7. Stevie WonderInnervisions
This was also in my father’s record collection and that’s how I first heard it. He had an amazing Motown collection too, alongside the more guitar-led or singer-songwriter-led stuff in the record collection from America – Crosby, Stills & Nash, Neil Young. Innervisions was light years away from the Motown songs that I’d heard him create, but I loved them just the same. On Innervisions he talked a lot about God and talked his connection to his spiritual life which I thought that very brave and honest of him. It wasn’t off-putting in the way that maybe some of the more happy-clappy God squad songs that come your way can be, which are really off-putting. But Stevie Wonder gave me an insight into how God can be in my life. It’s spiritual rather than dogma? Exactly, it’s Godma! It was also very political and hard-hitting and gave you a slice of a life about how tough and difficult it was to be a Black person at that time. It gave me a huge insight into the issues that surrounded him and the country that he’s living in.
