Rediscovering Stevie Wonder, with Wesley Morris and Josh Gwynn
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Bye.

Hello everyone, Kirk here with another special bonus for you all. Last week I ran an episode of The Wonder of Stevie, a new Stevie Wonder podcast from Pineapple Street Studios hosted by Wesley Morris. I hope that got some of you to go check out the show since, like I said last week, it's really good. And as I also mentioned last week, I ran that episode as part of a promo swap with the folks who made that show. So if you do listen to it, you might hear a new trailer that I just made for Strong Songs running during their ad breaks.

But because I'm such a huge fan of Wesley Morris, of his writing, his podcasting, I asked if he'd be down to come on Strong Songs to talk with me about Stevie Wonder and the process of making the show. He did me one better. He got one of the show's producers, Josh Gwynn, to also come with, and all three of us had the conversation that you're about to listen to.

A bit more about who each of those guys are, just in case you aren't a nerd like me who already knows lots of podcasters and writers. Josh Gwynn is both a podcast producer and a podcast host. He works on a bunch of different projects for Pineapple Street Studios. He hosts the terrific pop culture show Back Issue, among a lot of other things that he is involved with.

And Wesley Morris is critic at large at the New York Times, a co-host of the Still Processing podcast, and winner of not one but two Pulitzer Prizes for criticism. He is the author of some of my favorite pieces of music writing ever. I've linked to some of them down in the show notes, and I hope you'll check them out because his writing is indispensable.

We spend most of this conversation talking about The Wonder of Stevie, about this six-part podcast series. You can listen to the whole thing right now. I guess that would put some of our discussion in a more specific context. But also, I think this episode would totally just stand on its own as a conversation about Stevie Wonder and why he is great.

Also, just worth noting, there's a bonus episode of the show, a seventh episode that I actually haven't heard, which features Wes in the studio with Barack Obama and Stevie Wonder himself talking about music and life. It sounds like it's great. It'll air in the public feed a little bit down the road. That comes up briefly. So we talk a little bit about Stevie and his role on the show. So that's what we're talking about when that comes up.

Thanks so much to Wes and Josh for coming on Strong Songs, and thanks to you all, as always, for listening. Stick around. Josh Gwynn and Wesley Morris, welcome to Strong Songs. Wow, thanks. Kirk, it's a real honor. I can't believe... I mean, I really... I mean, I will speak for me. I...

As a listener, I'm glad that we're here together. Oh my goodness. That is, uh, that's the best thing I've heard in a very long time. I am of course a huge fan, Wesley, of your writing, your work of still processing. I've been wanting you to make a music podcast like the wonder of Stevie for a long time. I just finished listening to the whole thing. I kind of binged the, uh, the six main episodes all at once. It was a pretty amazing experience. I learned a lot. I think, I mean, listeners of this show are going to love it. I think a lot of people are going to love it. It's,

Yeah, it's a really remarkable accomplishment, I think, that both of you and your whole team have put together. So I guess the first thing I want to ask is just how this project came to be. What was the genesis of this show? Well, I'll start because I was the person who didn't want to do it. Okay. And I got...

The idea of the show came from Anna Holmes, who's a Stevie Wonder fan. She worked at Higher Ground, developed the show with us. And man, she tried real hard to get me to host this thing. Really? And you were resistant? I was resistant because, you know, sometimes there are things that I think I can do. And then there are things I think I'd love to hear somebody else do.

And this idea was one of those things where like, I just would love to hear the following four people just sort of like enthuse their way through the catalog of Stevie Wonder. Right. And at some point, because it's higher ground and this was also Anna had taken this idea to Barack and Michelle Obama.

And they really wanted to do it. They're huge lovers of Stevie Wonder. And as you've heard the show, you know that they are conversant in the meaning and the power of the songs and the history around, you know, the history of the period in which the music was being made. They asked me if I wanted to do it too. And I said, yes, absolutely.

Yeah, I can imagine that's kind of hard to say no once it gets to that level. So then the thing that made it a lot more exciting to do, and this is the honest to God truth, was that I was going to be working with Josh and everybody, Josh and Janelle Anderson and Asha Saluja and, you know, what turned out to be Raj Makija and, you know, Justine, all these great people who work at Pineapple. Right.

Pineapple Street. And I just... I'm familiar with them. We've worked together. Josh used to make still processing with me and Jay Wortham. And I don't know. It just... There was a moment... Josh, I don't know if you remember this. There was a moment... Well, you probably remember you were there. We were planning... We had a big whiteboard. We had two days of whiteboard meetings. Sure. In person in Los Angeles. And I don't know. There were so many moments where...

We were just putting things on the board and it was just like, I think this is, this is just, I think, I think this is going to be fun. I hope it stays fun. And I can really hear how we can do six episodes of this show. I felt like we could have done more than six, but easy. Well, I'm sure that was, that was probably kind of a challenge, right? Is, is picking how many episodes it was going to be. It feels pretty focused. We would do like, you know, one album per episode. And,

And you could go and I mean, you could do I could make an episode about every single song on one of those albums. Like I could make season after season after season just on Stevie Wonder. So you have to kind of limit the scope somehow. And the scope of the show is remarkable. Yeah. Josh, as a producer, I'm curious how you thought about that when you guys were setting it up, when you were having those whiteboard meetings. It was really hard. When you think about.

what Stevie means to so many different people, it's so expansive, right? Like all of us have met Stevie Wonder at different points in our lives. And because of that, like he plays different parts in different parts of our lives. And so...

Being able to constrict the story that we were telling to a specific time period was really helpful because it felt less like a mountain that you were climbing to tell this huge story. But even within that time period, there's so many stories to tell. And like you mentioned, there's so many songs where me and Wes would be sitting writing and we'd be like, are we really not going to talk about this?

song like are people going to think that we're we're crazy what am I and am I crazy that I wish does not actually get a lot of play in the songs from the key like where that was so the Stevie episode that I made in my show is about I wish and I was waiting for it to come up a little bit dreading it like oh man they're gonna put it in this amazing context that like I didn't really understand when I made that episode and just talked about the walking baseline or whatever and then you guys didn't talk about it and I was almost relieved yeah no I mean

It's so hard. But yeah, no, I can imagine. I mean, you had to make a lot of painful cuts. I'm sure we, that one really hurt because, um,

There were things we just couldn't do every... When it came to Songs in the Key of Life, I think that was the one... That's obviously the album where you're just like, wait a minute, for real? I mean, I don't... Because every song. Yeah. I mean, Josh, can you refresh my memory? Because I know I wrote...

I think I wrote about every single song on that album. You did. And I'll have to look and see, because I just heard I Wish This Morning on my radio station. And I heard, well, it doesn't matter. I heard I Wish This Morning on the radio. And parenthetically, my boyfriend comes over and he's on his way out to go home. And I was like, I wonder if Daniel is hearing this right now.

