Writing a one paragraph synopsis of Stevie Wonder's career is a tall task...but I'm going to attempt it anyhow. Starting out in my adopted home of Detroit, Wonder signed his first music contract when he was eleven years old with Motown. Wonder's musical success started slowly as he didn't have his first hit until he was all of thirteen ("Fingertips"--it also made him the youngest person to top the Billboard Hot 100). Wonder added more hit singles throughout the sixties, before coming into his own in the seventies. By the time he was twenty-five, Wonder had won two Grammys for album of the year, and would go on to win three album of the year Grammys in four years. After the seventies, Wonder settled into a more commercial groove, and while he never again reached the artistic success of his earlier works, he sold a shitload of records. Overall, Wonder has released 26 LPs, sold over 100 million records, three of which hit #1 on the Billboard charts, and ten of which hit the top five. He's had ten number one singles and thirty which hit the top 40. He's won twenty-five Grammy Awards (you read that right, 25--the most for any single artist in Grammy history), won an Academy Award for best song, been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, been inducted into the Songwriter's Hall of Fame, and been given an honorary music degree by Yale. He's also been a political activist, fighting against racism, hunger, AIDs, and war, as well as championing Nelson Mandela when it wasn't popular to champion him, and also performed at Barack Obama's first inauguration. Wonder is also known for collaborating with too many artist to count (he's a multi-instrumentalist, and his harmonica playing has been featured on numerous songs). Did I mention that he's been blind since shortly after his birth? Taken as a whole, that's a legacy to end all legacies.
Fun Fact: Wonder was instrumental (so to speak) in establishing Martin Luther King's birthday as a national holiday--he wrote the song "Happy Birthday" to popularize the campaign and also staged a rally which helped to bring in a petition with over six million signatures in support of making King's birthday a national holiday.
"If You Really Love Me" was released in 1971 on the album Where I'm Coming From. It would eventually reach #8 (with a bullet!) on the Billboard Hot 100. Wonder wrote the song with his first wife Syreeta Wright, and played piano, synthesizer, and drums on the song.
One of the reasons I chose this week's tune (other than it's one of my favorites of his) is that I like how Wonder opens with the catchy as all hell chorus and then moves into the considerably slower, almost ballad-like stanzas--it's a fine juxtaposition of the two styles. As I did my half-assed research for this week's tune, I noticed that the album "If You Really Love Me" came from was the last of Wonder's career before Motown turned control of his work over to Wonder himself, and in a lot of ways you can see in this song what was to come in his seventies work over the next few years--Wonder was really stretching out a little bit, seeing just what he could do with his music. I also chose it because there's a joyousness, a playfulness, to the song that is a hallmark of Wonder's work--he did some great socially conscious songs through the years, but Wonder's genius has always been that he could do it with some of the greatest pop music sensibilities of any artist I can think of. I would be remiss if I didn't note that the song has some fine horn work from Motown's in house band, the Funk Brothers, and that Wonder's wife at the time also provided some fine backing vocals. All in all, it's a hell of pop tune from one of the greatest practitioners of pop this country has ever seen--and a man with the heart of a lion.
Lyric Sheet: "First the feeling's alright/Then it's gone from sight/So I'm taking out this time to say.../Oh, if you really love me won't you tell me..."
Enjoy:
Fuck Donald Trump,
emaycee
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