Stevie wonder- Dud or Really bad?

As far as his albums go, I don't think I've heard an entire one that wasn't from the 70's. I will say, though, that the last great song he recorded was "Overjoyed".

stevie has a handful of albums i'd place amongst my favorites of all time, so jimmy, i'm going to have to ask what you find so damned overblown about his 70s work? ;) but, on the other hand, a compilation of his finest sides pre-music of my mind would trump all of those albums if only for its sheer exuberance.

in many ways, i think that like stax was to soul, stevie was to r&b, in that often times the records were the extreme of the genre and therefore wouldn't be recommended to the average motown listener or what have you. that said, there's a bracing humanity to his work and what i love most about innervisions, for one, is that stevie makes me feel like he's singing to ME, as corny as that doubtlessly sounds.

Interesting question is why... I suspect there is a profoundly different sensibility with the core black audience. I keep trying with the ballads but I haven't found a way in yet..

Also musicians keep writing ballads - not just commercially-minded musicians either. Why, if people don't like them? The obvious answer is that people do. But it is mostly true that the specific subset of 'people' writing and thinking about music (here at least but everywhere else I've been too) tend not to like ballads.

Well, Orwell seemed to hate 'em, but he's dead.

(Constant Lambert talking to Arthur Hutchings re. Faure, quoted in the introduction to Lambert's Music Ho!, 1934)

Also they're always men with some need to have clearly delineated music tastes with which to prop up their poorly-defined sense of identity - ballads are not 'differentiating' as they take roughly the same form no matter what their genre of origin is...

ballads are perceived by many as grown-up music and rock is hyped as rebellion (adolescent) music, so some fans don't like ballads (ain't rock n roll enuff, see?).

this also ties in with what Marcello wrote about perception of black music:

but there you are again – the theory (only ever held by middle-class whites) that black pop music between 1959-68 is somehow “pure” and “sacred” and that all subsequent pop music has been a cheap bastardisation of “truth.”

music from that era is somehow associated with 'the cause' or someat - part of the holy sixties/counterculture (rebellion again) scene. many of those who are prejudiced that way were too young or serious to realize that much of the music started off as and continued to be for having fun, dancing and smooching.

at least that's what I usually mean by "rockism" - the inability (of rock fans) to get past a kneejerk reaction to any music(ical elements) that smack(s) of adult complacency/satisfaction/functionality/sentimentality/etc or preteen innocence/gullibility.

if you run screaming when a smoochy smooth r&b ballad comes on, yew miight be a rockist...

(oh, and Stevie's done lots of great ballads throughout his career)

As compared to all other types of pop music which are noted for their lyrical and musical complexity.

Ballads allow for plenty of musical complexity. I see no reason why they wouldn't.

I think Stevie Wonder is one of the few artists who I might (wrongly I'm sure, I instinctively feel this kind of thinking is wrong but:) feel justified in using as a yardstick i.e. if somebody doesn't have at least some love for Stevie Wonder then I would have to think "something wrong with that dude"

woah my friend al said the same thing yesterday

I suspect most of the "awful cheesy SW ballads" hate upthread is vexed by his kind of being the original MODEL for the kind of ballad that's read as awful / cheesy / overblown since, I dunno, the 80s or so. (But personally I feel like you can hear that, a bit, which saves it -- a 70s Wonder ballad doesn't read to me as rote and sentimental, it reads slightly more as an early birthing of stuff that would come to seem rote and sentimental.)

If it hadn't been for his ballads, I wouldn't have been into Stevie Wonder much. Virtually all of his musical genius lies in those wonderful, harmonically complex, ballads!

(And I'm speaking of the 70s stuff, mind you, not "I Just Called To Say I Love You")

(And that's not to say the way he did them was some kind of dramatic radical innovative CREATION of that mode, just that it doesn't even nearly carry the baggage of rote-and-cheesy that it's possible to project backwards onto it.)

his music has a high cheese quotient. he's obviously brilliant tho.

"Old ILX" morelike "retarded waste of space" amirite?

even the schmaltziest Stevie ballad has Stevie singing, though.

stevie wonder episode of the cosby show was awesome

I think Stevie Wonder CCR is one of the few artists who I might (wrongly I'm sure, I instinctively feel this kind of thinking is wrong but:) feel justified in using as a yardstick i.e. if somebody doesn't have at least some love for Stevie Wonder CCR

don't get me wrong I love Stevie but I can totally see how he would seem completely annoying to people who only know "That's What Friends Are For" or the Jungle Fever soundtrack or whatever

whereas if you can't dig CCR on some level, you are not human

but most of the strawmen you cite would know, thanks to movies and his great habit of licensing songs, all kinds of stuff: "Sir Duke," "Superstition," "I Wish," "My Cherie Amour," "Isn't She Lovely," etc.

btw he hasn't lost it: A Time For Love was pretty good.

Wow, scanning the beginning of this thread it's shocking to me to a. read posts from people professing to outright dislike all of his stuff and b. seeing such subdued responses to the stevie hate.

