Innervisions
Innervisions is the sixteenth studio album by American singer, songwriter, and musician Stevie Wonder, released on August 3, 1973, by Tamla, a subsidiary of Motown Records. A landmark recording of Wonder's "classic period",[3] the album has been regarded as completing his transition from the "Little Stevie Wonder" known for romantic ballads into a more musically mature, conscious, and grown-up artist. On the album, Wonder continued to experiment with the revolutionary T.O.N.T.O. (The Original New Timbral Orchestra) synthesizer system developed by Malcolm Cecil and Robert Margouleff, and Innervisions became hugely influential on the future sound of commercial soul and black music.
For the song by System of a Down, see Innervision.Innervisions
August 3, 1973
1973
- Mediasound, New York City
43:52
Tamla: T326
- Stevie Wonder
- Robert Margouleff (assoc.)
- Malcolm Cecil (assoc.)
The album peaked at number four on the Billboard Top LPs & Tapes chart and number one on the Billboard Soul LPs chart, eventually finishing at number four on the magazine's Top Pop Albums chart for 1974. At the 16th Grammy Awards, it won Album of the Year and Best Engineered Non-Classical Recording, while "Living for the City" won Best R&B Song. Innervisions is widely considered by fans, critics, and colleagues to be one of Wonder's finest works and one of the greatest albums of all time. It was ranked number 34 on Rolling Stone's list of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time" in 2020 and was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999.[4]
Recording[edit]
As with many of Wonder's albums, the lyrics, composition, and production of Innervisions are almost entirely his own work, and he also played all, or virtually all, of instruments on many of the album's tracks. He made prominent use of synthesizers throughout the album.
The nine tracks of Innervisions encompass a wide range of themes and issues: from drug abuse in "Too High", through inequality and systemic racism in "Living for the City", to love in the ballads "All in Love Is Fair" and "Golden Lady". The album's closer, "He's Misstra Know-It-All", is a scathing attack on then-US President Richard Nixon, similar to Wonder's song "You Haven't Done Nothin'" from the following year.[5] "Living for the City" was one of the first soul music songs to deal explicitly with systemic racism and to incorporate everyday sounds of the street, such as traffic, voices, and sirens, in with music recorded in the studio.[6]: 44 [7]: 236 [8]: 62
Commercial performance[edit]
Following Talking Book, which hit the top 5 of the Billboard albums chart in early 1973 and achieved steady sales throughout the rest of the year, Innervisions became another considerable hit on the charts for Wonder. It debuted on the Billboard albums chart on August 18, 1973, at number 85, then climbed to number 22, number 14, number nine, and number six, before reaching its peak position of number four on September 15. The album remained in the top 20 until the end of the year, and remained in the top 200 during the entire calendar year of 1975. Innervisions was Wonder's second consecutive album to reach the top of the Billboard Black Albums chart, where it remained for two weeks. On the Cashbox chart, it reached number one near the end of 1973. In the UK, the album also found success, and became Wonder's first to reach the UK top 10, peaking at number eight.
Three hit singles were issued from the album. "Higher Ground", which was released several weeks before Innervisions, reached number four on the Billboard singles chart in late October 1973, and number one on the Cashbox singles chart. "Living for the City" reached number eight on the Billboard singles chart in early January 1974. These first two singles both reached number one on the Billboard Soul Singles chart. Finally, "Don't You Worry 'Bout a Thing", released in March 1974, reached number 16 in early June, and also peaked at number two on the Soul Singles chart. In the UK, "Higher Ground" and "Living for the City" were released as singles, but only achieved modest success, reaching numbers 29 and 15, respectively. Only the third single issued there, "He's Misstra Know-It-All", managed to reach the top 10, peaking at number eight on the UK Singles Chart.
"All in Love Is Fair" was a hit for Barbra Streisand when she recorded it and released it as a single in 1974.