25 Great Stevie Wonder Deep Cuts

Charles picks some favorites, for Stevie Wonder Week

It’s Stevie Wonder Week at No Fences Review. David talked about sixteen of his Wonder favorites, and we continue today with Charles discussing some great Stevie deep cuts.

Stevie Wonder, who turned 75 this week, is one of the great recording artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. While his many hits are justifiably cornerstones of the soundtrack of the last seven decades, with surely many more decades to come, I wanted to turn attention to the wealth of great tracks that exist alongside them, on albums both widely celebrated and less venerated. So here are 25 of the best deep cuts from one of the deepest catalogs in the history of popular music.

The rules were few and simple. 1) I only used songs released by Wonder as the primary credited artist, so there are none of his many guest appearances on other’s recordings. 2) There couldn’t be any song that they released as a single A-side in the US or that charted as a B-side. 3) Unlike my previous dive into the deep cuts of Wonder’s onetime tour-mates the Rolling Stones, I didn’t limit it only to studio albums, nor did I find a representative from all of those albums, but I did remain committed to one deep cut per album. And, especially with Wonder’s incredible run in the second decade of his career, that was really, really tough.

Now, of course, one person’s deep cut is another person’s biggest hit, so treat this categorization lightly. And, particularly on some of their most canonical recordings, the notion of an under-appreciated or unsung track is a relative enterprise. (If not a fool’s errand.) There are other caveats too, and I might’ve accidentally violated my own rules, and I’m aware that this is all arbitrary anyway. So, please take this in the spirit I intended. And definitely feel free to drop others in the comments that you think deserve mention – I probably agree, and I’d love to be reintroduced if I don’t.

“Manhattan at Six” (from The Jazz Soul of Little Stevie, 1962)

In the beginning, there were the drums. The Jazz Soul of Little Stevie is perhaps an odd debut, in that it’s an instrumental album that only features young Stevie as part of a group of Motown musicians stretching out on grooves derived from the nightclubs and hi-fi LPs of the 1950s. There’s nothing particularly essential on Jazz Soul, even the original version of “Fingertips” that would later become a hit in its (superior) live take. But it’s still a kick to hear the 11-year-old on everything from harmonica to organ to the kit he features on “Manhattan at Six,” a let-there-be-drums bop written by Henry Cosby and Clarence Paul. There’s little more to the track than the propulsive rhythms (with the drums rumbling in tandem with a set of bongos) and the occasional flute or piano solo, but the exuberance of “Manhattan at Six” makes it a short, sharp kick and the highlight of Wonder’s debut.

“My Baby’s Gone” (Tribute to Uncle Ray, 1962)

Motown’s early attempt to associate Stevie Wonder with Ray Charles as a promotional strategy was both a rather tacky linkage of their blindness and a not inaccurate acknowledgment of the exceptional talent and broadminded tastes that made both artists so significant. An “uncle” only in the respected-elder sense (which matters, of course), Charles’ repertoire was the basis for Wonder’s second album, on which his young “nephew” did his versions of Charles originals and songs associated with him. The youthful exuberance he brought to “Hallelujah, I Love Her So” or the folk standard “Frankie and Johnny” is notable, but it’s fitting perhaps that the album’s best moment is the one that doesn’t come from the Ray Charles catalog. “My Baby’s Gone,” which closes the album, is a Berry Gordy-written lament that finds the young Wonder floating around the strutting rhythm with a tone that sounds both wise beyond his years and the product of the big emotions of childhood or adolescence. Benefitting from an early manifestation of the limitless Motown Sound, Wonder ends Tribute to Uncle Ray by doing the best possible thing: setting off on his own path.

