Stevie Wonder, a world-renowned pianist, songwriter, and musician, just celebrated the 50th anniversary of his album, Talking Book. Wonder paved his way through the music industry facing and defeating many obstacles head-on. As a blind man, his disability highlights his talents in the industry, especially his expertise on the piano. Follow Wonder through his creation of “Talking Book”, an album that rocked the charts and transformed the music industry.
In 1972, following the release of “Music of my Mind” eight months prior, “Talking Book” was released, reintroducing pop to the music industry. After the release of some of his earlier albums, Wonder hinted that he would be writing and producing more than happy love songs. “Talking Book” reaffirmed that and also extended his sonic and technological ambitions, as he used state-of-the-art synthesizers and an arsenal of studio effects to orchestrate his songs with startlingly novel sounds” New York Times reported. Talking Book was Wonder’s vessel to demonstrate his expertise and show a more political side of himself.
The “album cover — which showed Wonder wearing African-style robes and braided hair in a quasi-Biblical desert landscape (actually Los Angeles) — made clear that Wonder’s futurism was unmistakably Afrofuturism” reports the Times. Afrofuturism is a movement that Wonder was a part of that involves literature, music, or art featuring futuristic themes that subsume black history and culture. This increased his popularity as his music reached multiple genres including gospel, R&B, jazz, show tunes, folk, pop, country, and classical music.
Wonder signed his first contract with MoTown Records when he was 11, where he was gifted the name of Little Stevie Wonder. His first contract expired in 1971, on his 21st birthday. “Other labels were eager to sign him, and when he returned to the Black-owned Motown, he had won complete creative control for himself. From then on, he would write and produce his own songs, release albums when he decided they were finished and choose his own collaborators,” said New York Times.
The 1970s were a time for creativity within R&B, artists experimented with new instruments and tunes while incorporating their social consciousness in their lyrical writing, Wonder was no different.
New York Times reports, “Music of My Mind,” the first album under the new Motown contract, started to probe Wonder’s newfound freedom; then “Talking Book” reveled in it. It’s an album mostly of songs about love: euphoric, heartbroken, jealous, regretful, longing, anticipatory”. “Superstition” and “Big Brother” are two tracks on the album that showcase a political side of Wonder. “Superstition” covers received opinion and being gullible while “Big Brother” talks about a politician who is “tired of me protesting/children dying every day.”
The song “You and I”, compares love going right to love going wrong. “Maybe Your Baby” is another track on the album where Wonder sings about the realization of being cheated on. The final track on the album, titled “I Believe (When I Fall in Love It Will Be Forever),” is described as “a Beatles-tinged three-episode song in which the singer picks himself up from “shattered dreams,”.”
The album itself was futuristic for its time, Wonder had a few outside musicians helping him but the majority of the instrumental bustle heard in the background of his songs are self-made. The album was a smashing success: “Superstition” and “You Are The Sunshine Of My Life” both reached #1 on Billboard Hits contributing to his ten #1s in total. Both tracks stayed as #1 for a full week. “Talking Book was not only a hit album — No. 1 on the R&B chart, No. 3 on the all-genre Billboard 200 — but also a harbinger of R&B and pop that would be increasingly electronic and synthetic, proudly unbound by physical realities”