Before anything else, I’m gonna go over my process a little bit– how I’ve been considering revisiting it, and how I tested out some adjustments in this listen. The problem I’m trying to solve is that there are artists, older ones in particular, who have enormous catalogues. Stevie Wonder, for example, has 26 unique studio albums. At my established pace of one new album a day, that is a full month to get through one artist. For a long time, I’ve just eaten that cost and accepted it as a part of being strict, maintaining a purity of process, it’s been almost a show of my integrity that I treated even these artists with tons of music the same way. I think that’s neat, and there’s a lot I respect about that mindset still, but I don’t think it quite works for me anymore. Increasingly, both in my life writ large and manifest in this project I undertake, I’ve been feeling that leaning onto a purity of process can act as a crutch. It makes it possible and somewhat easy for me to be less worried on what I’m actually doing, and more on that I’m doing it faithfully. I think there’s certainly a beauty in that, but I also think it’s incomplete. I can do better. It’s a little bit hard for me to step away from the structure I build for myself because I know how spineless I can be without external structure, but I think it’s important, I think it gives me options, I think if I can learn to do it well it will let me do more, and better.
All that to say, I’ve been thinking up alternative structures for these high-investment type artists, because as it stands I either listen to them and they take up a disproportionately large portion of my finite time (and take that time away from a large number of other artists), or they are too intimidating and so I end up just avoiding listening to them at all. I’ve thought about listening to high-investment artists concurrently with lower-investment artists but only listening to an album every other day; I’ve considered listening to two albums a day with one listen each; I’ve considered doing only one listen a day and spending two days on each album (but again, concurrent with standard pace shorter artists, so it’s more like these heavy loads are running in the background); I’ve considered listening to only the most famous or purportedly influential works and making a new designation of listening that marks artists for whom I’ve down research and acquainted myself with, but not listened to systemically, and giving myself space to learn about artists in a way entirely separate from the “listens” I’ve based everything else off of. I’m trying to be open to changes, to different options.
What I ended up doing with Stevie Wonder is listening to his first six albums at double speed– two albums a day, one time each. Part of my justification for this is that these albums are about 50% covers at the most, with little artistic control from Wonder himself, and that’s how I’ve treated cover albums historically. This didn’t actually save me much time, only three days. But mostly, it was an attempt to get myself moving, to try something, to practice letting myself off the hook for doing it exactly only the one way. I started listening to Wonder’s albums one a day twice through at Down to Earth, which upon listening to immediately felt a difference in quality for (which is a little rough, because I don’t think the methods of its make were all that different than those of Up-Tight).
So those first six albums are the ones I had the least attention on and were the ones I cared the least about. Wonder signed on with Motown when he was 12 years old. He got more artistic freedom as time went on, but especially in the beginning he did what they wanted, he was their musician. Not a unique story, but important to recognize. That meant he did a lot of covers of standards, it meant there were a lot of mentors and a lot of pretty specific guidance. There was a lot working with Henry Cosby in particular. As I mentioned, I’m kind of treating those early albums as B sides. I’m not really counting them for or against my feelings on him, on Wonder as an artist. Mostly because I don’t love them and I don’t think it’s fair to punish him for music he made under heavy guidance as a 12 year old. Heavy guidance is about as much as I can say, I don’t know the full extent to which Wonder had creative control over the music in the beginning; he did have songwriting credits on songs even in those early albums– usually on about 50% of the tracks, until Eivets Rednow in 1968 (at which point he would’ve been 18, 6 years into his contract, and still three years from legally being an adult). And, frankly, I did think those albums were lackluster. Again, how much of that was him not being experienced and how much was constraints placed on him by the label, I can’t say, but that’s my feeling.