“Moon River” (from The Motor Town Revue, Vol. 2, 1964)

Stevie Wonder’s first hit “Fingertips, Pt. 2” was a live cut, a rarity for Motown’s hit factory and a reminder that a performer who soon became one of the great studio recording artists of the 20^th century could more than hold his own among the label’s expert crew of entertainers. His version of “Moon River,” already a standard by the time of this release from Detroit’s Fox Theatre, reveals that the frenzy of “Fingertips” was only part of the story. Wonder stretches “Moon River” to its limits, drawing out the melody and adding the blues and jazz flourishes that made those Ray Charles comparisons more apt. Then, near the end, the band backs away and allows Wonder to deliver one of the dancing-harmonica solos that became one of his many instrumental signatures. A standard bearer, from early on.

“Hold Me” (from Uptight, 1966)

It’s on fifth album Uptight where Stevie Wonder really begins to emerge. You can hear him, for example, in the pleading swoon of “Hold Me,” which marries a stately R&B pulse to a deceptively complicated melody. The track is particularly carried by a chiming electric guitar, which nods at both six-string traditions in jazz and R&B and the hegemonic jingle-jangle of Beatles-and-Byrds pop-rock. Wonder is a little older here, reflected both in the expansion of his maturing voice and the texture with which he uses it. If his contemporary Brian Wilson sought a “teenage symphony to God,” even the less famous side of Motown productions in the mid-60s sound like God’s symphonies to teenagers. And what a messenger He chose here.

“Mr. Tambourine Man” (from Down to Earth, 1966)

Wonder’s deep engagement with ‘60s rock produced his hit versions of “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “We Can Work It Out,” but don’t sleep on this other Dylan cover, which draws most obviously from The Byrds’ breakthrough version. Over the Funk Brothers doing the aforementioned hegemonic jingle-jangle, Wonder harmonizes with himself as he unfurls Dylan’s imagistic lyrics. Whereas Roger McGuinn seemed tentative in his request, Wonder insists that the tambourine man find a soundtrack with a forthrightness that turns it into an invocation. And when Wonder sings “I’m ready to go anywhere,” it’s hard not to hear the still-teenage artist announcing his plans to head across the artistic universe. Which, soon enough, he would.

“The Little Drummer Boy” (from Someday at Christmas, 1967)

I’m not sure there’s a more divisive Christmas classic than “The Little Drummer Boy,” or at least one that inspires as much derision. I understand, but I’ve always loved this small story about a poor kid who does his best to honor the newborn savior with a song. I’ve had little luck converting the nonbelievers, but Wonder’s version on the great Someday at Christmas is one of the versions that has potential. Wonder – a drummer himself – delivers the marching melody with a kind of quivering steadfastness that lends the song both the humility and grandness it deserves. A fluttering fife and swelling strings add welcome texture, but it’s all about how Wonder walks across the martial rhythms as the song smiles as brightly as the baby Jesus does at the song’s climax. You may not like “The Little Drummer Boy,” but this version is hard to deny.

“Until You Come Back to Me” (recorded 1967)

Aretha Franklin made this full-hearted ballad into a hit in 1974, but the original recording by Wonder (who co-wrote the song with Morris Broadnax and Clarence Paul) suggests that he could’ve scored with it too. Left unreleased until a 1977 compilation, Wonder’s “Until You Come Back to Me” is all watery backgrounds and restrained desperation, over a post-cha cha rhythm that harkens back to Sam Cooke, Ben E. King, and other stylistic forebears. Franklin would make it a bit funkier and more defiant, a fitting remix for the mid-70s reign of the copyright-killing “Queen of Soul,” but she retains the melody and dynamics in a fashion that makes Wonder’s original instantly familiar. Hearing this version, it’s no surprise that Franklin – like The Supremes, Chaka Khan, or his onetime wife and collaborator Syreeta Wright – found these Wonder works to be a source of success and sustenance over the years.

“Never My Love/Ask the Lonely” (from Eivets Rednow, 1968)

The instrumental Eivets Rednow is a placeholder, finding Wonder doing his versions of ‘60s pop and easy-listening hits and showing off his harmonica, keyboard, and percussion skills. But, beyond the perennial pleasure of hearing him play, tracks like “Never My Love/Ask the Lonely” feel less like a diversion and more like a logical step in a career just about to hit its biggest strides. “Never My Love,” a hit the previous year for The Association, has a knockout melody that’s both sturdy and flexible, letting Wonder’s harmonica soar, saunter, and settle in equal measure, and in equal reflection of the pop and R&B that he was reshaping in real time. Speaking of which, he works in a bit of the Four Tops hit “Ask the Lonely” for good measure, a seamless mashup that tells the story of these Wonder years in a simple, beautiful package.

