial. I think the lightness of it is the thing that. That is so obvious to me. There's no heft, there's no. There's no thickness to this music. It just quintessentially 80s. And it makes me sad because this is the first album I think he ever did where he doesn't have any co writers. It's all his, but there's just not that much there that I care for.

[Eli Lake]

See I dreamed of my dick the first part night Knowing it's so wrong, feeling so right. I read something that I must tell. Last night someone rang our doorbell and it was not you My part time lover and then a man called our exchange. But if you want to leave his name I guess you can play the game of part time lovers, you and me Part time lover.

[Jeff Blair]

Tell me wrong, tell me, tell me that it's wrong.

[Unknown Guest]

Jeff, you're not wrong. It's.

[Jeff Blair]

It's not apartheid. Okay, good to know.

[Unknown Guest]

Okay. It's. It's not. It's like the magic is somewhat gone. It's the 80s. It's not great, but, you know, I don't know. Listen, if it's. If you're hanging around in 1985, you're trying to figure out, like, all right, should I get a Stevie Wonder album? I have some advice. Go pick up around the World in a Day by Prince. Okay. That's some incredible music. And you can't get weirdness. Yes. Like, it's like this fallow period for Stevie Wonder is like perfectly coincides with like the great Prince run that we talked about in that podcast.

[Jeff Blair]

They really handed it off in 1980.

[Scott Bertram]

Did they?

[Unknown Guest]

I really do. He did. It was like Prince did Dirty Mind, Hotter Than July. Both in my view, really great albums. But like, obviously Dirty Mind is a million times better. And like, you know, then it's the.

[Jeff Blair]

Prince wins from that point on.

[Unknown Guest]

Yeah, Prince wins in front of from that point on. Exactly. So, you know, what are you going to do in a square circle? Like, let's move on. I agree with you. Overjoyed is great. Love it.

[Jeff Blair]

Well, the thing is, where do you move on? So the next album, I mean. By the way, Scott, do you have any deep thoughts about In Square Circle? Do you want to tell me about how much you bonded to a part time lover when you were a kid?

[Scott Bertram]

I listened to the whole thing. Nothing sounds real. It all sounds plastic. There's a song called Go Home which actually hit number 10 on the charts. I have no memory of it whatsoever at all. But yeah, if we take one moment, Overjoy's a miracle here that it exists in the midst of everything happening on In Square Circle. For the most part it is just a beautiful track and a wonderful vocal performance by Stevie Wonder. And so you want to rescue that from the rest of the album. But yeah, the rest is, is is just pales in comparison.

[Eli Lake]

Heart I have painfully turned every stone just to find I have found what I've searched to discover I come much too far for me now to find the love that I sought can never be mine and though you don't believe that they do, they do come true for did my dreams come true when I looked at you and maybe too if you would believe you too might be over joy, over love, over me.

[Jeff Blair]

So what do we do about the rest of his career? What do we do? Does any I I honestly have listened to 1987's characters man about four times in my life, which is more than you would expect because one was enough. I gave it the four. I have nothing good to say about it. I don't like Jungle Fever. I don't like Conversation Piece. I, I, I just I a time when he had something that, that really sang to me and then everything afterwards is never terrible, but just sort of. I don't see the necessary relevance in my life. I know Eli would like to get right up in my grill and disagree with me at least about one album of the post 80s TV wonder career. Eli, can you tell us when you first came down with Jungle Fever?

[Unknown Guest]

All right, just briefly, there's one jam on Characters, which I like. It's called.

[Scott Bertram]

Okay.

[Unknown Guest]

It's Skeletons.

[Jeff Blair]

Yeah, that's the one. Good song. Okay. Yeah.

[Unknown Guest]

Okay. All right. We agree. It's. It's not like the great. It's not a. It's not in the level of like. It's not in the pantheon, but it's a. It's a pretty good song and I appreciate it.

[Eli Lake]

What did your mama tell you by night? She said it wasn't polite to. What did your daddy tell you? My life. He said one white one turns into a mad one it's getting ready to blow it's getting ready to show somebody Shout out Back to mountain we're getting ready to move it's getting ready to drop it's getting ready.

[Jeff Blair]

The whole thing is slick and professional and smooth. And it comes. It's almost depressing because it was the first time in a very long time I've had occasion to go back and listen to something that made me think, wow, this is the generic 80s. Like, you know, it's. You know, things that last. Last. And stuff that really played to that stereotype. Usually you don't find yourself encountering in 20. That happened to me with this album with, you know, the generic 90s.

