3. Stevie WonderFullingness’ First Finale
I guess Prince led me to Stevie Wonder; I was into him first, around age 14, 15, and then that slowly led me to Stevie Wonder. Like many musicians, you love funk music, you love the idea of the perfect groove, but it was never just enough for me, I could never just listen to The Gap Band or Kool & The Gang really with a straight face. With Stevie Wonder, there’s the European aspect, the Mozart aspect, that Prince also has, and that comes from the overarching vision: the groove is there, in the end, to support music-based songwriting, which is to say not lyric-based songwriting. Both Stevie Wonder and Prince are hit-and-miss as far as lyrics are concerned – when they have good lyrics, it’s like an accident.
There’s something about Fullingness’ First Finale that seems to be the darkest [of Wonder’s classic albums]. I love that song ‘They Won’t Go When I Go’, that’s probably my favourite track on there. It’s the most neo-classical album; I think it’s the one where he really got into the experimentation with the synthesisers the most and it’s got that crazy title, that crazy alliteration.