“You Can’t Judge a Book by Its Cover” (from Signed, Sealed, & Delivered, 1970)

Funk came of age just as Stevie Wonder did, perhaps un-coincidental timing that animates several tracks on the driving Signed, Sealed, & Delivered, the first album on which Wonder received a co-producer credit. “You Can’t Judge a Book by Its Cover,” written with Henry Cosby and Pam Sawyer, is a furious groove where Wonder’s protagonist plays hard to get both as emotional protection and perhaps as a bit of unfortunate macho negging. There’s something mean in this track, a surprising bit of emotional shading from an artist who rarely treads on the shadowy side, but it’s impossible to hide the warmth of the heart beating underneath the “coldness” of the “mask” he’s put on. The imagery of the “mask” goes deep in African American and Black diasporic traditions, of course, and Wonder recognized well how the shifts in popular music – including those expansive funk possibilities – allowed for such masks to be both applied and dropped through implication and outright admission. That’s a lot of symbolic weight to put on a popping B-side, perhaps, but “You Can’t Judge a Book by Its Cover” sustains such a reading. And you can dance to it.

“Something Out of the Blue” (from Where I’m Coming From, 1971)

Where I’m Coming From continues Wonder’s declaration of independence, offering the first album entirely produced and written by him. (Well, co-written, since all the songs emerged from his fruitful songwriting partnership with Syreeta Wright.) The change is noticeable thematically – in the sermonizing of “Look Around” and bluesy racial dramatization “I Wanna Talk to You” – but it’s perhaps more striking in the sonics, which feature the prominence of clavinet in a way that signals the decade-long no-skips era about to begin. “Something Out of the Blue” begins with that electric-keyboard twinkle as it prances alongside a chamber orchestra while Wonder celebrates a love that moves beyond fulfillment into something like transcendence. Like the realization is just sinking in, Wonder sings with a quiet that feels ready to burst out at any moment. The wonder of love, indeed.

“Happier Than the Morning Sun” (from Music of My Mind, 1972)

Stevie Wonder turned 21, got his new Motown contract, held full artistic control for the first time, and responded by embarking on one of the great runs in the history of recorded music. It began with Music of My Mind, the title of which reflected both Wonder’s new autonomy and the album’s thematic and sonic intimacy. With Wonder providing almost all the instrumentation (employing the new TONTO synthesizer rig as a favorite tool), Music of My Mind is idiosyncratic and iconoclastic in the best sense. “Happier Than the Morning Sun,” with its busy clavinet expressing both contentment and excitement, is a gorgeous mash note, especially when Wonder slows it down in the final 90 seconds, luxuriating in the beauty of his partner, his music, and the newfound freedom he’s found in both.

“I Believe (When I Fall in Love with You It Will Be Forever)” (from Talking Book, 1972)

How good was Stevie Wonder’s run from 1972 to 1980? Even with U.S. singles excluded, there are enough classics on the albums from Music of My Mind to Hotter Than July to nearly fill its own deep-cut list. Talking Book is particularly bountiful, with its mere two singles (“Superstition” and “You Are The Sunshine Of My Life”) meaning that I had my pick of almost the entirety of the album’s warm waves of affirmation and yearning. I went with my heart: this may be my favorite Stevie Wonder track of them all. “I Believe” is an elegant benediction, with an invocatory verse opening into a hook that I could quite literally listen to for hours. It seems like Wonder loves it as much as I do, since he spends the final half of the song wrapping interlocking vocals in call-and-response around that simple, powerful chorus. It’s hypnotic and climactic in the best gospel and soul traditions. And then, just when the trance is nearly complete, Wonder breaks into chopping funk for the song’s final section, coming back to earth and heading for the stratosphere at the same time. From the first time I fell in love with “I Believe,” I knew it would be forever. And it is.

