Song Review (The Very Best Of Stevie Wonder) - Stevie Wonder

...No. 1 to date. The song was heavily panned by the critics upon its release on the soundtrack to the so-so film 'The Woman In Red', and to this day it provokes a kind of revulsion among many artists and critics who believe this was the point where Stevie Wonder stopped being a driving force in soul music and was safely absorbed into the mainstream, releasing mushy muzak to please the coffee-table music masses who bought only one album a year.
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...piano… the sentiment behind the song is admirable but it is just so slushy and drippy. The lyrics go something like 'Ebony and ivory/Live together in perfect harmony/Side by side on my piano keyboard/Oh lord, why don't we?' and it sounds pretty embarrassing to listen to. It's by McCartney though, so I guess Stevie can be absolved of any blame here. 'Lately' is considered one of Stevie's best ballads but I found it to be dull, limp and uninspiring, ... more

A quick survey of my CD collection betrays my taste in Blondie, the Strokes, REM, Talking Heads, Scissor Sisters, Duran Duran, the Ramones, Franz Ferdinand and others. Something of an eclectic mix already in that bunch, but it would be safe to argue that at least the above artists all safely fit into the typical 'rock' category. Well, maybe not Duran Duran, but there we go (and quit the sniggering at the back, Duran Duran are quality, quality I tell you!). Nestled among these various albums (the number of which are getting quite out of hand but there we go, what can you do when you have such fine taste in music?) are a few little gems by one of soul's greatest singers and one of the best and most under-rated songwriters of all time, Mr. Stevie Wonder. While admittedly something of a sharp contrast to anything else in my music collection, my love for the music of Stevie Wonder comes from an appreciation of his ability to create such funky tunes, danceable grooves and soulful ballads. With no shadow of overstatement, I think no other artist has done more to shape soul music into what it is today than Stevie Wonder, with the possible exception of James Brown.

When we think of Stevie Wonder today, we instantly think of 'I Just Called To Say I Loved You', right? And that would be a fair assessment, as it is his biggest British hit, indeed his only British No. 1 to date. The song was heavily panned by the critics upon its release on the soundtrack to the so-so film 'The Woman In Red', and to this day it provokes a kind of revulsion among many artists and critics who believe this was the point where Stevie Wonder stopped being a driving force in soul music and was safely absorbed into the mainstream, releasing mushy muzak to please the coffee-table music masses who bought only one album a year.

As an owner of some of Stevie's best albums, including 'Music Of My Mind' (1972), 'Talking Book' (1973) and 'Innervisions' (1973), I can appreciate where these critics are coming from. A quick peek at a sample of these albums finds Stevie in quite a different form to 'I Just Called To Say I Love You'. The funk is hard, gritty and nasty, the social commentary is astute and sharp and the grooves are by turns sultry and dangerous. 'I Just Called…' seems ultra-limp in comparison. In a TV documentary about the greatest No. 1's of all time, 'I Just Called…' was somewhere within the Top 100, prompting cries of anger from New Order members Bernard Sumner and Peter Hook, who expressed their anger that in a career as fantastic as Stevie's, it is almost criminal how the only No. 1 of his career is one his weaker songs.

Sumner and Hook would have not liked this collection then. 'Song Review' is most definitely a collection which focuses on the mainstream, inoffensive side of Stevie's career, complete with 'I Just Called…' and a horde of soundalikes. Ballad follows ballad as the compilers of the album seek to portray Stevie as a safe, almost bland soul singer with no real soul. The funk is kept to a minimal, despite Stevie's key role in bringing the musical genre to the masses with a series of devastating funky albums and singles. Criminally absent from the album are the breathless, fantastic 'I Wish', which was transformed into 'Wild Wild West' by Will Smith a couple of years ago for his dreadful film of the same name, and 'You Haven't Done Nothing', Stevie's biting attack on the Nixon administration, in which he is backed by a young Jackson 5. Also absent is his fantastic 'Higher Ground', covered many years later by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, a ducking and diving, swerving funky classic and 'Pastime Paradise', which was morphed into 'Gangsta's Paradise' for the 'Dangerous Minds' soundtrack by Coolio a few years back. Looking at how Stevie's music has been used and sampled by a variety of different modern artists is evidence enough of how fantastic a talent he is and just how influential he has been on pop music, and soul music in particular.