And he comes around the corner into the kitchen and he's like, listen, you know, I really hate that I met Stevie Wonder this way. This is how I met Stevie Wonder and I met him through Will Smith. I'm out. I gotta go. Wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild

In Cisco. Yeah, it's true. Because he's younger than I am. He's like, you know, meaningfully younger than I am. And that was his introduction. His TV wonder is that.

Wild Wild West Jim West Desperado well Will Smith and Coolio right I think for a lot of a lot of children in the 90s like we first learned those songs and then went back and realized like oh there's an original version that's you know pretty different but to answer your question about like what like how like no we don't do all the songs

I feel like there are songs that did at the time when we were, especially with songs in the key of life, it just felt nuts to not do. But I mean, cause in a weird way and Kirk, I'm actually curious how you feel about this. I actually feel like that first suite of songs, um, on side one, they're all, I mean, it's funny. The, the, the sequencing of the, of the, like they, they've bought, well, Bob and Malcolm, Bob,

Bob Margulief, Robert Margulief, sorry, and Malcolm Cecil did not work on songs in the key of life. It's a whole cycle drama among the three of them. We don't have to get into it, but, um,

They claim, I mean, Stevie doesn't claim this, but other people do, like the two of them. They have said things like, we never paid attention to the order of the songs. The order of the songs doesn't really mean that much to us. We were just putting the songs on the album. Stevie had so many songs, and these are the ones that made it onto the albums that he made it on. Whatever, dude. That's not how it sounds to anybody else.

And I think that the thing about Sir Duke and I Wish is that they just feel like they're two sides of a coin in a way. They're the two songs that are nostalgic, but nostalgic in a very pointed way. Well, I Wish is purely nostalgic, but Sir Duke is pointedly nostalgic. Yeah.

And I just, I don't know. I think I just shut up. I just calmed down when Josh and Janelle were just like, listen, we can't do it. So that was the compromise that I, we talked about Sir Duke and I think we do talk about Sir Duke, right? That's the one we were with. So that was, I made my peace with that because I wish, I don't know, just as music, I feel like I wish it's just such a,

I was just hearing it this morning and I was hearing it knowing I was going to talk to you today. And just, um, and that episode, I mean, you really, the walking baseline, you're correct. I have nothing. I learned more about listening to you do it than I had arrived at on my own. I was just thinking more about like, you know, the sort of cultural significance of that song. Um, and how, um,

You know, all of these sort of extra elements in it, like the yips and yaps that he includes. The you know, they're all these sort of extra musical things that create this this that enrich the sound of that song. But anyway, the point is, like the I wonder how conspicuous conspicuously absent certain songs are going to feel.

Yeah, I think that at that point in the run of the series, it's not as big of a deal. Like you guys earlier, you spend quite a bit of time on Superstition. And I think that that breakdown, it's like a Strong Song style breakdown where you have the stems and you're isolating different parts. You're building them up and kind of showing how the clav parts like mix together, like where the baseline is. I think that was really cool. And you don't have to do that over and over again. It's kind of, it goes without saying that you could do that for any of these songs. They're all these incredibly powerful,

you know, works of genius. So at some point you have to kind of zoom out because I think that what you're doing with the show is really valuable. It was really valuable for me, partly because of my background with Stevie Wonder, which is its own whole thing. I mean, like, you know, I'm a little bit younger. I grew up in the nineties. I grew up hearing Stevie as kind of the like nice, joyful uncle character that you introduce him as. Like he was just the guy who sang, isn't she lovely? And I didn't,

really think of the songs in the context of the albums on which they were released. And of course, also like grew up in the white suburbs in Indiana, just like a really different background from the kind of the like broader black American life that you're illustrating on this show that I think is like such an essential part of understanding Stevie in the seventies. Yeah. So,

Then I went to jazz school as a jazz saxophone performance major and learned a lot of jazz, but didn't really start playing music like Motown stuff and Stevie's stuff from the 70s, all that great funk music until I started playing in cover bands.

in school, like just to make money. So the first time I was playing Stevie, it was all those big hits. It was totally Sir Duke and I Wish because those both have like killing horn parts. And like I learned the whole Sir Duke part and like I loved that song just because there was so much for me as a tenor saxophonist to do. ♪

But I totally didn't hear it in the context of the album. I don't even think that I really listened to the lyrics and realized that it was about jazz, which is funny because I was studying jazz. I probably would have thought that was corny even as a jazz student. So then going back and really starting to learn the songs, getting into it before making an episode of my show about it.

That gave me some understanding, but it didn't give me close to the level of appreciation for just like what it meant for him to go from being this child star to releasing his own first album, Music Will My Mind, the first record of his that's kind of, you know, the first one that you talk about. That album is like the one I was least familiar with. And now I love it. I've been listening to it nonstop for the last month because it's this feeling of like

joy and discovery, and he's just messing around. It's all him, and it's so loose and kind of rambunctious. Anyways, I really appreciate the way that the show...

takes all of these albums and not only contextualizes each song within the album, but also contextualizes the album within that decade in like black America and what it meant for like what he was saying and what he was talking about and how his like view of the world was changing. Like, I think that's really cool. I wonder if when you set out to make this show, was that kind of on your mind? Like thinking that he could,

he could be this kind of vital nexus through which to view that whole decade and really like the whole like post-civil rights, you know, like decades of black American life. I remember in those meetings, Josh just kept,

Like we had those early meetings where we were sort of planning the scope of the show. And it was, you know, there were a bunch of us sitting around a table. Some of us zoomed in. And I think the thing that was clear among all of us and Josh really kind of kept trying to emphasize. The one thing Josh really wanted to emphasize is a kind of.

generational understanding of Stevie, right? Like the, I mean, we, I think, I mean, we use this framing for the first episode, like the Stevie we got versus the Stevie that, you know,

your parents got. You talk about like third phase and second phase and first phase. I think you, I don't know if you use the word phase, but basically that he was the child star and then the seventies is the second phase. But most of us met him in his third phase, which I really liked that. Yeah, that was Josh. I mean, Josh is the one who sort of emphasized the, the importance of how to invite,

Um, Janae Marable was another person. Like, remember that Josh? Like, um, the youth of, you know, like there's some people that like their way in is the movie sing. Yeah. Right. Sure. And that, that blew my mind. I was like, but I think that like when you, I just kept thinking of like,

Being in a car with my parents and like liking a song and my parents being like, you don't know anything about this. I'm going to break it down for you. And like we started thinking about like I remember Beyonce's like Cuff It had like a TikTok challenge. And I think me and Wes were in the room. We're like, what if the first time that someone heard a Beyonce record was Cuff It?

And it's like, but they had never heard like solo Beyonce. They had never heard Destiny's Child. Like there's not a way for you to even mentally wrap your head around the context of what it means to put this music out if you don't understand those earlier phases. And also like, I think one of the things that me and West Cup thinking about was like, I like,

This was a young person. Like this was someone who was like, that was so young. I mean, he was like what? 28 or something at the end of this front. 26. Well, depending on when you stop it, he was sure. Sure. In his twenties for all of this, which is just wild. Hotter than July comes out before his 30th birthday.

