Stevie Wonder

Stevie Wonder is one of the most gifted musicians popular music has produced, a singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who has shaped soul, R&B and pop for six decades. Born Stevland Hardaway Morris on May 13, 1950, in Saginaw, Michigan, and blind since shortly after birth, he signed to Motown at eleven and never looked back. He has won twenty-five Grammy Awards, the most ever by a male solo artist, and written some of the most loved songs of the last century.

Little Stevie Wonder

A child prodigy on piano, harmonica and drums, he joined Motown’s Tamla label in 1961 and was billed as Little Stevie Wonder. In 1963, at thirteen, “Fingertips” reached number one on the Hot 100, making him the youngest artist ever to top the chart at the time. Hits like “Uptight” and “My Cherie Amour” followed through the 1960s.

Creative control and the classic period

When his contract ended at twenty-one, Wonder negotiated near-total creative control, rare for a Motown artist. What followed, from 1972 to 1976, is studied in music schools. Talking Book gave the world “Superstition” and “You Are the Sunshine of My Life”, and Innervisions, Fulfillingness’ First Finale and Songs in the Key of Life each won the Grammy for Album of the Year. No other artist has won that award with three albums in a row.

Songs in the Key of Life

The 1976 double album Songs in the Key of Life is widely held to be his masterpiece, home to “Sir Duke”, “I Wish” and “Isn’t She Lovely”, the last written for his newborn daughter. Decades later it still turns up near the top of best-album lists. Wonder played most of the instruments himself and pushed synthesizers into soul music in ways few had tried.

A wider stage

The 1980s brought his biggest mainstream hits and a larger public role. “I Just Called to Say I Love You” won an Academy Award, and he recorded with Paul McCartney and traded a duet with Michael Jackson on the album Bad. He led the campaign to make Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday a national holiday, a fight he won in 1983.

A lasting influence

Wonder has sold more than 100 million records and reached number one on the pop charts ten times. He is one of only three artists, with Paul Simon and Frank Sinatra, to win Album of the Year three times. Still touring into his seventies, he remains a model for what a songwriter can be, and his fingerprints are on generations of music that came after.

Most loved songs

A spread across the catalogue. Each title opens through the in-site player.

From a clavinet groove to a love song you have known your whole life, the odds are good a Stevie Wonder song lives somewhere in your memory. Type the line you remember into the search box above and you may find it leads back to him.