Stevie Wonder Innervisions LP

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums of All Time - Rated 34/500!

Stevie Wonder's 1973 album Innervisions won the Grammy for Album of the Year and features the hit singles "Higher Ground," "Living for the City," and "Don't You Worry 'bout a Thing."

"It's one of the greatest albums of our time," Motown contemporary Lionel Richie, Wonder's friend and one of the album's many admirers, told GRAMMY.com in 2023. "Every song on the album is incredible, and it will hold the test of time with people saying the same thing 100 years from now about it."

When Stevie Wonder applied his tremendous songwriting talents to the unsettled social morass that was the early '70s, he produced one of his greatest, most important works, a rich panoply of songs addressing drugs, spirituality, political ethics, the unnecessary perils of urban life, and what looked to be the failure of the '60s dream — all set within a collection of charts as funky and catchy as any he'd written before.

Wonder is in absolute control here, injecting such tunes as 'Living for the City,' 'Higher Ground' and 'Don't Worry 'Bout a Thing,' with elements of spiritual quest, racial pride and social urgency. In between, he finds room for one of his loveliest ballads, 'All in Love Is Fair.'

With signature harmonica squeals and whimsical clavinet underlying 10 gorgeously crafted songs, Wonder's sightless vision had created a truly beautiful world of golden ladies and deep faith with funky, jazzy songs that are unapologetically romantic and loving ('Higher Ground,' 'Jesus Children of America,' 'All in Love Is Fair').

Innervisions remains Wonder's most harrowing and tightly structured album—one that manages to say as much about life in 45 minutes as Songs in the Key of Life took an extra hour to convey.

Stevie Wonder's trailblazing Innervisons has more than stood the test of time. The nine-track Tamla Records release pushed boundaries — lyrically, musically and technologically — subsequently becoming an influential lightning rod for both Wonder's career as well as R&B and pop at large.

Nothing in his canon quite hits the spot like Innervisions. It is the best long-form capturing of Wonder's talent, and remains a work of constant, evolving surprise.

A song cycle meant to endure, the work holds up by the sheer commitment of the performances and dead-on commentary that's proven timeless.