“Visions” (from Innervisions, 1973)

Despite its title and cover image, Innervisions is one of Wonder’s most here-and-now albums, with songs like “Too High,” “Living For The City,” and “He’s Misstra Know-It-All” surveying the early-‘70s landscape with an equal mix of anger, caution, and a determination to keep pushing. Perhaps it’s for that reason why the dreamlike “Visions” complements these blues-drenched narratives so effectively. A wavy bed of electric and acoustic guitars floats around Wonder as he talks about the dreams of love, peace, and equality in a future that seems both far away and just around the corner if we had the collective will to make it so. Such intermingling of the earthly and supernatural had long been central to the prophetic traditions of Afro-Christianity, and Wonder employs them beautifully in a song that both reckons and conjures. “What I'd like to know is could a place like this exist so beautiful?,” Wonder asks. “Or do we have to find our wings and fly away to the vision in our mind?” He knows the answer as it is, and the answer as it should be. It’s up to us to decide which path we’ll choose.

“Heaven Is Ten Zillion Light Years Away” (from Fulfillingness’ First Finale, 1974)

Speaking of visions, the aching gospel of “Heaven is Ten Zillion Light Years Away” offers a prophetic prayer that extends through the rest of Fulfillingness’ First Finale. Wonder and his collaborators specifically condemn racism as they call on both a higher power and the beloved community for support. The rising calls of “feel His spirit” are both plea and blessed assurance, a needed reminder that converses with Aretha Franklin’s “Spirit in the Dark,” The Staple Singers’ “I’ll Take You There,” and other contemporaneous anthems that drew from the same well. Like those artists, Wonder’s work in this period often wrestled with the question of how to sustain Movement-era energies while responding to the changes of a new and troubled moment. “Heaven Is Ten Zillion Light Years Away” is one of the best examples, and – like so many great songs by him or his colleagues – it’s still as relevant as it ever was.

“Saturn” (from Songs in the Key of Life, 1976)

This trilogy of visionary album cuts concludes with an Afro-Futurist fable from that most searching of masterpieces, Songs in the Key of Life. Throughout this magisterial collection, Wonder considers sources of strength, beauty, and rejuvenation for a community and world in need of them. Some come very close to home, some in the lessons of the past, and some – like in the case of this Sun Ra-recalling fantasia – find their solutions out in the spaceways. Less the funky liberation of P-Funk or LaBelle, Wonder’s proggy “Saturn” is closer to a balm-in-Gilead utopia for those who have grown exhausted of hatred, war, and environmental destruction. It’s a more advanced society, too: “don’t need cars, ‘cause we’ve learned to fly,” he assures. Crucially, like Ra, Wonder reminds us that he’s going back to Saturn, suggesting a circular journey that’s amplified by the appearance of the jump-roping kids at the end. The cosmic circle remains unbroken.

“Same Old Story” (from Journey through ‘The Secret Life of Plants,’ 1979)

Journey through ‘The Secret Life of Plants’ is many things at once. Simultaneously an experimental indulgence and a fitting next chapter, the documentary soundtrack features some of Wonder’s strangest and most beautiful music. Amidst the lush instrumentals and multi-lingual gestures towards the music of the world, there are a clutch of songs on Journey that stand out. “Same Old Story” is one, a tribute to botanists Jagadish Chandra Bose and George Washington Carver that extends both the affirmative counter-history of Songs in the Key of Life’s “Black Man” (among others) and the condemnation of how hatred clouds the heads and hearts of “non-believers.” A mournful piano and plucked bass accompany this eco-humanist sermon, as Wonder sings with a clarity and vulnerability that he always used to focus our attention on what matters.