Man, unbelievable. And then this is just such a rich cultural time for black Americans, right? Like if you look at like all of the movies and all of the music and all of the cultural production that was happening at that time, it's hard to understand that.

who Stevie is and what this music is if you don't look at it in the tapestry of everything that was being made at that time. So I think understanding his biography and his past, understanding culturally what was happening in the landscape, and then musically what was happening in his music were like the three sort of sides that I wanted to make sure that people had a grasp on. That's great. And then there was this other part too, which is that

I think, and this is the way, this is kind of the way I move through the world when it comes to music and artists I love, or any art of any kind, is

Which is that it has this, you know, especially when it comes to what I'm going to term legacy-oriented things, where they're old and they are obviously meaningful, both culturally and, you know, interpersonally. But I still feel like Stevie Wonder, for as acclaimed and for as best-selling as he is, still felt to me...

improperly rated, right? Improperly situated in the story of American popular, or like, you know, popular music writ large. But, you know, I'm saying American, but really, I mean, it's more holistic than that because if we're thinking about, you know, all of the people, like his primary...

I don't know, Kirk. It's funny. Listening to your show, I'm like, well, everybody's important. But there are people who...

When you think of the, like, if, but how many people could you do, could you spend two seasons of the way you make your show doing only their music? Like, there's like only a couple, you know, Prince, Duke Ellington. Like, there are a few, but there are fewer and further between than some of the artists I focused on. I mean, and so I really was sort of, one of the things that I was determined to make sure happened, well...

I think we all agreed, but it was really important to me. Like, I just wanted to make sure that, like, Paul McCartney understands. And I know that he... Because Paul McCartney does not get credit for being competitive. He is a competitive person. He wanted, you know, he wants to win the girl's mind as much as Michael does, right? Mm-hmm. And I think he is fully aware. He's humble enough to understand that Stevie is...

is a brother and is a compatriot in genius. Um, but I also think that in the, in the popular imagination, the, the, the place in space, the Beatles occupy, um,

kind of overshadow so many other great artists who are as prolific, as musically important, as imaginative and innovative as John Lennon and Paul McCartney were. And I'm not here to take anything from the Beatles. I love the Beatles! Yeah, it's not zero-sum, right? Even though some people think of it that way. Some people think of it that way. And I just want to expand...

I just want to make sure there's enough marble when we're chipping out, you know, more statuary that Stevie gets. If we're even dealing with monuments, God knows we've had enough.

But if we're going to build a monument to something, why not build it to musicians, honestly? Yeah, that's an interesting one. The ratedness of Stevie Wonder, which can be just kind of a black hole since it's a lot of it. It's kind of contingent on what other people think or on the way that he's been written about by like rock media in the 80s, which was long enough ago that it's hard to really litigate. I really appreciated the conversation with, is it Robert Crisco? Yeah, I think that it's like a difficult conversation and you're almost talking past each other because...

you're, you're, he's like, well, but he won Grammys for all his records. Like, I don't understand. Like he, you know, he was celebrated. And at the same time, I celebrated him. Yeah. I mean, that's right. Yeah. Right. And there's, there is this view though, that like,

at least some people see Stevie in terms of greatest hits albums and not these revolutionary records that he was releasing, which is something that I at least personally feel and have experienced where it's very hard to get a sense of these albums. I mean, something that I think is really valuable about this show is that it's just like, here's the chronology of these five albums.

Here's how he changed. And here's what each album was and how it fit together. There's this wonderful sequence where, who is it? It's Michelle Obama and Thelma Golden. Thelma Golden. Where they're talking about...

They're talking about sitting with their uncle or their grandfather and just the experience of this physical object that was in their house in this beautiful record collection and what it meant to be in this almost like sacred space where we're going to take out this vinyl, you know, this record jacket and put it on and just experience the music.

Uncle Clarence had a stereo system of components and he would listen to his albums. That was an activity, right? What's Uncle Clarence doing? Listening to his albums.

He had his whole house wired, every room, even the bathroom, with sound, with speakers, all jack-legged. None of it new. It was all used, old, from the trash can. What I remember specifically about Stevie Wonder is hearing Stevie Wonder's music coming out of Uncle Clarence's speakers. But I also remember... That experience is so far removed from, I think, how anyone now, especially a young person now, would listen to Stevie Wonder. Yeah.

that it's really important to capture that experience and record it and share it with people so they can kind of better understand what it meant for these albums to come out and how each album fits together. It's something that I still... I had to do a lot of work to get myself there, despite studying music and really spending a lot of time with a lot of artists and the artists who influenced Stevie's. It's just...

to go back to that experience. Like you almost have to go buy, you know, inner visions and put it on your record player and like sit with it to really get that. Buy inner visions and put it on your record player. And people should do that. I mean, I have to say you, I'm so grateful that you identified that bit of the show because I, I mean, I,

I mean, I'm like tearing up just like not even hearing it, hearing you talk about it. It's really beautiful. And it is my favorite. It is my single favorite. There's a moment that Yolanda Adams has in episode four talking about Fulfillness' first finale as a gospel experience. Yeah, yeah. That is also mind-blowing. But there's something so... I mean... Oh, no. Like, there's something so moving about...

Just hearing these two grown, accomplished, important women...

Talking about being little girls and discovering this whole world that this other kid made, right? This like 25-year-old made. And they were brought into it as both an audio and tactile experience, right? They're looking at pictures. They're holding this cardboard and paper. Yeah, yeah. Thelma Golden talking about how the album covers felt infinite to her.

But I remember him showing me the covers of these various albums, and I found it to evoke in me the same things that would happen when I would look at paintings and feel that the experience of looking at them was endless. And I don't know, it's just the way Josh and company just juxtaposed the two of them

And they're like in conversation with each other. These are two women who I know have talked to each other before. I, I swear I, I believe they have. Um,

And now they're talking in this other way through and doing the thing that culture is supposed to do. I don't know. It just, it just gets me every single time. And I'm so glad that, that you found it as moving as I still do. Josh, can you just talk about when did you know? Well, I knew when we were doing the interviews where you just have these two women that grew up in different parts of the country that had this

universal experience that I feel like a lot of us have had, right? Like the, they're both talking about

the cool elder having this collection of music that they are gatekeeping, that they're holding. We weren't allowed to put the records on ourselves. You're not allowed to touch. You have to be supervised. And they are passing down the cool gems down to the nephew or the niece. And

It just like the fact that like neither of them had talked to each other about that experience, but like told it in such a parallel way. And then me thinking about like my family, like I remember my aunt Lorraine, she played bass guitar. She used to have all of the records and she passed away. So my mom has all of her records. I remember her playing Sylvester for me for the first time and me being like, what is this? Like, you know,