I consider that early-Wonder. Not just early-Wonder, but Little Stevie. He’s young, he’s still coming into his own, he has limited control over his art. Wonder didn’t get to record an album outside the original contract he made as a 12 year old, and album with full artistic control, until Music of My Mind, his 14th album. However, he became the primary writer and producer of his tracks two albums before then with Signed, Sealed & Delivered. And before that, his albums had more original work than not starting from Eivets Rednow. Which is to say, there was a phase between Little Stevie and Classic Wonder in which he was coming into his own, steadily getting more and more control over his art, spanning roughly from Eivets Rednow in ’68 to Where I’m Coming From in ’71. There were several albums in that span I actually liked a good bit– I think that might’ve actually been my favorite phase. He still played with a full, rich band, and he was still held to commercial standards that I think held him grounded a little bit, even as he was exploring more and continually stretching out his own muscles and power. Where I’m Coming From I think might be my favorite Stevie Wonder album, going off this first listen. My general impression is that even if I don’t love every song, I can definitely get behind at least the vibe of all the albums from Down to Earth on. It makes me think I’ve really gotta listen to other 60s/70s R&B/Soul/Pop. I have a suspicion I’m going to be pretty favorably inclined to music in the soul to pop pipeline, the black pop music. It’s groovy, it feels good.
I was a little nervous going into “classic Stevie era”. I wanted to like it and be a big fan, and I thought I probably would, but I was a little nervous I was gonna find myself wanting more 3 minute songs and less 6 minutes songs, and that I was gonna want just a little less synthy stuff and more thick recorded bands. And, well, I was right. The “classic Stevie era” is a keystone moment in pop music history, it was definitive and transformative to the music scene and the industry, and I think if I’m being honest I never really liked Stevie Wonder more than I did in the albums just before that “classic Stevie era”. Innervisions and Songs In the Key of Life are the classics, are the albums of all time, but they weren’t super my favorite. Maybe that’s not totally fair, I definitely liked them a lot and thought they were good, they just didn’t at all meet the level of hype I’d built for them in my mind. I’m sure a lot of that hype is to some degree based on how they influenced and pioneered, and it’s hard to go and relive that retroactively, out of order, without the requisite history. Mostly I must feel like if I hadn’t known beforehand, I wouldn’t have known or guessed that these album in particular were notable and that’s kinda a bummer. With Songs In the Key of Life in particular it’s a little tricky just because it’s so long, it’s hard for me to keep my attention the whole time. The album is so long, and individual songs in the album are so long. But they’re definitely great, and I found a significant increase in appreciation and enjoyment of them even just from first to second listen, so I’m feeling it’s hard for me to say. Maybe I’ll love them later, Iunno.
The stuff after those two definitely fell back off a cliff. I liked Hotter Than July– it didn’t feel particularly special in any way, but it was solid. None of the other half dozen or so albums caught my attention at all. Wonder had his groove and it sounds pretty good, but at some point it’s all the same. I dunno, it just… there’s so much of it, and I could not meaningfully differentiate it. At least for his earlier stuff where he was still somewhat beholden to Motown he stuck to commercial friendly song lengths; in his later stuff, his songs all go on forever. That’s not really a problem by itself; I can forgive that and there’s lots of music for which I do. But these are long for no discernible reason. They are repetitious without any exploration, without any development. They don’t use the extra time to feel out new themes or expand on existing ones, they don’t play with textures, they don’t even really do, like, gratuitous instrumental solos. They just loop for an extra three minutes, and I am not a fan of that.
SO. ALL THAT TO SAY. Little Stevie: don’t care for, don’t care about, don’t really hold it against him. Developing Wonder: honestly, dig it, good stuff in there. Classic Stevie Wonder: loses me a little, but there’re definitely depths in there I haven’t plundered. Post-Classic Wonder: don’t care for, don’t care about, but kinda do hold it against him. Altogether, a high B-. There’s enough that I do like for a C to not make sense, but there’s plenty I don’t like, and none of the stuff I like I actually love, barring maybe Isn’t She Lovely which I have a preexisting emotional attachment to. So yeah, B-
Stevie Wonder complete, now listening to: Michigander
tunafruitsandwitch 