Sunday, June 17, 2007

293. Stevie Wonder - Innervisions (1973)
















Track Listing

1. Too High
2. Visions
3. Living For The City
4. Golden Lady
5. Higher Ground
6. Jesus Children Of America
7. All In Love Is Fair
8. Don't You Worry About A Thing
9. He's Misstra Know It All

Review

Well we've had a nice couple of albums the last couple of days. Although the styles are so different that it is impossible to compare them, I probably take even more pleasure listening to this album than Dark Side of The Moon. Innervisions is my favourite Stevie Wonder album, it might be tied with Talking Book, and while I think that Talking Book as my two favourite Stevie Wonder songs, Superstition and When I Fall In Love, Innervisions ends up being the better album.

Innervisions is a work of beauty at all levels, the music is exquisite, from the guitars to the synths and the amazing harmonica work, the message is also important, this is Wonder's most political and angriest album and that is a good thing. Wonder balances the political message with truly beautiful romantic pieces, however. There is really nothing to fault in this album, not one song is a dud or anywhere close to one. The songs which don't shine through so completely here like Visions would probably be highlights of any other artist, the album is just too perfect.

The suite Living For The City is the closest to a political R&B Prog-suite and it sounds perfect, form the voices that Stevie makes to the great use of ambient sounds and it's 7 minutes actually sound too short. If I have a problem with anything in this album it would be the intro to Don't You Worry About A Thing, which can get a bit annoying, but the song that follows it is such happy perfectly crafted pop that you bear with the intro more than happily.

This is one of those albums that is definitely in my top 10 of all time and it should be in your too. If I could give it more than 10 I would. So get it now at Amazon UK or US.

Track Highlights

1. Living For The City
2. Higher Ground
3. Don't You Worry About A Thing
4. Golden Lady

Final Grade

10/10 (Perfect!)

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

It was the third of five consecutive albums widely hailed as his "classic period", along with Music of My Mind, Talking Book, Fulfillingness' First Finale, and Songs in the Key of Life. Considered by many fans and colleagues to be his masterpiece, the nine tracks encompass a wide range of themes and issues: from drug references in "Too High" and "Don't You Worry 'Bout a Thing"; social anger in "Higher Ground" and "Living for the City"; to love in the ballads "All in Love is Fair" and "Golden Lady." The album's closer, "He's Misstra Know It All," is a scathing attack on then-US President Richard Nixon, similar to his song "You Haven't Done Nothin'".

The album was originally released on Motown's Tamla label on August 3, 1973. As with many of Stevie Wonder's albums the lyrics, composition and production are almost entirely his own work, with the synthesizer used prominently throughout the album.

Innervisions won Grammy Awards for Album of the Year and Best Engineered Non-Classical Recording in 1974, while "Living for the City" won the Grammy for Best R&B Song.

In 2003, the album was ranked number 23 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. In 2001, VH1 named it the 31st greatest album of all time.

Living for the City, get the album version for the full 7 minutes of glorious music:

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