Stevie Wonder’s Songs of ‘Love Mentalism’
The holy trinity of modern music, according to Mrs. Shamus, is Johnny Cash, Al Green and Stevie Wonder. But the Mrs. and I have always disagreed on which Stevie Wonder. I prefer the ’60s singles and the “Innervisions” album. She is a hardcore “Songs In The Key of Life” fan. I’ve always thought that album was too overstuffed  two discs and an EP!  but I sat down to listen to it again this weekend and found myself gobsmacked by its greatness. I’d still argue for “Innervisions,” but why split semantic hairs? They are both major achievements by one of the most magical artists of the late 20th century.
I know that every new soul artist from India.Arie to John Legend and Kanye West bows down to Stevie Wonder, as they should. But do younger listeners today really understand his importance? Do they know him mostly for treacle like “I Just Called To Say I Love You”? For decades now, Stevie has been calling it in musically, or paying more attention to his important work on social causes. Some may rightly wonder: Who is this guy who rates a standing ovation just for showing up and gets a Grammy nomination for singing a Gap ad Xmas song? Wonder, as unjust as it is, may suffer from hanging around and doing guest spots on Sting albums and Tony Bennett specials long after his last great stretch of pioneering work.
But I hope I’m wrong. I hope he’s still being rediscovered. For those of us who grew up in the ’60s and ’70s, we were raised on a soundtrack of Stevie Wonder songs. Thirty years ago, from October 1976 to June 1977, “Songs In The Key of Life” ranked every month in the Top 10 albums, two of those months at No. 1. From 1972 to 1977, as Wonder emancipated himself from Motown’s grip and unleashed his muse, he released five albums, a string of hit singles and won three Grammys for Album of the Year. One could argue (and I do) that his burst of creative output is just as important as the Beatles’ similar stretch in the ’60s, or Dylan’s.
Listening to “Songs” again, I hear a young visionary who just couldn’t contain the music pouring out of his soul. It’s all here: love ballads, funk explosions, Latin rhythms, jazz fusion, Nawlins boogie, synthesizer experiments, harmonica workouts. In the sort of weird liner notes, Stevie explains that he wants to spread his “love mentalism” to the world, and lays out his mathematical key to the songs of life: “love + love - hate = love energy.” But the “love mentalism” phrase strikes a chord with me, because Wonder’s lyrical ideas of love (and, to a degree, God) have always struck me as the expressions of a person who cannot see the physical world, and so creates an alternative universe of mental feeling. And sometimes that feeling comes out in awkward, airy descriptions that are more internal. Innervisions, if you will. Musically, the song “Sir Duke” is the key to me. The idols he cherishes here are Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Glenn Miller. He didn’t pick the more radical jazz be-boppers  no mention of Bird or Coltrane or Monk. That’s because Wonder’s music has always been more mainstream in its approach. But the cutting edges he works into the formal framework of popular song is what makes him so damn daring and unique.
The joy of rediscovering “Songs” is to hear how he creates such hard, deep grooves out of synthesizers. Wonder has never been given proper credit for his producing skills: The bass and horn and synthesizer lines that jumble and tumble throughout “Sir Duke,” “Contusion,” “I Wish,” “Black Man,” “Isn’t She Lovely” and the second part of “Ordinary Pain” are simply stunning (as is the Latin drive that builds up from “Another Star”.) Most artists might be able to create a funk beat, but they couldn’t infuse it with such layerings of musical richness. Basically, they couldn’t make you think about what you’re hearing  and make your ass shake at the same time.
“Songs” doesn’t have any great ballads like “Golden Lady” or “You Are The Sunshine Of My Life” (”Isn’t She Lovely” is sort of a ballad, but not.) The slower love songs here are mostly effective, though, because of Wonder’s gift for pitting the “hot” soulful scrape of his voice against his stately, “cold” and beautiful piano melodies. (I’m no music theory expert, but I’ve read that Wonder is a master of melisma, or stretching a syllable across several notes. Like many pop geniuses, such as Bacharach and Brian Wilson, his music is more technically complex than it may sound to the untrained ear.)
Wonder calls “Songs” a “conglomerate of thoughts” and it’s got a bit of a kitchen-sink approach: God, love, nature, birth, heartache, racial harmony, childhood memories, musical mentors and life on other planets are all addressed, some more successfully than others. In his late 20s, Wonder was at that sweet time of peak creativity and just let out everything that had been building up inside his soul. There are a few plodding songs on Disc 2, but it’s rather amazing how cohesively the entire album hangs together. Critics like to call it sprawling, but I don’t see that as a negative. This is Wonder at the height of his ambition  this is his “Smile,” his “Rhapsody In Blue,” his “Love Supreme,” his “Blonde on Blonde,” his “What’s Going On,” his “Blue,” his “Astral Weeks.”
Of course, there are probably fans of “The Secret Life of Plants” or the soundtrack to “Jungle Fever” or some of the ’80s-’90s singles who think that “Songs In The Key of Life” wasn’t his last major work. We can agree to respectfully disagree on that. But we probably all hope he’s got one more great album percolating somewhere in that cavernous musical mind. If nothing else, I’ve always wanted him to record an album of harmonica instrumentals  he is an unacknowledged master of the mouth harp, as well as about every other instrument he chooses to pick up. But that’s why he’s Stevie Wonder. That’s why he still rates those standing ovations.
(Cross-posted at Bad For The Glass: A Culture Blog. www.badfortheglass.blogspot.com)
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