Songs in the Key of Life was Stevie Wonder's longest, most ambitious collection of songs, a two-LP (plus accompanying EP) set that -- just as the title promised -- touched on nearly every issue under the sun, and did it all with ambitious (even for him), wide-ranging arrangements and some of the best performances of Wonder's career. The opening ...
When you're putting together a 21-song collection of a major artist who's had more than 40 Top 40 hits, inevitably there's going to be a lot of good stuff left out. Stevie Wonder's long and varied career (not over when this anthology appeared) really needs more than one disc to even adequately summarize the highlights. But this single-disc comp ...
When Stevie Wonder applied his tremendous songwriting talents to the unsettled social morass that was the early '70s, he produced one of his greatest, most important works, a rich panoply of songs addressing drugs, spirituality, political ethics, the unnecessary perils of urban life, and what looked to be the failure of the '60s dream -- all set ...
After releasing two "head" records during 1970-71, Stevie Wonder expanded his compositional palate with 1972's Talking Book to include societal ills as well as tender love songs, and so recorded the first smash album of his career. What had been hinted at on the intriguing project Music of My Mind was here focused into a laser beam of tight ...
After the righteous anger and occasional despair of the socially motivated Innervisions, Stevie Wonder returned with a relationship record: Fulfillingness' First Finale. The cover pictures his life as an enormous wheel, part of which he's looking ahead to and part of which he's already completed (the latter with accompanying images of Little ...
While it's not quite the definitive compilation it could have been, the double-disc Song Review: A Greatest Hits Collection is still a good overview of Stevie Wonder's long, prolific career. Skipping over "Fingertips, Pt. 2" and picking up with "Uptight (Everything's Alright)" and "I Was Made to Love Her," Song Review runs through the next three ...
Despite all of the hype surrounding it, the soundtrack to Jungle Fever is Stevie Wonder's best work in years. Although it can't compare to Wonder's glory days, Jungle Fever is a considerable improvement from his bland late-'80s albums. Wonder still borders on saccharine on his ballads, although even the sappiest of them ("These Three Words") is ...
For anyone who grew up during the last days of AM radio, anyone who remembers gas shortages, disco scarves, and feathered hair, this mammoth seven-disc box set, Have a Nice Decade: The 70s Pop Culture Box, will be a holy grail of nostalgia. First of all, the discs themselves contain a staggering 164 tracks. Basically, if you remember the song, it ...
Of the label's seemingly endless budget-priced hits collections, the Motown Legends series ranks among the best, giving consumers exactly what they want: the smash hits which defined "The Sound of Young America" during the company's heyday. Each of this third volume's 11 tracks is a true classic, and although it's difficult and more than a little ...
Contemporary soul-pop artists, including Patti Austin, Tevin Campbell, Stevie Wonder, Quincy Jone, Take 6, Howard Hewett, and Dianne Reeves, take a pop-song approach to Handel's classic Christmas oratorio. Handel's wonderful melodies are updated with synthesizers, drum machines, and slick pop production from Quincy Jones and Take 6's Mervyn Warren ...
The CD companion to the America: A Tribute to Heroes telethon, this double-disc set features all of the musical performances aired on the show, including Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers' "I Won't Back Down," Billy Joel's "New York State of Mind," and Paul Simon's "Bridge Over Troubled Water." Disc one features earnest, rousing performances like ...
Four years after the pinnacle of Stevie Wonder's mid-'70s typhoon of classic albums, Hotter Than July was the proper follow-up to Songs in the Key of Life (his Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants concept record was actually a soundtrack to an obscure movie that fared miserably in theaters). It also found Wonder in a different musical climate ...
During times of extreme political and social change, Stevie Wonder's voice and songwriting served as cultural and spiritual guideposts to many a listener, often lending insight and a barometer with which to measure the ways of the world. But that was largely during the golden phase of his career, generally regarded as being the late '60s through ...
Stevie Wonder's career in the 1980s was a source of frustration to the fans he had earned in the '60s and '70s. In 1982, there were a few new songs on a greatest-hits album and a duet with Paul McCartney. Then came this soundtrack to a Gene Wilder comedy that was simultaneously more of a pop vocal album than most soundtracks and yet less than a ...
A fabulous assortment of artists from different areas of the rock genre give a glorifying tribute to Curtis Mayfield in a sparkling 17-song package. Stevie Winwood does a partying rendition of "It's All Right"; a version of "Let's Do It Again" is performed by Mayfield and the Repercussions that mimics the Staple Singers' original; Mayfield does ...
Stevie Wonder was beginning to rebel against the Motown hit factory mentality in the early '70s. While he certainly hadn't lost his commercial touch, Wonder was anxious to address social concerns, experiment with electronics, and not be restricted by radio and marketplace considerations. Still, he gave the label another definitive smash with the ...
Released in 1982, the double-album Original Musiquarium I summarizes Stevie Wonder's classic period of the '70s, concentrating primarily on the hits, but adding a few album tracks to hint at the depth of his albums, as well as four new songs (one for each side, all pleasant, none particularly remarkable). Though there could be some dispute about ...
Motown never tires of finding ways to repackage their history, but a 40th anniversary celebration is one of the better excuses they could have for releasing another multi-disc retrospective, such as the double-disc Motown 40 Forever. Unfortunately, devoting the first disc to classic '60s hits and isolating '80s and '90s singles works against the ...
With a new contract from Motown in his hand, Stevie Wonder released Music of My Mind, his first truly unified record and, with the exception of a single part on two songs, the work of a one-man-band. Everything he had learned about musicianship, engineering, and production during his long apprenticeship in the Snakepit at Motown Studios came ...
Instead of following Stax/Volt's pattern and delivering an exhaustive box set containing all of their singles, Motown decided to limit their singles box, Hitsville USA: The Motown Singles Collection 1959-1971, to four discs that concentrated on the hits. There are a handful of wonderful lesser-known songs here, such as the Contours' "First I Look ...
Stevie Wonder shocked fans by taking only two years to release his next new non-soundtrack studio album, Characters. Unfortunately, it had long since become clear that Wonder was willing to settle for good pop music without challenging himself to make great pop music. And by now, a big chunk of his formerly mass audience had gotten the message: ...
PSM's A Rock'N'Roll Christmas, Vol. 2 is a weird collection of pop/rock, new wave, post-grunge, R&B, adult contemporary, novelty, and pop-metal Christmas tunes. There's nothing linking these songs together -- Dave Edmunds' "Run Rudolph Run" and Squeeze's "Christmas Day" are the only ones that could possibly be connected, stylistically -- but there ...
Notable for containing Wonder's then-most recent Top Ten hit, the title track, and its follow-up, "Yester-Me, Yester-You, Yesterday," this album otherwise contains contemporary filler like "Light My Fire," plus a peculiar arrangement of "Hello, Young Lovers" from The King and I that makes it sound like "For Once In My Life." ~ William Ruhlmann, ...
Radio Disney: Kid Jams 2 collects kid-friendly pop and rock from Weird Al Yankovic, Queen, Sister Sledge, Aaron Carter, and Jason Raize. Christina Aguilera's "Reflection," Britney Spears' "Sodapop," Will Smith's "Just the Two of Us," and Lou Bega's "Disney Mambo #5 (A Little Bit Of...)" are some of the highlights from this enjoyable compilation. ~ ...
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