Instead, we get ballad after ballad. This is not to say that the quality of the ballads is consistently poor, as Stevie is far too good a songwriter to bash out any old crap. Certainly, the likes of 'Isn't She Lovely', Stevie's ode to his newborn baby, in which he thanks God for how beautiful his child is, has a wonderful energy and effervescence, 'For Once In My Life' sounds as sprightly and awe-inspiring now as it did the day it was recorded and 'My Cherie Amour' is still the sweetest thing ever put onto vinyl. However, there are times when the incessant balladeering, which isn't wholly representative of Stevie's career, even though the compilers of collection such as this would rather it be that way, gets a little too annoying and I found myself crying out for something just a little bit more abrasive. It's a pity that in these less enlightened times the impact of Stevie Wonder's career seems to have been dimmed by his success, indeed suggesting that 'I Just Called…' and its success meant that the public no longer saw Stevie as an artist who could make social commentary, which he done consistently throughout the 1970's, and instead became some bland old fart like Elton John or Sting. A true career retrospective would take a look at the downright nasty, angry work of Stevie in the early 1970's, when he fought for artistic freedom within the constraints of a rigid Tamla-Motown contract. The album actually was released in the US and the UK with two different tracklistings. The American version has more variety and gives a better insight into the differing stages of Stevie's career, the British one does a poorer job and gives a very stilted picture of a very varied career. The American version, however, is available to order off www.amazon.com, and if it came down to a straight choice between the two versions then I know for sure which one I would pick. And so should you!

The album has a number of weak songs. The worst of these is the sickly duet with Paul McCartney, 'Ebony & Ivory', in which Wonder and McCartney compare the races of black and white to the keys on a piano… the sentiment behind the song is admirable but it is just so slushy and drippy. The lyrics go something like 'Ebony and ivory/Live together in perfect harmony/Side by side on my piano keyboard/Oh lord, why don't we?' and it sounds pretty embarrassing to listen to. It's by McCartney though, so I guess Stevie can be absolved of any blame here. 'Lately' is considered one of Stevie's best ballads but I found it to be dull, limp and uninspiring, while the last four songs to close the album ('Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I'm Yours', 'For Your Love', 'Kiss Lonely Good-Bye' and 'Redemption Song') I found to be immensely boring and not a patch on the rest of the album. The sleeve notes I also found to be somewhat pompous, with the writer, some guy who nobody has ever heard of and was probably given ten quid to write down any old crap, bleats on and on about how Stevie's best work is yet to come and blatantly ignores the musical variety and sense of rebellion which imbues Stevie's music right from the beginning.

The album does have some excellent highlights, though. 'I Just Called…', for all the flak it gets, is really refreshing when you haven't heard it for a while. And if you think about the sentiment behind the song then its true sweetness is revealed. Wonder can often be a bit of a hammy lyricist, something exposed most frequently on his love songs, and on 'I Just Called…' he just about gets away with it before entering serious cringe-factor. 'Superstition', with its wonderful funky drum opening and its distinctive guitar refrain which opens the song, sounds extremely fresh, modern and contemporary, the kind of song one would expect from a modern soul artist, it really hasn't dated a bit. Listening to songs such as these make you marvel at just how talented Stevie is. Apart from the fact that he has one of the richest, most soulful voices in the history of popular music, Stevie also writes and produces all of his own work. He then plays the keyboard, drums and harmonica on his own tracks! The man really is a legend and each song, whether you think it be really moving or incredibly bland, is inarguably perfectly crafted down to the last note. When you think that the man was born blind from birth then his achievements seem truly incredible.