“Do Like You” (from Hotter Than July, 1980)

The simmering, appropriately sweltering Hotter Than July works equally well as the final chapter in Wonder’s astonishing 1970s and the beginning of a 1980s marked by great commercial success and continued (though spottier) creative accomplishment. “Do Like You” recalls Songs in the Key of Life’s “Sir Duke” in both its vibrant jazz-inflected funk and its theme of music’s liberatory power, here expressed through the story of a young dancer who finds his footing in a sometimes-unfriendly, rhythm-deficient world. As with all great songs about dancing, it’s impossible not to join in as the percolating synths light up each step. Wonder bops between his light higher range and the playful growls of his lower register, pushed forward by encouraging responses from Delores Barnes, Shirley Brewer, and Alexandra Brown Evans. Even the abrupt ending – where the dancer knocks over Mama’s lamp and earns his sibling’s reproach – can’t stop this party.

“Stay Gold” (from The Outsiders, 1983)

Stevie Wonder showed up on soundtracks in the 1980s and 1990s more than he released his own solo albums. The first appearance was on the 1983 adaptation of the S.E. Hinton teen classic, a vivid melodrama befitting its source material, proto-Brat Pack cast, and direction from Francis Ford Coppola. “Stay Gold,” which riffs on the book’s most famous line, is un-missably Wonderful from the harmonica intro, which opens into a gentle arrangement augmented by Carmine Coppola’s orchestrations. Wonder returns “Stay Gold” to the Robert Frost poem that inspired Hinton, meditating on the temporary nature of life and beauty in a manner that both honors the memory of what’s been lost (“away into that way back when”) and assures that it’s worth living to the fullest anyway. In lesser hands, this could be hokey or even maudlin. But Wonder’s gorgeous delivery, the precision of his epigrammatic lyrics, and the graceful instrumentation assures that “Stay Gold” could forever remain golden in Wonder’s repertoire.

“It’s You” (with Dionne Warwick) (from The Woman in Red, 1984)

Speaking of soundtracks, Wonder contributed multiple songs to The Woman in Red, most famously “I Just Called to Say I Love You” and most effectively “It’s You,” where he paired with Dionne Warwick a year before “That’s What Friends Are For” on a smooth-as-silk ballad. The two singers sound great together, playfully responding to each other’s sweet nothings and joining in close harmony on a wide-open chorus, like hands clasped together. The production is Big-‘80s gloss, which perfectly serves the interplay between Warwick’s resonance and Wonder’s urgency. The sound of contemporary adults.

“In Your Corner” (from Characters, 1987)

Stevie Wonder’s transition from the lush ‘70s to the flinty ‘80s was more seamless than many of his contemporaries, probably both because of his facility with several generations of synth sonics and his specific awareness of how to use his voice as a complement to the grooves that were always working underneath the layers of sound. “In Your Corner” is a computer-age Motown Sound throwback, built around a “You Can’t Hurry Love” rhythm and a “Wang Dang Doodle”-style invitation that’s impossible to turn down. Especially when Wonder assures us that he’s there to back us up, maybe not so much to keep us out of trouble as to get us out of trouble from fights, cops, and parental worry. (The way Wonder holds “if there’s any trouble, they’ll blame it on meeeeeee” makes me laugh every time.) Then, as if things couldn’t get any more fun, a honking saxophone comes in to carry us off into the night. What a joy.

“Chemical Love” (from Jungle Fever, 1991)

The first of three pairings (so far) with Spike Lee, Wonder’s soundtrack for the drama Jungle Fever welcomes Wonder to the ‘90s with a winning collection that bounced off the film’s themes with a skill that both tied it to its source material and allowed the soundtrack to work just fine on its own. “Chemical Love,” with its brooding drum machine and muted Wonder background vocals, engages with the crack addiction featured through the film’s character Gator, but also fits in well alongside such cautionary tales from Prince (who’d certainly recognize those burbling drums), Public Enemy, and the many others who addressed the epidemic and its consequences. Tying as ever to the spiritual, Wonder urges his song’s subject and audience to reckon with the reality while offering a vision of what might come after the fog lifts.

