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By Kevin Powell
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What the world needs now is Stevie Wonder. That means America, too. I do not say this to be excessively sentimental, nor to overstate the evidence. I simply quote my rural South Carolina born-and-bred mother: “The world sho do feel like it on it last go-round.”
My ma ain’t lying, and Stevie is indeed a wonder. Yes, he is one of the utmost singers and songwriters and musicians and producers and artists of any form we’ve ever experienced, and is still going hard in the paint at age 76, with a tour happening this very moment. And yes he is, undeniably, a genius of epic proportions. Few creatives can say they have sculpted iconoclastic art across seven decades, from the 1960s when he was a preteen signed to the fabled Motown Records, to the present, with fresh music coming in 2027.
To put this in context, Stevie first became a megastar when President John F. Kennedy was in office, and here he is in the era of President Donald J. Trump and MAGA. He has been here with us through the Civil Rights Movement, the birth of the Super Bowl and Apple everything, the AIDS and crack and Fentanyl pandemics, America’s first Black president, COVID, endless mass shootings, and the atomic explosion of new scenes and new cultures like punk, disco, grunge, hip-hop, reality TV and TikTok. Stevie has witnessed wars ranging from Vietnam to Iran, and he has been a label mate of The Temptations’ Eddie Kendricks and is an adoring fan of Eddie’s namesake, Kendrick Lamar.
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That is why this 50th anniversary year of Stevie’s masterpiece double album, Songs in the Key of Life, matters to multitudes, including me. It is because there is nothing like it and, I would debate with anyone, it is the greatest album ever made, greater than any single album by The Beatles, Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, Joni Mitchell, The Beach Boys, Carole King, Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, Bruce Springsteen, Whitney Houston, Bruno Mars, or The Rolling Stones.
Because Songs in the Key of Life is not merely a record but an immersive experience like, say, Dolby Cinema at an AMC movie theater. You cannot just listen to its 21 tracks. You have to sit with and sit inside these pieces. I curiously felt this as a child in grade school when a teacher introduced us kiddies to Songs’ two most popular cuts, “Sir Duke” and “I Wish.”
As a youth, I had no clue who “Sir Duke” was (Duke Ellington), nor did I get until years later that Stevie was educating us on musicology before Prince, over a jazz-infused funkadelic groove. Nor did I realize “I Wish” was every ghetto lad’s saga, as sonically formidable in a little over four minutes as The Autobiography of Malcolm X or Piri Thomas’ Down These Mean Streets in its theatrical ebb and flow.
But this is what great art does. It speaks to its time, and it speaks to the times to come. America turned 200 on July 4, 1976, nearly three months before Songs circulated. We were recovering from the double insanities of Vietnam and President Richard M. Nixon’s Watergate scandal; and we were less than a 10-pack removed from the political assassinations of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy in 1968. America was at an ugly and gut-churning crossroads, with some already crudely resisting whatever democratic gains had come because of stacks upon stacks of movement protests.
Stevie saw and felt every bit of it. This is why I believe for both personal and social reasons it took him a minimum of two dozen months to finish Songs in the Key of Life. We need to remember Stevie was only 26 years old when this multi-disc was released. As Dave Chappelle would say to me in the 2000s about Chappelle’s Show, Stevie was determined to craft something which revealed all he grappled with as a Black man in America, on his terms, and with his liberated imagination.
There is a freedom in that one cannot comprehend if one does not know what it is to be Black in the United States, from the jump in 1619 till now. It is a seemingly eternal quest for that word freedom—from slavery and segregation to Rosa Parks and George Floyd—for the right to simply be, without damage to one’s soul, to one’s body, to one’s mind. And it can be argued, credibly, that no other group on this soil has struggled for freedom, for justice, for equality, and for true democracy as long and as doggedly as Black folks. Nor have attempted to spiritually uplift America, tenderly, and time and again, the way its Black citizenry has.
That is how it is not lost on me why Stevie begins Songs in the Key of Life with “Love’s In Need of Love Today.” Because other than perhaps Bob Marley, no other global musician has spoken about love as much as Stevie Wonder. Songs is an open love letter to us, the human race, and Songs is a blueprint for how to make an album, with admirers as diverse as Elton John, Michael Jackson, Lauryn Hill, Meshell Ndegeocello, and George Michael. Because it is a project of astonishing lyrical and genre-defying variety, of breathless, head-nodding musicianship, of the sort of poetic elegance and picturesque observations we would find in the collected works of a William Shakespeare or a Sonia Sanchez.
But it is also a blueprint for how we should be, as Americans, as children of this Earth. Know and love yourself. Know and love those who are not you. Never erase people or their histories or their identities or their contributions. Acknowledge and help people who are suffering. Honor our children. Honor our elders. And as Dr. King pleaded with us at the end of his life, do not abandon poor people of any race. It is all there on Songs in the Key of Life—a majestic musical exploration of Dr. King’s passionate longing for the beloved community.
I did not know how much community meant to Stevie until I received a DM via X, one day nearly two years ago, from a woman saying her husband had read one of my books and wanted to talk with me. I had recently been hacked on a couple of social media platforms, so I was hesitant to respond, and when I did I was quite nervous. But the outreach was legit; it was Stevie’s wife, Tomeeka. I was in tremendous and utter shock. Stevie Wonder wanted to talk with me, the little boy who worshipped his music straight into adulthood? This could not be real. Yet it was.
I was on vacation with my wife out of the country, but I wound up on that first phone call with Stevie for three hours. It was like listening to a direct disciple of the divine. I kept asking Stevie what I should call him. Should I say Mr. Wonder, Mr. Stevie, out of gratitude and respect? His response each time was, “You can call me friend; you can call me Stevie.”
Thus, so it was. And on that first call Stevie did not know Songs in the Key of Life had saved my life across broken hearts and broken bones and broken tomorrows. Stevie did not know that singular album has made me laugh, cry, dance, shout; that it has rescued me, several times over, from debilitating depression, from gruesome grief, from sensational sorrow. That I have lived with Songs through marriage and divorce, and marriage again; and through stunning highs and devastating lows. That I have sought out the bottomless wisdom on Songs in the Key of Life, as one might seek solace in the Bible, or the Torah, or the Quran. That this man, Stevie Wonder, who was one of the primary voices and leaders to make Dr. King’s birthday an official American holiday, was on the phone with a fellow poet, a fellow artist, who would come to lecture at countless Dr. King celebrations in various parts of America, and overseas in Japan too, because of his undying love for MLK.
And that it all began for me, as a child, with a forward-thinking teacher playing a few tunes from Songs in the Key of Life, Stevie Wonder’s greatest and most enduring gift to us all.
Kevin Powell is a Grammy-nominated poet, humanitarian, filmmaker, public speaker, Webby Award-winning contributor to Newsweek*, and author of 17 books, including his newest poetry collection,* A Poem for Evangeline, And Other Songs (Get Fresh Books Publishing). His next book will be a biography of Tupac Shakur. Kevin lives in New York City. You can find him on social media platforms by typing poet Kevin Powell.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
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