'Sir Duke', Stevie's tribute to legendary jazz trumpeter Duke Ellington (and in which he also gets chance to reference Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong, among others), is jazz-tinged and is chock-full of brass. The refrain of 'You can feel it all over' is repeated a staggering eighteen times, beginning halfway through the song and continuing right through to the end, but the music is so danceable and enticing that we don't notice, we are carried away by the music so that the words are becoming background to the groove. 'Master Blaster' has some celebratory lyrics ('Everyone's feeling pretty/It's hotter than July/Though the world's full of problems/They couldn't touch us even if they tried') and is quite a happy number, taken from 1980's 'Hotter Than July' album, and deals a lot with hope, optimism and faith. 'Happy Birthday', Stevie's tribute to Martin Luther King Jr., follows in pretty much the same vein, questioning why there wasn't a national holiday devoted to the legendary civil rights activist. Stevie would get his wish a few years later when the official Martin Luther King Jr. day was declared a day of national celebration in the US. The lyrics here occasionally seem like they are going to step into the cruddy territory occupied by the likes of 'Ebony & Ivory', but the general higher quality of songwriting and the upbeat melody carry the lyrics above that.

'Living For The City' one of Stevie's darkest numbers about the reality of black life in a tough inner-city neighbourhood, is included but halved in length, and goodness knows why. Still, its raw power and impact is still evident even in this abbreviated version. The lyrics are unrelentingly dark and is a stunning example of Stevie's foray into social commentary in the early 1970's: 'A boy is born in hard time Mississippi/Surrounded by four walls that ain't so pretty/His parents give him love and affection/To keep him strong moving in the right direction/Living just enough, just enough for the city...'. 'He's Misstra Know It All' is another classy cut, a piano-led number with Stevie's anger kept below the surface, not overt but muted, but still hovering under the surface waiting to burst out.

'Part-Time Lover' is one of the highlights of Stevie's post 'I Just Called…' career, a roaring, up-tempo number about 'undercover passion on the run'. It really is quite a stand-out track and something of a forgotten classic in the Wonder canon. It lacks the bite of some of Stevie's earlier work, but than it probably to be expected, as not every artist can retain the anger of their youth as they move into maturity, both as a person and as an artist. 'I Was Made To Love Her' has some of Stevie's best lyrics and proves that when it comes to love songs, he is up there with the best of them (You know my papa disapproved it/My mama boohooed it/But I told them time and time again/"don't you know I was made to love her/Build a world all around her"/Yah! Hey, hey, hey')

It is somewhat frustrating that an album which could be so fantastic has been muted and tamed down and made kinda bland. The inclusion of too many a ballad gives the impression that Stevie has spent an entire career singing sickly-sweet love songs, when that couldn't be further from the truth, as Stevie Wonder was one of the sharpest, most astute songwriters of the late 1960's and early 1970's, his songs offering stinging ripostes to the way of life in modern America, attacking the corruption of politics and the toughness of life as a black man in America. This album doesn't offer any kind on insight into this and instead gives this happy-go-lucky impression of Wonder. The American version of 'Song Review' is much, much better than the UK version and if you have the chance to order that off Amazon then I would recommend you order that version than this one. The rating of two stars below is by no means a reflection of Stevie's music, but merely an indicator than there are much, much better collections of Stevie Wonder's stuff out there, and while there are songs of high quality on this album, as a genuine career retrospective, indeed as a 'Song Review', which the album purports to be, it fails.

For those who want to look more into Stevie's career, I recommend checking out 'Music Of My Mind' (1972), 'Talking Book' (1973), 'Innervisions' (1973), 'Song In The Key Of Life' (1976) or 'Hotter Than July' (1980), each one a strong example of Wonder at his peak, before 'I Just Called To Say I Love You' doomed him to balladeer status forever.

'Song Review' is available from Amazon.co.uk for £11.99 

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