Stevie Wonder-The Key Of Life
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Stevie wonder was born in 1950 as Stevland Hardaway Judkins. He was born six weeks premature which made him go blind when he was still a baby. As a black blind person that was born in the early 50’s, it is almost unbelieveble that he succeed as an artist. His great talent allowed him to sing and play various instruments such as piano, bass drums and much more. Here is one of his most famous songs.
There is a reason for the title of this e-book. Besides the relation of the name to one of the earliest most magnifisent albums of stevie wonder, it shows how this great artist managed to write and sing about so many subjects, and conect it’s music to our life. The most common subject in his songs is love, and I think that this is the most touching one, “Joy Inside My Tears”, from the album “Songs In The Key Of Life”(1976).
in the previous song Stevie emphasizes one of the greatest things in love: you can be happy even when life gets tough. Here is another song about the same subject, that gives a bit different perspective, “Part Time Lover”:
The previous song was taken from the album “In Square Circle” released in 1985. The album won Best Male R&B Vocal Performance at the 1986 Grammy Awards. This album combines R&B and soul, but most importantly electronic. in these sense this album does not belong to the classical era of Stevie Wonder. One of the songs in this album, “Never In Your Sun”, contains a very special drums intro, and shows one of Wonder’s early attempts to combine electronic instruments as a major part in his songs.
Stevie grew in a religious family. Since he was a young child he started to sing and play at church. His album Innervisions,released August 3, 1973, contains several songs about this topic such as Higher Ground,Visions and Jesus Children Of America. One of the most beautiful songs in this album is Higher Ground, which talks about salvation and correcting our sins:”I’m so darn glad he let me try it again ‘Cause my last time on earth I lived a whole world of sin”, “Gonna keep on tryin’ Till I reach my highest ground.”
As a black man in America, Wonder had to confront racism and prejudice. Maybe in this part we can understand why the topics of his songs and the music itself are so varied: he was a diverse person, who had to overcome many obstacles. This is one of his song about this topic, from “Hotter Than July” (1980) , called Cash In Your Face. it is about a black man with respectable work and education, who is discriminated against when trying to buy an apartment because he is black. This song is mostly interesting because it was written as a dialog between the racist landlord and the black person.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHWdMNdK2Xc
The album from the previous page, Hotter Than July, involves Pop funk and R&B. The song Master Blaster(Jammin’) , which is mainly about the joy in music, is rather expirimental in compairesant to this album, and opens with a very unusuall drum roll.
Stevie wonder has started to do music when he was about 11 years old. we can’t cover all of his work in this book, but it is possible to see (and hear) threw the few songs in hear that his music was innovative, and that he is telling a new story in each song, relating us all. To finish, here is another song about love, the subject that provides inspiration to musicians all over the world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYQfWJNWe3I
Published: Jan 12, 2020
Latest Revision: Jan 12, 2020
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Copyright © 2020
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