And I think that there's something that's like kind of I don't want to be like, you know, in my day because I'm not that old. But like there is something that I feel like kind of nostalgic for an experience I never had because I didn't grow up listening to records. Like I grew up listening to CDs and then pirating music off of Napster. But I think like there's not like that like.

cultural passing down of music that happened in that way. And I think that's just something that we should hold on to. It is. I think you really managed to capture it on the show without

or making it kind of commercial in the way that sometimes, I think the way that people talk about records, it can become kind of about accumulation and sort of just buying things and like building up your collection rather than sitting and listening. And connection. And focusing on the experience of listening to the record, I think is important because that's something I always talk to people about. Like, you know, they'll ask, well, why do you like to listen to records? Why are records more popular? And it's so about something I think you specifically say on the show is the moment where you have to get up

and you turn the record over and everyone kind of breathes together for a minute if you're sitting in a room listening to the record together. And anyone who's had like a vinyl listening party before

has had this experience and maybe didn't even go in thinking that that's what they were signing up for. They were just thinking, oh, I don't know. Yeah, we'll listen to some music together. But then you start to realize that these small things, having to get up, change the record, having to kind of organize the records, these physical objects, looking at the, just passing around the record jacket and looking at it. Like those things are all really integral parts of,

of the music, like of the shared experience. I mean, I actually really like how you focus on the artwork for these albums, you know, the talking book photo, which I had never really thought about that much before. Like I've, I've always seen it. It's a really striking picture, but I'd never really just sat down and like, you know, basically you guys do like a, like deep read of every single element of this picture. Lorna Simpson came into a studio and,

And close read a Stevie Wonder album. And it really enriches the whole album. Like it really does speak to something super deliberate, which is especially cool when you consider that the album cover is the visual element of the record. And that's something that Stevie is like necessarily going to be sort of

working with other people on because he's blind. So he can't have the level of control over the way the album looks compared with the way the album sounds. And that makes it extra cool because it's this kind of collaborative part, especially of those early records where so much of those albums he just did everything himself. Yeah, I mean, I just felt like I knew, okay, so I know I can't do what you do, Kirk. I feel like

I can't find musicological and music theory joy in the listening experience. And, you know, those of us who love your show, like what we know we're going to get from you is...

is a complete dismantling of a song so that there are bolts and washers and nuts and you're just going to like reassemble the thing exactly as it was originally made. I just love, because you're also really good about imagining what a song is beyond what would be on sheet music.

Right. Like there is, you know, just well, first of all, just your feeling, your enthusiasm, your belief in the power of the song. And you aren't trying to unpack it in order to.

rob it of its pleasure, you're arguing for the power of its pleasure by unpacking it. Yeah, I mean, yeah, that's it. And what I felt was important is like, what can I do working with these amazing audio geniuses at Pineapple that...

And I mean, mostly it was just like feel right. Like it was to be excited about like the complete, like what it would have been like to listen to this music in 1972 and 1974 and 76. You know what I mean? Like what would it have been like to have, but I wasn't there. Right. I mean, I definitely, I grew up at the end of the album era. Right. Um, this is an experience I'm familiar with, but I wasn't listening to this music on the floor of my uncle's house. Um,

So it was important to us to find people who had and just to hear a few of them talk about that. And I just really I mean, because it also Josh, I don't know how you feel about this, but it definitely verifies the it verifies and makes experientially real things.

a thing that we now fetishize as, as being pure, um, or cool, right? These are people who didn't know in this is the only way you could do it. It wasn't a fetish. It was the primary delivery mechanism for art, for musical art. Um, and it was just important for us to have like, like archived these people having this experience that we now, um,

to pay we overpay to have because we've been we've been I mean I don't want to say institutionalized because I actually do think it's a better listening experience in some way but like like I actually don't necessarily know that I need to prefer it to walking around New York City listening to music in my headphones and

Um, but it was just really great to just hear all of these people talk about like baby face and Jimmy jam and you know, everybody else who's talking about like hearing this music for the first time as a kid. Right. Like the kidness of this Josh, do you remember the moment where like it hit us with the, with the show is really about like, it's about kids. Right. I mean this, I mean this, it's all in episode six, but like, um, um,

It didn't hit us till the end. It really just, it occurred to us when we were dismounting what we had actually been listening to and what we were making. Yeah.

Yeah, Josh, I'd love to hear you talk a little more about that, about like how your sense of the project changed while you were making it and how you guys came up with that, that kind of like the summarizing big idea at the end there, which is really lovely and does feel like the only, you can only arrive at that at the end, right? I feel like a lot, like what Wes was saying, like a lot,

I could never do what you do in terms of like being able to break things down, like music, like theory wise. I feel like I'm, uh, like when it comes to like music, I'm a lot more like instinctual and a really great, um,

thing about working on the show was like figuring out the whys behind how I feel about music like why does it make me feel that way like why like hearing Rick McLaughlin talk about like the suspended chords and um yeah and the whole tone scale at the start of Sunshine of My Life oh the sunshine of my life

Yeah, and how it makes you feel lifted. I was like, oh, that's why I feel that way. So a lot of the show was figuring out why I felt the way that I already felt. And I think a lot of it had... Speaking of the ending, I think...

It has to do with what we were talking about with the records and passing down and like legacy and like what you're leaving behind. And I don't know, I can't think of a bigger impact on people's lives that or a bigger show of impact that they choose to like celebrate being here on earth by singing the words that you wrote. Yeah, right. Yeah. With his happy birthday. Happy birthday.

I was struck listening to it by the way that Stevie's music, the way that his collaborators changed, I suppose, because you talk with a lot of these music legends that are, you know, on the show to just talk about their, the way that he influenced them. You know, they heard him for the first time and then, you know, they eventually became Babyface or whoever. Or you talk to like, like Smokey Robinson is, you know, just like a really, he just has a couple of really great bits of insight into what things were like at Motown at the time.

But you also have Ray Parker Jr. You have some of the singers who worked with Stevie. You have a variety of his collaborators. At the same time, what he was doing, especially for most of the records you're talking about, he was doing almost everything himself. And it winds up making for a really interesting... It's not a dissonance. It's like a complication, I guess, to the idea of what music is and what American music is and Black American music in the way that...

Going all the way back to the beginnings of jazz in the early 20th century, it's this very collaborative music and it's ensemble-based, especially New Orleans jazz. And there's kind of this...

a push toward stardom that starts to coincide with recorded music. So Louis Armstrong is one of the first great soloists, and suddenly jazz starts to be more about soloists. And actually, this is a tangent, but talking about hearing Beyonce's later stuff and not really realizing her early stuff, I think a lot of people have that relationship with Louis Armstrong. Oh, yeah. I mean, that's their relationship with him. Yeah, they hear him sing What a Wonderful World, and his later kind of... When he was just...

he was Uncle Louie in a way. He was this very safe, friendly guy. He was a kitsch figure. Right, in a similar way. It's different in a lot of ways in a different era, but similar to how Stevie was kind of just this icon. He was this larger-than-life guy who would just turn up on the Cosby show. Louie was kind of the same way, where if you go back to the Hot 5 stuff and you listen to early Louie, it's really revolutionary, mind-blowing music. And so anyways, I think this is a recurring... It's happened with a ton of different artists. I just wanted to mention that. Anyhow...

