Stevie Wonder began demonstrating his production skills and compositional acumen on his first of two albums in 1966. Although still just a teenager, Wonder was already...
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One month before he turned 21, Stevie Wonder released Where I'm Coming From, the most distinctive record of his young career, and one that looked forward -- in its breadth...
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A weird collection of grown-up love songs for a fifteen year-old boy to record, this is the least successful entry in the post-Uptight Wonder...
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One of his lighter early albums containing the famous title song and "Yester-Me, Yester-You, Yesterday" plus an odd moment as Wonder covers the Doors with "Light My...
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Notable for containing Wonder's then-most recent Top Ten hit, the title track, and its follow-up, "Yester-Me, Yester-You, Yesterday," this album otherwise contains...
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Wonder's best, and last, pre-auteur album contains the famous title track, a surprising cover of the Beatles' "We Can Work It Out" and the heartfelt "Heaven Help Us All."...
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Stevie Wonder was beginning to rebel against the Motown hit factory mentality in the early '70s. While he certainly hadn't lost his commercial touch, Wonder was anxious to...
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The obligatory Stevie Wonder Christmas album is par for the course, with standards like "The Little Drummer Boy" coming off better than the new songs written for the...
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Some criticized Wonder for the sprawl and ambition of this double album, but if anyone had earned the right to experiment, it was Stevie. There are more than enough pop...
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Talking Book 1/1/1972, Yahoo! Music, John Quaintance
Just a hair below Innervisions, this is another brilliant album signifying the beginning of an amazing five-year stretch that saw Wonder release four consecutive...
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Recorded live, this includes the full seven-minute version of his number one hit "Fingertips." The rest of the album shows him as a young prodigy fixated on Ray Charles;...
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Stevie Wonder shocked fans by taking only two years to release his next new non-soundtrack studio album, Characters. Unfortunately, it had long since become clear that...
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Down To Earth 1/1/1967, Yahoo! Music, John Quaintance
In the two years between Uptight and For Once In MyLife, Motown rushed out as much Stevie Wonder as they could. As a result, there was a dearth of solid material, as...
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Stevie Wonder's third album signaled more artistic growth, but was the first of his career that didn't make much commercial headway. It didn't contain a single big hit,...
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The release of Down to Earth/I Was Made to Love Her documents a transitional phase for Stevie Wonder. Down to Earth (1966) and I Was Made to Love Her (1967) were made at a...
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Stevie Wonder's 1968 album For Once in My Life (which contained three big hits) is paired with Uptight, an album from two years earlier. This is something of an odd pairing,...
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Rather than rushing out an album in the spring of 1968, when "Shoo-Be-Doo-Be-Doo-Da-Day" (Number 9 Pop, Number One R&B) hit, Motown waited, through the modest summer success...
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A couple of inoffensive pieces of filler, but for the most part, Wonder keeps it going with this follow-up to Innervisions. "Boogie On Reggae Woman" is one of the catchiest...
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When it was released, Stevie Wonder's first hits collection, a 12-track disc tracing his work from 1963 to 1967, served a common function of compilations: It gathered...
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Stevie Wonder's second hits collection, gathering together his singles from 1968 to 1971, traces his development into a virtuoso talent, from upbeat Motown numbers like "For...
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Rebounding from the debacle of Journey Through The Secret Life Of Plants, this was something of a return to form for Wonder. "Master Blaster (Jammin')" was a hit, "Lately"...
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Basically the title smash with a lot of covers, albeit entertaining ones. Stevie does Smokey, (with whom he would later co-write "Tears Of A Clown,") Otis and Ray amazingly...
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This album was rushed out to capitalize on the success of the title song, which was Wonder's biggest pop hit since "Fingertips, Pt. 2," and would not be bettered until...
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Many of the tracks suffer from weak drum machines, and the biggest hit, "Part Time Lover," is grating and thin, but "Go Home," "Overjoyed" and the anti-Apartheid "It's...
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Although it went platinum, nothing stands as better evidence of how cyclical the pop experience is than the response to In Square Circle. Wonder actually wrote some superb...
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Innervisions 1/1/1973, Yahoo! Music, John Quaintance
Without a doubt, from top to bottom, one of the finest records ever made. Musically inventive, lyrically challenging and completely unforgettable. From the growl and stomp...
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When Stevie Wonder applied his tremendous songwriting talents to the unsettled social morass that was the early '70s, he produced one of his greatest, most important works,...
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More than any single LP, this album showed how much pure talent Stevie Wonder possessed. He was a gifted drummer, fantastic chromatic harmonica player, engaging vocalist,...
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Despite all of the hype surrounding it, the soundtrack to Jungle Fever is Stevie Wonder's best work in years. Although it can't compare to Wonder's glory days, Jungle Fever...
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A selection of love songs gleaned from his deleted 1977 anthology Looking Back. Although the obligitory well-known love songs are included ("For Once in My Life," "My Cherie...
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One of the two albums he recorded on his own around his 21st birthday, and used to leverage Motown into the contract that would give him the freedom he required, Wonder took...
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With a new contract from Motown in his hand, Stevie Wonder released Music of My Mind, his first truly unified record and, with the exception of a single part on two songs,...
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In the early days of the CD age, Motown released an astonishing number of CDs, including a whole line of single-disc sets that contained two original records on one CD....
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This infamous new-age boondoggle would have been more warmly received as a side project, but Wonder took three years to record it at the height of his career, ending his...
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Beginning in the mid-'80s Stevie Wonder's albums didn't catch the public's attention, and Conversation Peace did not change that, although it wasn't for lack of trying....
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Wonder's entry in the Motown Legend Series is a keeper. Mega-hits "I Was Made to Love Her" and "Uptight" are packaged with a laundry list of excellent B-sides and LP cuts....
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Following the relative commercial failure of Conversation Peace, Stevie Wonder rushed out this double-disc live album drawn from an international tour during which he was...
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While it's not quite the definitive compilation it could have been, the double-disc Song Review: A Greatest Hits Collection is still a good overview of Stevie Wonder's long,...
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While it's not quite the definitive compilation it could have been, the double-disc Song Review: Greatest Hits is still a good overview of Stevie Wonder's long, prolific...
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He's been called one of the most influential performers and songwriters of the century, but until 1999 Stevie Wonder didn't even have a box set to call his own. Such was the...
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When you're putting together a 21-song collection of a major artist who's had more than 40 Top 40 hits, inevitably there's going to be a lot of good stuff left out. Stevie...
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Released in 1982, the double-album Original Musiquarium I summarizes Stevie Wonder's classic period of the '70s, concentrating primarily on the hits, but adding a few album...
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When it comes to holiday records emitted from the shadows of the mighty Motown hit factory on West Grand Boulevard, few could match the quality and quantity from one of...
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With the plethora of 20th Century Masters collections issued since the late '90s, it's hard to believe that it took until 2005 for a Stevie Wonder edition to be released....
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