Sphinx's Music Blog - Stevie Wonder: Innervisions

Hello everyone!

I hope everyone is well and happy. 

This week, I want to discuss a hometown favorite artist - Stevie Wonder, and his impeccable 1973 classic, Innervisions, released by Tamla Records (a subsidiary of Motown Records) on August 3rd. This album is smack in the middle of Wonder’s “classic period”, where he steered away from the catchy pop love songs of the 1960’s, and started moving into much broader, more artistic territory. While this album still has some fantastic love tunes, it has many deeper themes as well, such as drug abuse, racial tensions, social/income/race inequality, and politics. At this point, it’s evident that “Lil’ Stevie” is all grown up and has a lot to discuss. 

The album is highly regarded as an artistic masterpiece of the 20th century, and it’s hard to not agree. What makes the album so impressive, is that for the most part, Stevie Wonder does all the work on the entire album - keyboards, vocals, synths, drums & percussion, vocal harmonies, song writing, production, and arrangement. He is a one-man band for this album and many of his other albums in his career. 

Stevie jamming out with Grover

Innervisions peaked at #4 in the US, but came out with some big Grammy Award victories, including Album of the Year, Best Engineered, and Best R&B Song for “Living for the City”. In addition, fellow musicians love to cover songs from this album. The Red Hot Chili Peppers covered “Higher Ground”, and Barbara Streisand covered “All In Love Is Fair” for the most popular examples, but the track “Don’t You Worry ‘Bout A Thing” is a huge piece to the movie “Silver Linings Playbook”. 

A crazy, sad story around the time of this album is that just a few days after its release, Stevie Wonder got in a terrible car accident in South Carolina where his friend (who was obviously driving) hit a lumber truck head on, and was believed that one of the logs went threw the windshield and hit Wonder in the forehead (later on, the truck driver said the bed was empty, so it’s believed that either left over debris hit Wonder, or the shock of the collision caused Wonder to crash his head into the shattered windshield). He laid in a coma for days, but was able to eventually recover but took over a year. Stevie himself feels it was an act of God sending him some sort of message, and has forever changed his life. 

Getting into the music, let me first discuss what I think is such a cool instrument - the Moog bass. It definitely is the sound of funk, and comes into its own in the 1970’s, mainly because of well, Stevie Wonder (here’s a sample of it in the modern hit, 24K Magic by Bruno Mars - https://youtu.be/0_PCbftTkTc ) . I absolutely love the beats he provides on “Too High”, “Living for the City”, “Higher Ground”, and “Jesus Children of America” - each one is so awesome, catchy, and unique.

Another electric instrument Wonder uses that I love is the Fender Rhodes Electric Piano, and is used together with the Moog bass to create such an awesome sound (here’s a guy playing the classic line from “Living for the City - https://youtu.be/CWJL-BNr22U ) . In the opening song, “Too High” - I love how Stevie goes back and forth on sharing which instrument dominates the melody. It starts with the Moog providing the groove, but then he goes to the Fender Rhodes for the “do do dodos” unison with the singers, and then when he’s putting the chords together when he sings the main melody. It’s hard to fully explain, it’s just a great recognition of how to perfectly place these instruments to produce the right sound. 

Finally, for electronic sounds, I can’t forget Wonder’s use of the Hohner Clavinet (famously you’ve heard it probably as the main line from his classic hit “Superstition”) in the track “Higher Ground”. It just provides that final layer of funk that, sorry Red Hot Chili Peppers - you can't achieve in your cover. It sounds like he’s got two tracks going with the instrument set in a loop, which helps provide so much depth as it plays over the other electronic instruments. 

Stevie doesn’t shy away from his old style of doing things either though, as he has some fabulous acoustic piano tunes as well. “Golden Lady” is such a beautiful love song that has a great little solo intro until he brings in the band with a nice touch of the congas to give a light Latin feel to the tune. That Latin feel with the acoustic piano returns with a much more upbeat “Don’t You Worry ‘Bout A Thing”, and then “All in Love is Fair” is a deep piano ballad (with a sprinkle of the electric piano in there), and is also in my opinion his best singing performance on the album. 