The way that American music in particular evolved as this semi-improvisational composed group-like form of art that people make together in real time, live, and the recordings that you hear are just recordings of a band playing live. Somewhere that starts to change.

And I've really been fascinated lately by the difference between recorded music and music as it's like existed for tens of thousands of years. It's just like a thing that we all do. We all get together and we sing and play instruments and we just like feel the pulse together. And then just over the last hundred years and really even just the last

60 or something where like multi-track recording and you know even just musicians who could expect to play drums and piano and harmonica and vocals and lay down bass lines with the synthesizer and like have all of like access to all this technology Stevie is like the first artist who could really do that and it winds up

He's like the exception that proves the rule or something. I don't know if that's the right term. That's exactly the right way to put it because people use that term wrong. It's like the exception that proves the rule. I'm always trying to use it right. It's a challenging one. I don't know if you meant to use it right, but you did because basically that means it's kind of the exception that disproves the rule, right? Stevie is the person. He's the aberration, the anomaly, the...

the sort of the lone figure who XYZs, right? There are not that many people in the history of popular music up to the, before, you know, we could do everything with a laptop, right? Right. And then, I mean, then subsequently you get Prince and D'Angelo and I don't know, now like Jacob Collier or someone like that. Like you do have these musicians now. You're still not using, I mean, you still wouldn't be using all your fingers and toes for like major artists who work that way.

and worked that way successfully. You know what I mean? Like, Bruce Springsteen could not do this by himself. He wouldn't want to. That would not be his first choice. But if you were like, Bruce, I'm sorry, the band all has COVID.

and you got to stay in your house, no touring for you, but you got to make this album. You got to do it alone. I would love to hear that. I'd love to hear Bruce Springsteen. Yeah, it'd be like an acoustic album of him singing songs. Kid A or whatever. But it wouldn't be... But I also think that...

There aren't very many artists who have the nerve. Because the other thing about Stevie doing it alone is that it was hard to do that, right? I mean, you really had to be... And this is where Bob...

Robert Margulief and Malcolm Cecil come in, right? Like they understood how to use this giant synthesizer called Tonto to, to help Stevie execute this sound. But at the end of the day, it was Stevie's perfectionism that was saying like getting every one of those chords to match the

recording to recording or take to take to take or you know however it would have worked it would have been an arduous labor in some cases if you wanted to get it exactly the way he wanted to get it the way he could hear it in his brain yeah it's a fascinating thing especially the earlier stuff listening to music of my mind

the way that album is actually pretty loose, there are a lot of times where this was before the click track, he was just doing it. And I've been increasingly in favor of just trying to do that, even though we all have access to these incredibly immaculate, perfectly synced up

audio workstations where you can just drag and drop each of your little hits and make them all perfect to try to record like you've got a four track tape recorder to see if you can do it because it actually frees you up a little bit and opens up a kind of a sense of play. And you can hear that on this record. It just sounds like this guy playing around, especially like toward the end of the album. Oh my God. Yeah. And it's loose. Keep on running. Yeah. I'm sorry. Go on. No, no, precisely. Keep on running is an example of that.

Yeah, man, keep on running. Just like the whole energy of that. And there's really like, there are parts where

I mean, I don't know who would say this. Like a music professor or someone would listen and be like, oh man, you know, that keyboard part is really rushing or that drum part kind of didn't connect over the bar line with the bass. Like they just aren't lining up and that would be seen as like a mistake. But then when you're listening to it, it's this just great recording and it works beautifully. So like, how is that a mistake? It's so funny, yeah. ♪

I love that you're saying that because, you know, one of Questlove's... I mean, we talked to Questlove a couple times and Questlove was really...

I don't know if you've ever spoken to this man, but he can be... He is a font. Yes. He knows so much. It's wild. And one of the things that he got hung up on, I don't remember. We definitely didn't use it. But it was interesting to hear him. And other people have said this too. Like people in my life, musicians, are just like, yeah, I mean, sometimes Stevie...

I mean, he could play the drums, but he wasn't always the... He's not the best drummer. And the thing Questlove was talking about was just how...

As a drummer, Questlove is one of our great drummers. Questlove's like, yeah, he wasn't trying to get it perfect. He wasn't trying to get that perfect. But there were so many other elements to these songs that it kind of didn't matter that that wasn't exactly right because they're like...

10 other things happening on this track or in this song. Yeah. And his simultaneous...

Part of the joy, I imagine, of the listening experience has so much to do with feeling and not necessarily precision, right? Yeah, it's like that broader vision or the way that you get a sense of this broader experience. I mean, and this kind of blew my mind. I remember when I was in school, a jazz pianist that I was studying with saying to me, oh, well, Thelonious Monk, he doesn't really play

play that well he doesn't really swing because I was like what like because you know I at the time I was just like yeah Thelonious Monk one of the great pianists but then just hearing that from a guy who is not saying it in the context of like Thelonious Monk is like whack and can't play but just like classically speaking he doesn't he's not McCoy Tyner right right he's not Bud Powell he is like his technique is a little weird but then that's a key part of like

his whole, like, musical identity, like him as a pianist. When you go and listen to Monk, it's not about, like, how burning his eighth note lines are. It's, like, about his composition and his specific funky weird swing. It's all kind of sloshy and off a little bit. Yeah, yeah. ♪

When he's like hitting the piano with his, you know, forearm and stuff and like, and it's all kind of part of his sound. And as a result, like Monk has a much stronger identity to me, at least than someone like a Bud Powell where like Bud Powell is amazing, but like, he's just like really technically amazing and kind of invented a lot of bebop vocabulary that a lot of people use later. But so like, I think that that kind of, that understanding of Stevie for me, it's like a more mature understanding, I guess.

I do worry sometimes that that kind of appreciation for a looser...

but more specific musical vision gets lost, especially in the modern age. Like this is my kind of old man yelling at clouds where I'm like on Instagram or YouTube and I see all kinds of musicians who are 23 years old and can play the most amazing stuff I've ever seen. I mean, like the level of technical precision that just like the total mastery of the instrument that some of these young musicians display is like,

totally out of control. But I'm not sure if the focus on that sort of detracts from the focus on the broader thing. It's like focusing entirely on your drumming precision and then deciding that maybe Stevie isn't my guy because he's not the most precise drummer in the world. Even though when you actually listen to him play drums, he doesn't sound like anybody else. And that's maybe more important. You're not...