[Unknown Guest]

If you. If you find yourself in a record store in 1987 and you're like, oh, should I pick up characters? Just get signed to the Times anyway.

[Jeff Blair]

Okay, but tell us how you came about with this horrible disease.

[Unknown Guest]

Okay, I would agree with you because I re. Listened to Jungle Fever and most of the songs are really not great. But there are two that, for me, just stand out. I love Funny. I think it's a. I just think that's a bop. But the one that's, like, really worth it, it's. To me, it's the last great Stevie Wonder song is these three words. Now, part of the reason I love these three words is because of how Spike Lee used it in the movie Jungle Fever. Because this is a gorgeous ballad that's just expressing, like, why don't you say I love you to your best friend or to your wife or your kids or your brother or, you know, that kind of thing. And then he plays it as the sort of soundtrack of the background to a very violent scene where the father of Marisa Tomei finds out that she's dating a black man and proceeds to beat her. And that, I think, was very affecting. But the song itself These three words really stands on its own.

[Eli Lake]

Sweet and simple these three words Short and kind these three words always and aching heart to smile inside I know a family who hasn't a sin to their name and yet the joy and love they had between them they always flame.

[Scott Bertram]

And.

[Unknown Guest]

I like Bunday kind of for the jazziness. And so Jungle Fever for me and Jungle Fever, the song is not that bad. But it's really these three words that, to me, is the last great, great Stevie Wonder song. So for that reason alone, I would say Jungle Fever is redeemable. I did listen to it again, and I cannot say, like, I can't rhapsodize about it the way I did. Like the Truth by Prince in our Prince episode, which is, like, outside of the period where I'm like, no, no, no, this is such a great album. Everybody needs to listen to it. But that one song, these Three Words, is great. And if we wanted to end the episode there and get into the final part of it, it's fine. Because let's be honest, conversation piece, any time to love. Not really that great. Love you, Stevie, but. And thank you for the great music.

[Jeff Blair]

But we always have these discussions when we wind down these episodes, especially for artists who have run. Have very long life lifespans. And I'm grateful for the fact that I have long careers. It's just like, as with art, as with sports, as with everything, you know, except maybe, maybe being a scholar. Like, you know, if you're 100 years old, you know, you don't need any muscles to write. Like, maybe you could still get your thoughts down and you've learned something with all that age. But as it turns out, there are lifespans to creativity in so many other fields.

[Unknown Guest]

Yes.

[Jeff Blair]

I just don't think there's anything wrong with saying, like, we had 30 years of incredible music. That's enough. I'm not upset that Stevie Wonder didn't make a great album after 1980. I think he's more than enough. But, yeah, so, like, there are two further albums. Neither of them really ever popped up. Anything for me. You know what? We really even haven't mentioned, like, all the great charity singles he did during the 80s. We haven't mentioned We Are the World. We haven't mentioned the Greatest Love of All or any of those things. But, you know, this man was everywhere.

[Unknown Guest]

And you mean. You mean that's what friends are for?

[Jeff Blair]

That's what friends are for. I said the greatest love of all.

[Scott Bertram]

Isn't that funny? Yeah.

[Jeff Blair]

Isn't it funny how they sort of roll together in an 80s kids mind because they really are synonymous with me. But. But the point is, is that like, you know. Yes. You know, it's been fallow ever since that period. But does it matter? I mean, like, look at all this stuff we've got. Scott, did you have anything to say before we wrap it up?

[Scott Bertram]

No, I think we covered it well.

[Jeff Blair]

I think we've arrived at that time of the day.

[Scott Bertram]

It is indeed the time when we give you the two albums you should own. And good luck on choos songs you should hear from this era.

[Jeff Blair]

Yeah, we're doomed.

[Scott Bertram]

Of Stevie Wonder. Eli Lake, Free press columnist, host of the Breaking History podcast, now available. Eli, you have the floor for your two albums and your five songs.

[Unknown Guest]

All right, let's start with the five songs. Love's in need of love Today and knocks me off my feet from songs in the key of life. Then I love every little thing about you. That is my favorite. Stevie. Wonderful Wondersong. I think it's perfect. Then I would have to go with He's Mistra, Know it all and from fulfilling this first finale, the song in my view that just captures that begging hours. Please don't go. I love those. I could pick five other ones and you all know. And then I'm going to take a little bit of a left turn. I know you're supposed to say everybody's going to say songs in the key of life, so that's a given. The other one.

