#350 Stevie Wonder, 'Music of My Mind' (1972)

Previously #285

To the casual observer, Stevie Wonder is a piano playing hit machine. But he’s so much more than that. He’s an innovator. He’s a musical genius, and I don’t use this term lightly. On most of his records, but this one in particular, Stevie Wonder plays every single note of every instrument (except for trombone on the first track and guitar on track 4). He was doing it well ahead of Prince. Impressive at best, but for a blind man, it’s just astounding. He’s always been one of my favourite drummers. He has so much groove. Even his harmonica playing is distinctive. When Stevie’s harmonica comes in, you know just who’s playing it (obviously on his songs, but even on songs he’s guested on).

This album was the first album under his new contract at Motown. Under the new contract he managed to negotiate full artistic control. Motown were notorious for not allowing their artists full control but in the early ‘70s artists like Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye managed to pry that away from them. Around this time, Wonder became interested in an emerging and exciting new instrument, the synthesizer. He enlisted synth innovators, Malcolm Cecil and Robert Margouleff from Tonto’s Expanding Head Band to produce the album, and this was the start of the next phase of his career, a sound that was synth-heavy and innovative. On his fourteenth studio album, the 22-year-old Stevie Wonder had finally come of age.

#rs500albums