You're not, right. You're not even hearing a problem, right? It's just like, I mean, I'm definitely not. But I also think that you're identifying something that feels important to me in terms of a shift, which is like, you know, one of the things that we talked about was what else would, you know, Josh and I and Janelle and a few other people were just sort of thinking through what,

Like who else? It wasn't, I'm going to say this this way, Josh, and you can correct me. But it was, it wasn't so, we wanted to sort of situate the achievement of these albums within the context of who else was making music at that level, you know?

that prolifically at that time and they're truly somebody wrote me who listened to the show and was like what about Elton John

And yeah, Elton John's the one that pops to mind, right? I have a very specific response to that, right? There are too many albums that don't do what Madman Across the Water or Goodbye Yellow Brick Road or Honky Tonk Chateau do, right? They're like, it's like they're...

The highs are so high and the mediocre ones are mediocre. And it's like every other one is great and the ones that aren't great are good. But it's like music of my mind is as...

like mind-blowingly excellent as songs in the key of life right there's no the mountain the he's scaling something he's going from everest to whatever is higher than everest right yeah and elton john is the definite like contender for a title like this but the other other thing that's important to me about stevie wonder

is that there is a clear... Elton John is figuring something out on these albums. Stevie Wonder had 12 albums before he gets to Music of My Mind, and that's where he's figuring it out. A lot of those albums are unlistenable. Some of them are very good, but it's not until you... And he has to make... He has to make Signed, Sealed, Delivered. Is that the one? Oh, my God.

Is that what's before Music of My Mind? Where I'm Coming From? Where I'm Coming From. Thank you. That's right, Josh. He has to make Where I'm Coming From in order to do Music of My Mind. Where I'm Coming From is the one that sounds like

You can hear other influences. You can hear him figuring out how to break free. We had this discussion where we were like, does it start here? Where's the moment? We really talked about whether or not it actually is where I'm coming from. And it just isn't. It just isn't. At least to me, I can argue why it's not. And same for Elton John. I can argue that for as good as three of those albums in that burst...

It isn't the same as this streak. I would happily do Elton John. I would happily give him this treatment. There are things that you can't... The other thing is that, you know, like what is the world you're putting Elton John in? So much of what's going on in those albums relies a little bit on biography, things you can't hear in the music. A lot of what's going on with Elton John that's different from Stevie is that...

I mean, this is not important, but it'd be a thing you'd have to get into. Elton's not black, right? But so much of what he's experimenting with and discovering...

on those albums is black music. Like how, and blackness, right? And so I don't know. It's definitely a project that I would consider doing, but I do not feel remiss. I don't think there's any, this is a one of a kind, the Beatles are the only people that like, you know, are in the conversation. Well, and they were that experimental. I mean, I think something I had a new appreciation for is just how

and technologically experimental Stevie Wonder was. He was doing stuff with synthesizers that nobody else was. I really appreciate your pointing out the way that he was using synthesizers expressively, because I think that that was something that he was at the vanguard of, was taking a synth and not exactly making it sound like a horn or an electric guitar, trying to actually fake another instrument, but also not using it as this weird...

sort of freak out, like Dark Side of the Moon or something, the way that some of those other rock records would incorporate synths to just be like, all right, now we're going to do the weird electronic like Kraftwerk thing for a minute, and then we'll bring it back to the guitars. He was using them to just be like, well, I play keyboard. Like that is like my main way of interacting with music. So if I have a synthesizer now, I can do so many more things. I can do

bands and portamentos, I can like add vibrato and like add all these cool, like, you know, dramatic expressive sounds that I would imagine piano players as a mediocre piano player. I would imagine that even really skilled piano players struggle with

some of the missing expressive elements that the piano has compared to a saxophone or a guitar or something where you can shake notes and bend notes and you know you can add all those blue notes and those kind of expressive sounds and I just think that was something he was really pioneering in the 1970s and just the singularity of his vision because those records were all so dominated by him

performed and recorded by him right like it was just so like he had his collaborators but it was like really his vision that I think that he just makes for a really great a really great focus through this this period of time so yeah I totally understand why you guys why you guys picked him I also feel like um to your point about what what is missing a thing that that is sort of gone out of music is

And it's true that we are talking about a person who achieved something that no one else has achieved in a period in which it was the greatest era to be making albums in the history of the format. Yeah.

um but i do think it's interesting that now like this idea of vision um even if it's just sustained for like an album i mean this is the thing that makes a beyonce rather extraordinary as an artist is like she understands what an album is and can do right it's true she wants to make albums she's an album artist um single doesn't chart it's fine i didn't do it for that um

And so I think that like the idea of having a reason to make an album is important. I think that the, I mean, I think the Drake's of the world really win, right? Because prolificness and it's funny that Kent, well, whatever, this is a tangent, but it's useful to think about this in the context of Steve. It is interesting to me to think about the way that the thing that makes Kendrick Lamar great is,

is that he too is an album artist, right? He is thinking about the album, but he is having what to me is a Stevie Wonder arrives in the 1980s moment. And like now Kendrick is a singles artist. For the moment, he is a singles artist. And people want hits of Kendrick that they did not previously want because they had not been, he wasn't making music that was meant to do that.

But now he's just dropping a single. Like, he's dropping, I mean, these are landmines, these are grenades. Sure. These are warheads. But I also think they work in a singles environment because they're, I mean, in this context, they're being deployed as part of a conversation. Right. Or they're being deployed to end a conversation. Right.

But you are watching an artist who has been thinking one way about music and music delivery mechanisms be forced, like, through competition to think of a different way to express himself. And there's even a vision in that, to me. Sure. And I think Stevie just became in the 80s somebody who under, like, the...

Popular taste in some way, popular commercial taste really caught up with his interest in the synthesizer by the 80s. And that is how you explain how three of his best-selling songs come from that era and not from the 70s. I don't know. I just feel like one of the things we do not have...

is somebody who, cause I think Beyonce has another phase in her. I don't know what it, I don't know what it is. It's like, it's, I mean, another sort of expressive phase, not an even mean ID, like thematically or, um, like self expressively. I mean, like there's a, there's a, something's going to change in music and she is going to be, um,

on the back end with an innovation in some way. I don't know how it's going to... But that's just how she is. She's poised to read, not the tea leaves, but to see what is happening and find a way to take a conversation that's been long in place and say something new with it. Her vision is very different from Stevie's. Stevie wasn't in conversation with...

the moment in the same way. He was off on his own thing and it, it, it seemed like it was doing something else. But I think that there just aren't that many vision artists, right? I don't know what, I mean, I'm thinking about like, do I, do I say the words Taylor and Swift? I don't know. But you know, Radiohead, Kanye, people still making music that still seems to fit

within the scope of a self, if that makes sense. Yeah, I mean, the moment is just so different. I mean, appreciate that you contextualized Stevie in the context of Motown, even though he was so different from the rest of Motown. And he fits...

