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Stevie Wonder.
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Wonder, Stevie (1950—)
In the 1970s, as pop music fractured into a thousand competing subgenres, Stevie Wonder blended pop, jazz, soul, rock, funk, and reggae without trivializing or pastiching...
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Stevie Wonder (born 1950) is one of the most cherished rhythm-and-blues singers and songwriters of his generation. The 19-time Grammy winner is known for his soulful voice and catchy tunes as well as ...
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Critical Essay by Jon Landau
[The range of material on I Was Made to Love Her] is very limited, making it difficult to listen to the album as a whole.
Stevie's … style is essentially a v...
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Critical Essay by Robert Christgau
Stevie Wonder is a fool. I state it that way—baldly, without qualification—because the qualifications are so obvious that they tempt us away from the t...
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Critical Essay by Ellen Willis
Wonder not only has attracted a huge interracial audience and made the cover of Newsweek at a time when there is little communication between black and white musical cul...
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Critical Essay by Robert Christgau
The first notes of Songs in the Key of Life waft up from a choir of humming colored folks who might be refugees from Vincente Minnelli's Cabin in the Sky. The...
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Critical Essay by Mikal Gilmore
[How] does one approach the prodigy who technically deserves the highest of accolades, yet allows the grandeur of his work to obfuscate his perspective?… Stevie ...
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Critical Essay by Vince Aletti
Wonder confronts us virtually single-handedly, grasps our expectations and wrestles them to the ground [in Songs in the Key of Life]. I give him four out of five falls g...
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Critical Essay by John Rockwell
[Stevie Wonder] isn't consistent; he has a distressing predilection for cosmic meanderings and soupy sentimentality. But listening to his albums in sequence is a...
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Critical Essay by Chris Albertson
[The multitude of songs on "Songs in the Key of Life"] is a generous portion by anybody's standards, but one that is praiseworthy only if the mat...
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Critical Essay by Jack Slater
[Stevie Wonder] has begun writing and producing music exploring several layers of experience—music that addresses itself not only to one's romantic needs bu...
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Critical Essay by C. Dragonwagon
Stevie's songs of [his earliest songwriting] period undoubtedly have the Motown stamp on them, some of them also clearly have his special touch. With few except...
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Critical Essay by S. K. Oberbeck
"My Cherie Amour" and "Yester-Me, Yester-You, Yesterday," are more haunting ballads than soul tunes. The funky, grinding backgrounds of [St...
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Critical Essay by Arnold Brodsky
[Stevie Wonder] specializes in sentimental novelty songs which are very good when they work, very bad when they don't. "Never Had a Dream Come True...
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Critical Essay by Vince Aletti
Any of the 12 songs on Stevie Wonder's [Signed, Sealed & Delivered] holds more creative singing than you're likely to find in another performer'...
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Critical Essay by Vince Aletti
It's only when I stop dancing and singing all around the room that it occurs to me Stevie Wonder's Music of My Mind may not be the great album of the year....
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Critical Essay by Lenny Kaye
Stevie Wonder has become the brightest light of all [Motown's prodigies], his work since Music of My Mind consistently innovative and lustily creative, propelled by...
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Critical Essay by Jon Landau
Stevie Wonder has replaced Sly Stone as the most significant individual black innovator in the twin fields of R&B and rock. He has also replaced him as the most popula...
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Critical Essay by Ken Emerson
[The cover of Fulfillingness' First Finale is] remarkably apt, for the careers of few performers in popular music have been such uninterrupted ascents. Nothing, no...
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Critical Essay by Maureen Orth
Emotion—direct and straightforward—is the key to all of Stevie's music. His only real weakness is an occasional lapse into sentimentality that comes...
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Wonder, Stevie (1950—)
Stevie Wonder
Critical Essay by Jon Landau