[Jeff Blair]

Am I. Do you know that maybe not.

[Unknown Guest]

You're going to say conversation piece. Oh, no Characters. And then fulfilling this first for now is my second one. Barely making it over Intervisions and talking book, they're all great. But for me, fulfilling this first finale is just so great for all of it from it ain't no use creeping. You haven't done nothing. I mean, the whole thing is so good. So those are my two and I'm curious to hear what you guys say.

[Scott Bertram]

Yeah.

[Unknown Guest]

All right.

[Scott Bertram]

If Jeff's not going to do it.

[Jeff Blair]

Well, then you don't know that I'm debating it.

[Scott Bertram]

That's right. I don't know what you're going to do. So inner visions and fulfilling this is first. Those are the two that I'm going to recommend. And then the songs again are impossible. I talked. I talked so lovingly about Big Brother. So that one absolutely, absolutely makes my list. I think living for the city is a monumental achievement. We'll put that on the list. One that I might not have talked about as much as I would have liked Is Heaven is ten zillion light years away. Really love that song. They won't go when I go Showstopper. And then I figure I have to choose between Sir Tuke and I Wish, even though they are just both pillars of that decade. And in the end, I Wish is the fifth song on my list. Jeff, over to you.

[Jeff Blair]

Well, I wasn't even kidding when I told you I was completely improvising this because I never thought it through. And now I'm gonna have to just make a game time call. So because you guys both choose fulfilling this as first finale, I'm gonna be different. I'm gonna say the two best albums you gotta hear are Inner Visions and songs in the key of life. But now I've created a problem for myself because I have to consider five songs that lie outside of those two epic flipping Al. And again, we know this is impossible, folks, but just to cover the span of period that is Stevie Wonders, essentially his 70s, I'm gonna say first thing you gotta hear is I love every little thing about you from Music of My Mind and then from Talking Book. So that's the first one. Talking Book, Superstition. Of course, I believe when I fall in love, it will be forever. Of course, from fulfilling this is first finale, all the obvious songs could be taken. I'll just choose Bird of Beauty on there. And then for a fifth. Since we've already covered songs in the key of life, I'll just start a sneak in Power Flower of all things. Power Flower, Power Flower from the journey through the Secret life of Plants for my fifth song. And of course, because a very esoteric.

[Unknown Guest]

Cd, A very esoteric.

[Jeff Blair]

I want to end it on a more universal note as I can do that with host privilege. And so I'm gonna just end with a sixth song which does come from Intervisions. He's Mr. Know It all was the last song on that album and one of the most perfect, perfect song Stevie wrote in his entire career. And there's this moment right at the end where he goes and everyone just claps. And then the whole gang comes up, says, yeah, he's Mr. Know It All. And boy, it's a communal moment. It is a moment that everyone listening feels together. You could be alone. You could be alone in a plane with no other human around you for a thousand miles, and you'd still feel like you were in a crowd of people who were your friends when you hear him sings that. And that's what. That's what I love about Stevie.

[Scott Bertram]

I do have to point out that I think there was a big opportunity missed by, by not inviting Stevie Wonder to do the soundtrack for the Secret Life of Pets, which just came out a couple of years ago for the kids out there. I mean, come on, come on. There it is, the Political Beats. Look at part two of Stevie Wonder's career. We thank our guest, who's been tremendous with us all three times. You can find him at the Free Press, you can find him hosting Breaking History. You can find him as a contributing editor at Commentary and also on xli. Lake Eli Lake, fantastic contributions. Thank you so much for joining us.

[Unknown Guest]

Oh, thank you for having me. This was a lot of fun and it was. I'm so glad to kind of get a dive into the catalog. It was a great opportunity.

[Scott Bertram]

Outstanding. Jeff We've got a whole year ahead of us to plan and plot and, and some some options after we had some people step forward to volunteer for some shows at the end of last year. So we'll talk. I don't know.

[Jeff Blair]

I genuinely don't know. I don't know what's next.

[Scott Bertram]

We had a nice run. We had a nice run where we were sure we had it all planned out and now it's up.

[Jeff Blair]

Many options await.

[Scott Bertram]

We'll get it together. Jeff's on X at Esoteric CD. I'm there Ott Bertram. We again invite you to support [e-mail] Political Beats, where you can find all the special benefits available for you. Also, subscribe to the feed for new episodes and find us on X. Join the conversation at Political Underscore Beats. This has been a presentation of National Review. This is Political Bits.