1 post tagged “national hero”

Back almost two years ago, when we moved to this town, we moved with my parents, and some of our stuff got mixed in with theirs.  Due to a series of circumstances, they didn't unpack a lot of their stuff until just recently.  One of my things that had gone missing was my travel CD case with the CDs in it.  Since this was the CD case I carried around on trips and so forth, it was filled with some of my most favorite CDs.  I've been missing them sorely.

Finally, it was uncovered, but since we don't listen to CDs a lot at home (my son keeps ruining the CD players because he's 3 and he likes to do things by himself) and I'm hardly ever in the car, I hadn't had a chance to listen to most of the CDs yet.  Last Friday, though, I was driving my son back from tumbling class, and I thumbed through the case and pulled out Stevie Wonders' CD Innervisions.

And holy fuck.

God DAMN, that is a great album. 

How is this thing not required listening in school?  I realize that a lot of people still don't consider popular music as serious enough for inclusion in schools, but that's an attitude I personally find preposterous.  But let's not argue about that point right now. 

I don't really remember how I stumbled into buying Innervisions.  I mean, I knew Stevie Wonder mostly from "I Just Called to Say I Love You" and "Ebony and Ivory" which were easily two of my most hated songs of my childhood.  So, I don't know why I bought Innervisions based on that record (and honestly I have no idea how you get from the incredible genius of Innervisions to "I Just Called to Say I Love You"--I really have no idea because the two do not seem to be the products of the same mind).

Anyway, I'm not a music critic or in any qualified to really go into details of why it's so great.  I wish I were.  For me, writing about music is very much like dancing about architecture:  I know when something blows me away and I know when I like something (the two are not always necessarily the same thing--I like a lot of songs that don't really blow me away) but I can't usually explain it very well.

So, instead of explaining, I'm going to share, for the uninitiated.  This is my personal favorite song on the album:

However, this is the song that Obama clearly should have used as his campaign theme:

Man.  Despite some of the later sappiness, Stevie Wonder is a national hero, people.  He is a national hero.  If he had never produced another album after Innervisions, he would still be a national hero.  Isn't there some kind of medal we could give the man?