He was definitely an essential part of understanding Motown, and any Motown documentary would have to talk about Stevie Wonder. But he's always going to be a little bit unusual, just because the rest of Motown, a lot of the artists and bands, the studio musicians, the whole thing really fits together. And then there's Stevie just in the studio by himself, inventing whole new musical worlds, and he's just also doing it on Motown. So he just existed in this certain period of time, and...

that period of time is no longer. I mean, like Beyonce is fascinating. I would definitely listen to you guys' Beyonce documentary whenever it's going to be time to make that. Don't get Josh started.

You know, she's certainly an artist of the same caliber and the same level of vision. She just exists in such a different time period. Or Taylor, anybody now who's doing something bigger than just releasing hit singles. This period of time is a very... I mean, I would say it's weird. It is weird. I don't totally understand it. Off-putting and alienating, but also it's just so different. It's so different than 1973 or whatever. Yeah.

One other thing I wanted to ask you guys about, and we're going long, we're running out of time, but Stevie himself is not really a part of the first, you know, the bulk of the episodes. Your analysis, it kind of goes around him. Like he is an essential part of it. You're talking about him the whole time. So many of his collaborators and contemporaries are there, but Stevie exists only in the music and in the way that you kind of analyze him. I'm just curious, like,

why you took that approach and how you think it helped or held you back, like things you could do or couldn't do because you chose to make the show that way. Josh, I'm actually curious what you would say. I'm curious what you think. Well, I mean, I'll tell you that my understanding of what the show was going to be when I said yes was that it was going to, I mean, I understood that I'd be hosting it

I knew that there would be... It would be... Like, how I felt about these albums was going to be an important part of the show. But I always thought that there would be, in some way, Stevie Wonder there to bounce my criticism off of, right? Mm-hmm. To corroborate my suspicions, to answer questions, to, like...

tell me to go away, you know, or that I'm like, you know, come back tomorrow because the trail that you've taken to get here is not the right one. But I actually feel like I'm really grateful that... I just think this show is richer in some way because...

What we're having, I mean, it's richer without him being a correspondent to his own artist, being a correspondent on his own artistry, right? Like us turning to Stevie to get the quote real story unquote. I mean, I don't know. I just think that, first of all, it's a different show. And I also think it kind of...

I mean, this show, what's happening to this show now that it's in the world is proof of what I'm about to say. But you make a thing, it's not yours anymore. Right? Like, you have no control over how people are going to... You can hope for the best and that people derive pleasure or meaning from it. But you can't... I mean, yes, you can explain how you did a lot of musical things, but...

The feeling of the feeling you had making this, the feeling that made you want to make it, the desire, the passion, the inspiration, the experiences, all of those things, those live in us now. And I think so much of what we wanted to do with this show was just really...

dramatize, personify, journalize, historicize the feeling that Stevie Wonder had, the experiences that he had, the inspiration that he had, and the ways in which all of those things now reside within every listener of his music. And so I think that he is so...

He's so present. And I mean, I can't believe I'm about to say this, Josh, but I actually think the title really does kind of get it. You know, I think that like this man, you know,

We could have taken so many different approaches to making this show. Like, this show could have been me and Rick McLaughlin talking for every album. Because I would listen to Rick McLaughlin talk about anything. The show could have been like Yolanda Adams breaking down the vocal arrangements on every single song on this album, on these albums.

It could have been the Obamas talking about. I mean, it could have been so many different people. I mean, Janelle Monae said so many smart, interesting things that we didn't even use because every one of these people said so many deep, powerful, interesting, profound, revelatory, personal things about this man's music and its effect on them and its effect on everybody who's listened to it.

And the fact that we had, you know, six different approaches to the music this man made is a testament to the versatility, elasticity, depth, meaning, emotional resonance of all of it.

And, I mean, it didn't occur to me until a couple weeks ago that, like, there were moments when we were making the show where I was like, I wonder if I should reintroduce the fact that I think we need to call Rick back. And we just need to keep talking to Rick. Because Rick is a genius, and he gets it. He really gets it. But everybody gets it. There wasn't one person that we spoke to who didn't get it. Everybody could have...

co-hosted this show. And I mean, I don't know. I just feel like, I don't know. I mean, Josh, you go. I agree with everything you said. I feel like the approach, I think it was a gift that we were able to have the space to kind of examine and re-examine like all of the different feelings and histories and stories and all of that with the

the people that experienced it with him, with the people that have thought about this for a long time, with the people that experienced it with us,

And I think it opened up space for people to be able to focus on the feeling, like focus on how you feel. And then I was so grateful, like bucket list moment that we were able to then have a moment with Barack Obama and Stevie Wonder where he sat. Oh, you haven't heard it yet. I haven't heard it, but I'm excited to hear it. Stevie Wonder sits with a keyboard in the studio with us.

And as we're talking, as we're thinking about different questions and asking him different questions, he's responding in song, like sometimes. Like it's like an extension of his voice. And so I think the way that we went about making the show, having Wes's point of view being like the ship that everyone is on really frees up space for everyone to examine their own feelings. But then we...

are able to bookend it with the goat himself at the end. Yeah, no, you really get the best of both worlds. And I loved this approach. I mean, it's, I guess it's similar to the approach I take with my show. I think there is a place for talking to the artists about the music that they made and hearing their own accounts, their own correspondence of their work. And I think that can be really interesting and you can learn a lot. But

Yeah, like you said, Wesley, I mean, it, you know, it kind of, the music becomes something more, it becomes something that belongs to all of us. And especially something like, like the music of Stevie Wonder has been with all of us for so long, for a lot of us our entire lives. And so...

Being able to pull back and just really luxuriate in that and examine it from all these different perspectives, it kind of requires stepping away from him a little bit, at least from his account of the music, and taking the music as it exists as this larger cultural object, which I think is just a really special part of the show. So I really loved that approach. And yeah, I haven't heard the final bonus episode with Stevie and...

President Obama, but I'm really excited to listen to that. Well, we are pretty much out of time. I want to ask you both one more question, and that is, if there is a single Stevie Wonder song that the process of making this show has led you to have a new relationship with or maybe heard in a new way, if you just had to pick one, each of you, I know I'm kind of springing it on you right now, but I'm curious what each one of you would pick. Maybe, Wesley, you go first. You know,

I will just... This is like a cheat. I mean, okay. It's strong songs. I'm going to pick a song. But I will say I'm definitely going to pick it off of Music of My Mind. And I think I'm going to do that even though I think Fulfillingness is, you know, it is my favorite of these five albums. I think Music of My Mind is really the one that keeps on giving in this really interesting way. And I think Sweet Little Girl...

Is...

Just, I mean, it's simultaneously a weird song. It's a little... I don't know, a little creepy. But musically, right? I mean, I'm not taking him at his actual word. Like, I mean, we can... Whatever. But there's something just really... I just think that there's something about the way that music is working on this album and him figuring out how to use this technology and...

