Headline : The 50 Best Stevie Wonder Songs

Read more from the original article on here at www.rollingstone.com.

---

No. of Paragraph 57

Amid the geniuses, stylists, and show people that made up the Sixties Motown roster, Stevie Wonder may have been the most purely original singer. Even before he asserted himself musically with his classic run of albums in the 1970s, Wonder was already putting his distinct stamp on his music — and all of Motown’s. For one thing, he was a budding studio rat from the minute he made the roster: “Knockin’ the pianos out of tune, bustin’ the heads on the snare drums, he was one pest,” Andre Williams, an early producer, later said. “Matter of fact, he was barred from the studio, because he’d go in when nobody was there and mess all the instruments up.”

His first hit was a fluke, albeit a huge one: “Fingerprints Pt. 2” spent three weeks at number one on Billboard’s Hot 100. Though it took some time for other Wonder songs to join it, it was also a bellwether: This kid had universal appeal. Though he didn’t hit it big again until late 1965, with “Uptight,” Wonder became Motown’s weather vane — absorbing Bob Dylan, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Stax, and foregrounding them in his own music. As the Sixties ended, Wonder was co-writing and beginning to co-produce an increasing amount of music, including for other artists.

“I used to play on a lot of gospel sessions,” Wonder would later say of those days — just one of the many kinds of music in whose styles he would later write classic songs, many of them on this list. It’s not complete, of course — 50 is a small number, and Wonder specializes in thematically and musically cohesive albums, at least up through 2005’s A Time for Love, his last full length, almost 20 years ago. (There have also been a few digital singles since then.)

This list, then, basically keeps it to Stevie songs from Stevie albums. Wonder’s guest harmonica spots (Chaka Khan’s “I Feel 4 U,” Elton John’s “I Guess That’s Why They Call It the Blues”), songwriting (Smokey Robinson and the Miracles’ “Tears of a Clown,” Aretha Franklin’s “Until You Come Back to Me”), producing (the Spinners’ “It’s a Shame,” Rufus and Chaka Khan’s “Tell Me Something Good,” Jermaine Jackson’s “Let’s Get Serious”), and his prominent placement on event records such as “We Are the World” and “That’s What Friends Are For” could, by themselves, all fill another list.

Read more from the original article on here at www.rollingstone.com.

Related Headlines : The 50 Best Stevie Wonder Songs (in Google.com):

Hello, below you have a "Web" tab to read more content and an "Image" tab to get related pictures

Example : Trends, Country, News, Jobs, Scholarships, Investment, Business, Politics, Adverts, Fashion, Events, Technology and more.