Shakey, I don't really like CCR at all. John Fogerty's voice gives me a bad reaction. Plus I find the songwriting tedious.

whereas if you can't dig CCR on some level, you are not human involved in the search for some lost repository of salt-of-the-earth white-people righteousness and/or authenticity

Or not really, but that seems to be what's at stake there, a little bit, in certainly larger senses

NB I like some CCR songs okay. You know, the catchy ones.

Plus I find the songwriting tedious.

does not compute

what does that mean, that you hate music? all music is written.

oh sorry - reading too quickly (missed the "the")

I can't write to save my life today, anyway, so...

How did this turn into a CCR discussion?

I rode an elevator with Stevie Wonder once (and his "handlers"). He smelled like very expensive cologne.

If you can't find something of his to enjoy in his catalog, I'd hasten to suggest that you really aren't trying (or listening) very hard. I mean, he hasn't done anything worth listening to for over a couple of decades by now, but still.

"Old ILX" morelike "retarded waste of space" amirite?

-- Dom Passantino, Monday, 7 January 2008 23:18 (Yesterday) Link

No fucking doubt. I don't love Stevie unconditionally--I think too many of his songs in his mature period could lose a couple of minutes with nothing lost--but i hate the first part of this thread unconditionally

I mean, he hasn't done anything worth listening to for over a couple of decades by now

This is actually wrong. They may not have been as strong as his 70s output, but - "I Just Called...." and "Part Time Lover" aside - the four "proper" albums he has released since then have all been quite nice indeed. Just not up there with his 70s stuff. On the other hand, they are way better than "Journey Through The Secret Life Of Plants".

Why were there so many threads started around 2001 that all about dissing some beloved musician or band only to be revived and set straight a few years later?

Were there more retards on ILM back then?

I rode an elevator with Stevie Wonder once (and his "handlers"). He smelled like very expensive cologne.

Hah, I was in an elevator with Stevie Wonder once, as well. He had a seeing-eye dog w/him, and at one point he firmly said "Down, down on the floor, now, lady!" to his dog, and an older woman on the elevator immediately dropped to her knees and pushed her purse towards him.

True story.

love stevie wonder ballads

Don't ever bump this thread again.

Hah, I was in an elevator with Stevie Wonder once, as well. He had a seeing-eye dog w/him, and at one point he firmly said "Down, down on the floor, now, lady!" to his dog, and an older woman on the elevator immediately dropped to her knees and pushed her purse towards him.

True story.

-- dell, Tuesday, January 8, 2008 1:28 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Link

this is a story that will make me laugh for years and years

Stevie Wonder exuberates fantasticisms

It happened in Snopesville, AL, no lie.

my Stevie Wonder story is that I saw him play here when I was a kid - my mom was a Librarian-in-Charge at an LACoPL and all the in-charges from around the county came to Watts for some event (I was nine or ten, I don't remember what the event was) and he played a few songs solo. Stevie Wonder's voice in a small library is really something to hear and I wish I had been about four years older because I would have taped it.

That's amazing! All of the people who I've met who grew up in soCal seem to take it for granted. It still seems like Oz to me, right or wrong..........

http://www.sfgate.com/blogs/images/sfgate/culture/2007/08/02/stevie-wonder.jpg

DON'T FUCKING DRIVE DRUNK

http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/thumb/b/be/300px-BFfourbars.jpg

On August 6, 1973, just days after the release of Innervisions, Wonder was in a serious automobile accident while on tour, when he struck a telephone poll while driving drunk. This left him in a coma for four days and resulted in a permanent loss of his sense of smell.

I didn't realize the driver was drunk. Explains how Stevie Wonder has been using so much time fighting drunk driving since then.

One of the things he said in the mid 80s campaign was that "Before I ride with a drunk, I'll drive myself".

Umm, Geir. Reread that, then compare it with the following:

On August 6, 1973, just days after the release of Innervisions, Wonder was in a serious automobile accident while on tour, when a log from a truck went through a passenger window and struck him in the head. This left him in a coma for four days and resulted in a permanent loss of his sense of smell.

oh wait theyre different. i thought he was driving drunk... didnt i hear that?

dude, he's blind. he would have hit that telephone pole drunk or not.

Stevie is as Classic as it gets, and there are still good songs on Conversation Peace and the Jungle Fever soundtrack. I need to listen to A Time 2 Love.

His last album at least has "Moon Blue," which is pretty gorgeous. The DJ Spinna remix of "My Love Is On Fire" is the only version of that song I'll listen to, tho.

I would rank "A Time 2 Love" as his best album since "Hotter Than July" although not by a huge margin as they are all pretty decent (maybe apart from those two soundtracks)

this thread deserves to die a painful death

so nobody should post

http://images.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2008/01/08/obama/story.jpg

love and affection
moving in the direction

he barely makes a dollar
and you best believe
she hardly makes a penny

just enough

JUST ENOUGH

for the citaaaay

Skyscrapers and everythang

Stevland Hardaway Judkins

Ol' Ethan Padgett

The Dirtbombs cover of Livin for the City is really worth hearing if you never have.

Their cover of Maybe Your baby is better, though, IMHO...

they don't do bad covers