He's just having, you can hear him thinking in process, if that makes sense. And there's something about this common, this simultaneous thinking and feeling thing happening on this album that is producing this very exciting, I mean, musical tension, but also like sexual tension. You know your baby knows.

It's the one album where he is like a truly sexual creature. It's the one album in which sex is, it's a very adult, like young adult thing to do, like rite of passage oriented thing to do. Like I can say, I can say now, so I'm going to say it. I can say the N word now, I'm going to say it. I can come on to a woman now. I can do it in character too. I can do it in character and I can do it out of character.

But I just think Sweet Little Girl is just such a really good, fun, strange song. It's got a little bit of it's a little country. It's a little porch music is like that's what I'm hearing. And he's finding a new way to sing because he's in his lower register there for a lot of it.

And then he will do this thing where he like explodes and then he'll do one of my favorite Stevie moves, which is to like do that guttural preacher singing. You know, you know, you know, I, I,

I don't know if he invented that, but he's definitely the first popular, and we don't really even spend, we don't spend enough time. There are two things we don't spend enough time on with Stevie on this show. Him as a jazz musician and him as a vocalist. We talk a lot about his singing on the show. It's not, it's not unremarked upon.

But like we could have done a whole episode just about Stevie as a singer. Yeah. His techniques, his various registers and voices like that. Yeah. The way that he can become a whole gospel choir. Yeah, for sure. Josh,

I'm so shocked you didn't say as. I mean, I think you guys make a very strong case for as, and I've always loved that song for the melody, but I rediscovered it through it. Is that your pick? No, no. I've always loved as. Josh is making fun of me. Because he struggled with it for so long. It's a nice little narrative though. I know that feeling. I think for me, the thing that comes to my mind is Boogie on Reggae Woman. Oh, man. Yeah.

Because it's like what I was speaking about earlier in terms of like having an instinct but not knowing why I had it. Like, you know what I mean? What was the instinct? I just like loved this song and it was really like, it's like also like Stevie Wonder's like, you know,

one of my parents' favorite artists. And so, like, I would... Music from this era, like, I would hear songs. Like, I wouldn't hear albums. And so this was just one of those songs that came on my dad's, like, playlist that he would play. And I would be like, oh, I love this song. But not understanding, like...

the story behind the album and the story behind what's happening in his life at that time. And like the car accident, his recovery. It's just one of those examples of a song that I was able to like recontextualize in my mind because of working on this show and appreciate like from a different point of view and a different, from a different level. Like, um, you and Alex Papademos are talking about, um,

you know, the song being like him asking himself whether he's still able to play, like whether he's still able to be who he was prior to this experience that he had had. Like, that's like a totally different level of, of, of appreciation of a song than like, Oh, that's a bop, you know? Yeah. That's so funny. Yeah. I, I played that in a cover band I was in and had never even heard it and didn't,

I don't think I knew it was a Stevie tune the first time we played it. And it's funny both because it's not a reggae song, despite being about a reggae woman. And it's a blues. It's like the form of the song is a kind of modified or like a heavily modified blues, but it owes a lot to the blues in that chord progression. And so it was always just really fun to play over in this cover band. And it wasn't for a long time until I heard the original recording and realized like, oh, this is really cool. And then, yeah, I totally agree, Josh, that that

uh that with the way that you guys talk about it on the episode really helped me understand it on a much more zoomed out and like personal and kind of i'd say important level than just oh it's not a reggae and it's kind of a blues and it grooves right it's like you know andre andre 3000 said like you guys don't want to hear me you just want to you just want to dance like yeah that's how i feel like a lot of stevie's music i felt prior to working on this project was like

Oh, yeah, that's a great song. I love that song. Oh, I hear that song at weddings. And I'm really grateful that I had the chance to work with you, Wes, and work on deconstructing why and how. Yeah, yeah. I think that's really the triumph of this show. I think it's really something special. And that it accomplishes that. It accomplishes that for me. I think it will for a lot of other people as well.

Can I just say one quick thing, by the way? Yeah. I'm not changing my answer, but I do feel like I a little bit misunderstood the assignment for getting who...

like who the host of the show that I'm talking to is, I actually want to give you an assignment. Okay. I want you to do Jesus children of America. Jesus children. Jesus. Like, Oh man. I mean, like, I just feel like I have to do it. No, I mean, I don't, you don't have to do it, but I just feel like as, as like,

one of the most musically rich and interesting songs that he's ever written. And it's like a song that sounds like, I mean, the one amazing thing about this, and Josh and I have talked about this a little bit, is that you have, what, 50, I counted the other day, is it 50, 57 songs? Like Stevie songs? 59. It's 59 songs. I believe it's 59 songs. Not one of them

Sounds like the other one. 59 different sounding songs. Yes, yes, that's really true. Like the albums give them all a temperature. The album gives them a context that connects them in some way. But these songs are unmistakable for each other. But of all of them,

The one to me that I just feel like is a jam that like really, I mean, you might get to it and find that like, it just isn't quite as musically rich as Sir Duke or I wish. I doubt it. Or Pastime in Paradise. No. Or I mean, even Heaven is a Zillion Light Years Away. Sure. Um,

Or, you know, a million layers. I always make it a Z. Anyway, I feel like Jesus' Children of America is the least paid attention to and of the most musically rich Stevie Wonder songs from this period. I feel like that is a masterpiece of...

insinuation, musicality, feeling. There's so many things happening there. And it just, it is the most, it's the sexiest song he might ever have recorded that is not in any way about sex. Man, I'll have to sit down with it and yeah, really learn it. But I feel like when Wesley Morris tells you you gotta do an episode. I mean, you can do what you want. But

No, that's a great pick. I mean, they're all great picks, but that is definitely a really cool song. I'd have to sit down with it.

All right. Well, it is a hell of a thing that you guys have made. It's really something special. I'm very happy to have listened to it. I'm really glad that it exists. And I hope I get to tell at least a few people about it. And I really appreciate that you both took the time to come talk to me about it. Thanks for having us. Congratulations on the show. It's so great. And yeah, Wesley Morris and Josh Gwynn, thanks so much for coming on the show and for everything that you do. Oh, my God. Thank you, Kurt. Thank you so much.

And there you have it, my conversation with Wesley Morris and Josh Gwynn. That was a lot of fun. And I mean, it really is one of the best things about having a podcast. Sometimes you get to have on one of your actual favorite writers and just talk to him for an hour about Stevie Wonder. It's pretty cool.

I am, of course, still at work on season seven of Strong Songs. Everyone voted over on the Patreon and you all selected Sting and the Police to get an episode in the upcoming season. So at long last, I will do an episode on Sting. People have been requesting it forever and you voted and now that's going to happen.

In the meantime, I will keep running older episodes in the feed while I work on that season and maybe a few more interviews. I don't know. We'll see. Sometimes opportunities like this just come up and it's almost always worth taking the time. Okay, that'll do it for now. Take care and keep listening.