Tag: Stevie Wonder

You Picked It!: Stevie Wonder – ‘Songs in the Key of Life’ – Album Review

Published on by 2loud2oldmusic28 Comments

Alright…You Picked It! And here it is. The one you picked was Stevie Wonder’s ‘Songs in the Key of Life’.  The votes were as follows:

  1. Stevie Wonder – Songs in the Key of Life – 7 votes
  2. Genesis – Genesis – 4 votes
  3. Funkadelic – Maggot Brain – 3 votes
  4. Adelitas Way – Shine On – 3 votes (one vote was a Like on Twitter by the band)
  5. Mr. Mister – Welcome to the Real World – 2 votes

Thanks to all for participating.  The October choices will be up on Saturday!

STEVIE WONDER – ‘SONGS IN THE KEY OF LIFE’

I don’t know what I was thinking when I picked this album to add to the You Pick It ! post. I had completely forgot what a daunting task this would be as this album is considered the best Stevie Wonder album, one of the best albums ever and it is a double LP with 21 songs and at a run time of 1 hour and 45 minutes, it is a lot of ground to cover. When the album easily won the vote count, I became a little freaked on how I was going to do this album any justice. There is really no way I can go song by song as this post would be way too long and you would get bored. So, I am only going to go through what I found to be the highlights of this album which is still quite a lot.

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You Pick It! – Which Album to Review in September?

Published on by 2loud2oldmusic45 Comments

You, my reader, are going to pick an album for me to review each month.  It is really simple…first, I will give you 5 albums to choose from and second, you will tell me which one of those you would like to see reviewed on the site.  See…simple!

There are a few simple rules I have put in to place in my selections.  They are…

  • One has to be a new release (within the last month)
  • One has to be one I have never heard before (new releases don’t count for this one)
  • One has to be from a genre I don’t normally listen to at all or very often
  • And the last two are choices from my collection that I haven’t reviewed before

What are the 5 albums you ask?  Funny you should ask because I have those right here…note: I tried to throw in some non-obvious choices to make things a little more interesting.

91fueI6vNPL._SS500_  New Release – Adelitas Way – ‘Shine On’

91XuGESJC+L._SX522_  Never Heard Before – Funkadelic – ‘Maggot Brain’

71j8hhKN7fL._SX522_  Not My Normal Genre – Stevie Wonder – ‘Songs in the Key of Life’

81E2pAj6FwL._SS500_  From My Collection – Mr. Mister – ‘Welcome to the Real World’

41G32ZGTGML  From My Collection – Genesis – ‘Genesis’

Let me know which one you would like to see and sometime in September, I will post a review of the album that gets the most votes.  You have one week to decide and from there I will start listening to the album and do a review.

Thanks for participating!!

The Original Vs The Cover – “Higher Ground”

Published on by 2loud2oldmusic14 Comments

For this month’s The Original Vs The Cover, we are comparing the versions of the song “Higher Ground” originally performed by Stevie Wonder and then later covered by the Red Hot Chili Peppers.  Two great artists and two very different versions so which will come out on top.

The song was written by Stevie Wonder and it came out on his 1973 album ‘Innervisions’.  It went all the way to #4 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #1 on the R&B chart.  It was a very successful song for Stevie and in 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked it #265 on the Top 500 Songs of all time.  Not bad.

The song is possibly about two things.  One being second chances and the other is reincarnation (which could also be considered a second chance I guess).  Stevie wrote the song and recorded it in a span of 3 hours which to me is amazing.  According to Stevie, he felt a sense of urgency to get it done as if something was going to happen and he needed to finish it.  Just a few months later, he was in a car accident that put him in a coma for four days (3 days after the album was released).

Okay, let us get to the songs…

STEVIE WONDER

Stevie’s song is pure 70’s funk.  It has such an awesome little groove and that unique wah sound comes from a clavinet using a Mu-Tron III pedal.  What are those?  Here is a picture (thanks wikipedia).

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