Stevie Wonder

The essential Steve Wonder album. The sheer number of excellent tracks on Songs is astonishing, and Wonder balances his erudite social commentary with rapturous love songs and jaw-dropping musicianship. Funky, danceable and brilliant, the album is a culmination of his '70s aesthetic; it still sounds fresh today. Highlights include "Sir Duke" and "Pastime Paradise."

Stevie Wonder's Songs in the Key of Life, like some big Hollywood studio blockbuster,
comes to us already weighted down with words, stabbed with exclamation points and
wrapped--or is it shrouded?--in great expectations. Two years in the making, the album's
imminent release was announced several times, and each time it was withdrawn to be
haggled over, reworked, expanded and gossiped about until its release at the e... More >

It's no accident that the rich, hortatory one-man music of "Love's in Need of Love Today" is counterposed against the more intimately devotional one-man music of "Have a Talk With God," or that when the theme turns sociopolitical in "Village Ghetto Land" Stevie's synthesizer turns from African sounds to an ironic (though elegant) string-quartet minuet--the calm detachment of which is rudely interrupted by a jazz-funk tribute from Stevie's Wonderlove band, which then moves into the danceable black-music tribute "Sir Duke." And in themselves the words are much funnier and trickier than the sociospiritual bullsh*t or Maruice White or Kenny Gamble; as validated by the wit, pace, and variety of the music, they come close to redeeming the whole genre. (Grade - A)