“Blowin’ in the Wind” (from Bob Dylan: The 30th Anniversary Celebration, 1992)

In 1992, a few weeks before election day, Wonder appeared at the all-star Bob Dylan tribute concert at Madison Square Garden. He revisited the song that he’d had a hit with back in 1966, a gracefully swaying version that David talked about earlier this week. Coming back to the song three decades later, Wonder deepened the freedom-song energies that had long animated Black admirers of Dylan’s most enduring protest anthem. Opening with an extended spoken intro (cut off of the official release for sad yet maybe predictable reasons) where he placed the song within the continuing contexts of social movements from Civil Rights to anti-apartheid, Wonder stretched the song over nearly six minutes, with a long harmonica solo and rich call-and-response with background vocalist D. Keith John, who dances around Wonder’s lead with sweeping lines that double Clarence Paul from the original also recall the sweeping majesty of Sam Cooke. The all-star band (anchored by Booker T. and the MGs) grooves behind him, and Wonder soars into the highest end of his register as the verses build and progress. As much as I love Wonder’s original take, I prefer this version, which stole the show just as it was getting started and reminded everyone of just how much power was captured by the meeting of this great song and this great artist. We’re now 30 years since this performance, and it all remains just as essential.

“Conversation Peace” (from Conversation Peace, 1995)

On the title track and finale of his only non-soundtrack studio album of the 1990s, Wonder assays the 20^th century as it ends and urges us to do better in the new millennium. Outlining atrocities from historical slavery and genocide to the “ethnic cleansing” of the era, Wonder uses the pun of the title to focus our attention on the same questions he’d been asking on record since at least that 1966 version of “Blowin’ in the Wind.” As direct as his lyrics are, the message is in the music: the chorus swoops in behind him to push forward with calls of “all for one, one for all” and a reminder that “it’s me for you, you for me” as the storm swirls around Wonder’s steadfast but quavering vocal. Like much of the Conversation Peace album, the production places the song “Conversation Peace” in its moment (for both better and worse). But those voices carry the story back and forth across time: I hope we’re still listening.

“Misrepresented People” (from Bamboozled, 2000)

The creaking of a slave ship opens Wonder’s third soundtrack collaboration with Spike Lee, accompanying the opening credits of Lee’s fiery minstrel satire Bamboozled. In case you miss that message, Wonder (accompanied first only by plinking harpsichord) offers a history lesson of misrepresentation from colonial kidnappings through modern-day caricature. The lesson’s necessary in any context, but the song comes alive when a deep boom-bap track rushes in to support Wonder, whose multi-tracked harmonies swarm around him as the story reaches the present day. Built around a simple, unmissable hook, “Misrepresented People” sounds like a 21^st-century remix of Wonder’s great ‘70s albums, both in its layered sonics and a message that blends expansive scope with piercing specificity.

“Please Don’t Hurt My Baby” (from A Time to Love, 2005)

Twenty years old this year, A Time to Love is Wonder’s most recent studio album and his best since Hotter Than July. There’s nothing particularly different about this one than its predecessors, but the songs and performances sparkle and shine with a vibrance that’s aided by Wonder’s bright productions and perhaps also by the decade that separated it from Conversation Peace. “Please Don’t Hurt My Baby” tells the tale of a messy love affair with a razor-sharp groove and the assistance of a crew of background singers who occasionally step into the foreground to offer a womanist rejoinder to Wonder’s male protagonist. There are comedic sound effects and dead-serious lyrical threats, an infectious “whoa whoa” chorus, and a squelching synth bass that oozes through the crisp electro beat. There are more profound and beautiful moments on A Time to Love, but there’s something about how deftly Wonder constructs and delivers “Please Don’t Hurt My Baby” that captures a lot of what’s made him such a remarkable artist for so long. At the core, of course, is the sheer joy of the sound, of which he’s been one of our best and most creative craftspeople. I hope we get many more records from Stevie Wonder, but he’s already blessed us with one of the greatest catalogs of them all. So, most of all, I’m very grateful.