Lyrically speaking, I find Stevie Wonder to be one of the best of all time in how he writes lyrics and how poetic it is. The visual imagery he has for a guy who literally can’t see is stunning. In “Too High” he states: 

“She’s a girl in a dream
She sees a four-eyed cartoon monster
On the T.V. screen
She takes another puff and says
”It’s a crazy scene”
That red is green
And she’s a tangerine ”

And in “Visions” when he’s discussing race, he metaphorically states:

“I’m not one who makes believe
I know that leaves are green
They only change to brown when autumn comes around
I know just what I say
Today’s not yesterday
And all things have an ending”

And then immediately follows that verse with this heartbreak:

“But what I’d like to know
Is could a place like this exist so beautiful
Or do we have to find our wings and fly away
To the vision in our mind?”

Personally, “Visions” is a homage to a speech reminiscent of Martin Luther King Jr., but Wonder deserves the full credit on this phenomenal tune. The other nod to MLK comes from the tune “Higher Ground” - which is taken directly from MLK’s Selma speech when he (MLK) states 

“The battle is in our hands. And we can answer with creative nonviolence the call to higher ground to which the new directions of our struggle summons us. The road ahead is not altogether a smooth one. There are no broad highways that lead us easily and inevitably to quick solutions. But we must keep going.”

Living For the City is my favorite Stevie Wonder song, as his emotion in his singing is of total frustration on the world, but is sung so beautifully. I love how he plays around with the syntax (shout out to my English department friends who helped me remember some terms) too, like the great line “to find a job, is like a haystack needle”, but wow, this song is racially charged, as the line right after that is “cause where he lives, they don’t use colored people”. It’s a song that not only has me think of the struggles our county had then (and still very much has) with race equality, but it makes me think of it from the perspective of Stevie Wonder himself. I mean, honestly, the man is blind, but since he’s born black, he has to live and experience such things? What kind of shit is that? A nice touch to the tune is the intermission skit he has of a black man getting arrested on the street in New York City (and I want to give another reminder that this entire song was done in full by Wonder). To give a final point on his emotion in this song, just look at the last verse here, a verse of frustration, but of hope as well: 

“I hope you hear inside my voice of sorrow
And that it motivates you to make a better tomorrow
This place is cruel nowhere could be much colder
If we don’t change the world will soon be over
Living just enough, just enough for the city!!!!”

The final song I want to discuss is the closing track “He’s Misstra Know It All” - which was a song Wonder wrote to criticize Richard Nixon. In more recent times, this song has been referenced many times for our current president, and it’s in my opinion that it is spot on with what we are experiencing now. A man who “make’s a deal, with a smile, knowin’ all the time that his lie’s a mile, he’s misstra know-it-all”, and then “must be seen, there's no doubt, he's the coolest one with the biggest mouth, he's Misstra Know-It-All”, and lastly 

“When you say that he’s living wrong
He’ll tell you he knows he’s livin’ right
And you’d be a stronger man
if you took Misstra Know-It- All’s advice”

If you have not listened to this album, please do. It is a phenomenal collection of songs, with each one offering something different. It’s the second Stevie Wonder album I owned (Talking Book was the first, I’m not counting the Greatest Hits album I owned), and in my opinion his absolute best. I had the chance a few years ago to see Stevie Wonder in Detroit, had tickets and everything. The night of the concert was a huge snowstorm, and I decided at the last minute to sell my tickets online (I did double the amount of money I paid for them), but in all honesty, I deeply regret not going. It was one of the last events at Joe Louis Arena, and I remember reviews saying he brought the house down, and played for over 3 hours. Hopefully soon, I’ll get another chance. 

TOP TRACKS: Visions, Living For The City, Higher Ground, Don’t You Worry ‘Bout A Thing

 Have opinions on this album, or on Stevie Wonder in general? I’d love to chat about it! Send a message either on social media or on the Gamezilla Media discord. In addition, if you love gaming and movies, check out the five podcasts on Gamezilla Media, and consider being a patron on Patreon! You can find me on the Last Action Podcast or the Noobs and Dragons podcast. 

 You can listen to this album and the other albums I have reviewed here on my Spotify playlist. Please consider being a follower on Spotify! It’s free to do!

Sphinx