By: Hudson Dexter
Singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Stevie Wonder is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential artists of all time. Through 23 studio albums, 25 Grammy Awards, and an innumerable number of iconic performances, Wonder has proven himself not just a musical force to be reckoned with, but also a strong advocate for social change. During his classic period from 1972-1976, one album emerged as a testament to all that Stevie Wonder truly represents, that being his 1973 album, Innervisions.
Juxtaposed with his early years of clean and catchy soul singles, Innervisions displays a striking contrast, covering heavy topics like the desperate lives of Black Americans, society’s complicity to violence and war, and the corruption present in American politics. Two songs fully capture the essence of what Innervisions is, “Living For The City” and “He’s Misstra Know-It-All”.
“Living For The City” is a track that powerfully blends soul and rock to tell the story of a young black man in New York City. Throughout the song’s run of just over 7 minutes, Wonder illustrates the poor comeuppance of the aforementioned young man, his journey from Mississippi to New York City, a clear allusion to the Second Great Migration, and how he is promptly framed for a crime, arrested, and sentenced to ten years in prison. Wonder blends both the studio recorded music alongside live performances of the different characters talking and the sounds of the cityscape to allow the listener to uniquely experience the unnerving reality of racial discrimination in America. The song stands as a testament to the suffering countless African Americans have faced unjustly. Rolling Stone perfectly dubbed it “a bleak seven-minute narrative about the broken dreams of Black America”. If any song on Innervisions displays the mature and gritty shift in Stevie Wonder’s music with this album, it would have to be “Living For The City”.
One of Innervisions’ lesser known yet equally important tracks is “He’s Misstra Know-It-All” a mellow ballad with beautiful and gripping harmony, giving the lengthy description of a “man with a plan” and a “counterfeit dollar in his hand”. The song serves as an extended metaphor for the slick businessmen and politicians that use their power purely for selfish gain, with a stranglehold on the American people. The historical context of this era is important to consider when interpreting this song, as it was released just a year after Richard Nixon’s infamous Watergate Scandal shook the nation. Wonder created this song as a means to address such discrepancies. Furthermore, he took the route of simply describing these kinds of characters in power, rather than giving an in-the-face message, allowing audiences to find for themselves that changes need to be made. By advocating for change in a more intrinsic way, “He’s Misstra Know-It-All” is an unmistakable part of what makes Innervisions such a landmark part of Stevie Wonder’s discography.
Truly, Innervisions completed Stevie Wonder’s transformation from a commercial, cutesy musical show to a genuine maestro, one that is not afraid to tell the world what he believes in, and unsurprisingly, the album was received with overwhelmingly positive reception. It even won Album of the Year at the 1974 Grammy Awards. Over the following 3 years, Wonder went on to create Fulfillingness’ First Finale and Songs in the Key of Life, both widely regarded as musical masterpieces, reinforcing many of the pushes for social change that took root throughout Innervisions. As the title suggests, Innervisions allows the audience an unapologetically authentic look inward at Stevie Wonder’s mind, which continues to reflect on the music industry and society as a whole “Until the day that is the day that are no more”.
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