Stevie Wonder

What can I say about Stevie Wonder that others have not already stated at length? A musical prodigy, a master of harmony and rhythm, and a multitalented genius. To have accomplished so much despite all the challenges he faced and the life-shattering incidents he encountered is truly remarkable. None of that is new to say of course. Musicians and critics have been singing his praise for decades; however, in this article I will just pick out a few of my personal thoughts and add what comments I can offer.

My first encounter with Stevie Wonder was likely on the soundtrack to You’ve Got Mail with his track “Signed Sealed Delivered”. As I assume is the case with many people, soundtracks often allowed for an introduction to artists with whom I would have very little other exposure. As an artist who reached their artistic peak in the 70s, Stevie Wonder was not an artist with whom I grew up particularly familiar. My parents were not particularly interested in his music (a lack of motivated interest than any dislike of his music). However, the films we watched as a family — in particular the output of Nora Ephron — often had an enjoyable range of music that I became familiar with over the years. Limited in the most part to the specific songs on these soundtracks (or encountered in other media), I had my first experience of many musicians, only really diving further into artists’ catalogs on rare occasions.

When I was in my early teens, I got into the Beatles and Queen. I picked up a Ray Charles album. I began to pick up a few more albums here and there, particularly starting to pay attention to the “best of” albums I could find in second-hand stores. Stevie had to wait a while for me though. It wasn’t until I went to university that I first began really listening to Stevie Wonder, and that was largely thanks to one significant change in my music listening habits in my late teenage years: I began listening to albums from beginning to end.

The “shuffle” feature of my phone (or iPod back when I used that) was my default way of experiencing my music collection. It was like having a “best of” album of all my music. I would often shuffle my entire collection — skipping music as and when the mood really hit or didn’t. Even when listening to an individual album (which to remind to was likely a compilation album anyway), the shuffle was probably on. When I was in the last year of my high school, I began to have pretensions of becoming sophisticated, well-read, and well-listened; I began to listen to the “great” albums. I had mixed results with this attempt to class-up my musical experience. I remember putting on “Dark Side of the Moon” by Pink Floyd and shuffling onto the instrumental tracks of the album. I confess I began to question what people heard in it. It must be like one of those “great” experimental films I had barely encountered that were so dense and difficult to enjoy for those uninitiated […]