Stevie Wonder

Steveland Hardaway Morris was born six weeks premature on May 13, 1950, in Saginaw, Michigan. The excess oxygen in his incubator destroyed his optic nerves, leaving him permanently blind. His mother named him Steveland; the world would eventually call him Little Stevie Wonder, then simply Stevie Wonder, and finally, simply a wonder — one of the most gifted musicians in the history of recorded sound. By the time he was twelve years old, he had signed with Motown Records. By the time he was twenty-two, he had renegotiated his contract into something unprecedented in the record industry and embarked on a run of creative work that still has no peer in popular music.

The early Motown years were remarkable in themselves. Wonder was a prodigy in the truest sense — a child who could play piano, harmonica, and drums, who could sing with startling maturity, and who had an instinctive feel for what made a song work. His 1963 hit "Fingertips (Pt. 2)," recorded live at the Regal Theatre in Chicago, reached number one on both the pop and R&B charts. He was twelve years old. It was the first live recording to reach the top of the Billboard charts, and it announced a talent that even Motown's extraordinary roster of gifts could not contain.

But it was at twenty-one, when his initial Motown contract expired and he refused to re-sign under standard terms, that Wonder demonstrated something beyond musical talent: he demonstrated an understanding of artistic ownership that was revolutionary for its time. He demanded and received complete creative control — the right to write, produce, and arrange all his own music, to own his masters, to choose his own release schedule. Motown, recognizing they had no choice, agreed. The result was a five-album sequence between 1972 and 1976 — "Music of My Mind," "Talking Book," "Innervisions," "Fulfillingness' First Finale," and "Songs in the Key of Life" — that constitutes one of the most extraordinary creative runs in the history of popular music.

"Songs in the Key of Life," released in 1976, is the crown jewel of this period and arguably of Wonder's entire career. A double album with a four-song EP included, it ranged from the joy-saturated funk of "Sir Duke" (a tribute to Duke Ellington) to the devastating social commentary of "Village Ghetto Land" to the intimate tenderness of "Isn't She Lovely," written for and about his newborn daughter Aisha. It debuted at number one and remained there for thirteen weeks. At the Grammy Awards, it won Album of the Year — the third time Wonder had won that award in four years, a record that stood for decades.

Wonder's genius was not merely vocal or compositional; it was instrumental and technological. He was an early adopter and master of the synthesizer, using instruments like the ARP and the Moog to create textures that had never been heard before. His use of the Hohner clavinet on "Superstition" — the grinding, percussive funk riff that opens the song — essentially defined an era of Black popular music. He played nearly every instrument on most of his recordings, layering parts with a spatial imagination that transformed the recording studio into its own kind of instrument.

His activism has been as consistent as his music. In 1980, Wonder launched a campaign to make Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday a federal holiday, writing and releasing "Happy Birthday" as part of the effort. He performed at rallies, lobbied Congress, and maintained pressure for years until President Reagan signed the legislation in 1983. Wonder was at the signing ceremony. The holiday was first officially observed in 1986.

He has also been a vocal opponent of apartheid — his 1985 Grammy acceptance speech for "I Just Called to Say I Love You" was dedicated to Nelson Mandela, a statement that led the South African government to ban his music from the country — a distinction he wore as a badge of honor. His willingness to use his platform for moral ends has never been performative; it flows from the same source as his music, a fundamental belief in human dignity.

With twenty-five Grammy Awards, Wonder holds the record for most wins by a solo artist. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989, his first year of eligibility. His catalogue spans seven decades, from the Motown singles of the 1960s through the present day, and he continues to perform and record. No other popular musician has sustained both commercial relevance and critical respect across such a span of time — not because he chased trends, but because the trends kept coming around to where he already was.

Essential Discography

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