Inner visions is a delicate, very soulful album with direct links to records from its Motown lineage such as that of Marvin Gaye What’s going onwhose social consciousness Stevie tried to channel in the 1971s Where I come fromalthough he is best known for “Never Dreamed You’d Leave in Summer” and “If You Really Love Me”, notable detours from his political message. Inner visions studies scenes outside Motown. The anti-drug anthem “Too High” evokes the technical and complex grooves of jazz-fusion; “Living for the City” is as much an art-rock epic as it is a funk/soul masterpiece. Wonder traveled the world in nine songs, matching the progressive experiences of contemporary rock gems like Pink Floyd. The dark side of the moon and Todd Rundgren A magician, a real star; the playful parts of the synthesizer in the funk bombs of fire birds by Mahavishnu Orchestra and Herbie Hancock’s Headhunters; Donny Hathaway’s nervous hope Extension of a man; the acoustic jazz of Baden Powell Loneliness on guitar; and Willie Colón and Héctor LaVoe’s horned salsa Lo Mato. Inner visions collapsed the spaces between avant-garde and mainstream, rock and soul, jazz and pop music. They all played the same instruments.

As What’s going on, Inner visions lays out a problem, then offers solutions: the constraints of the modern age are many, but with truth, kindness, love, and faithfulness, we can push back the darkness. Wonder’s albums had never been so concise or cohesive in their message. Inner visions was his first feature with no co-writers or covers, a monumental undertaking for both Motown – a hit factory again betting against its history by letting an artist write his own songs – and Stevie, which pulled thematically cohesive tracks from thin air. The album does not judge or sell easy answers. It pushes you in the direction of more conscious management of our world and then lets you know that the task will be difficult. (“Jesus Children of America” ​​is compelling and slippery. It implores you to place less emphasis on physical gratification and more on building the mind and soul. It reminds you that this path is riddled with swindlers and swindlers.And it’s far too hyped about Transcendental Meditation to call it commonplace proselytizing of the church. Inner visions is a potpourri of ideas from Eastern and Western philosophies, but its call to inspire change through personal and cultural judgment is entrenched, less pie in the sky and more mutual aid and good vibes . It’s a very 70s perspective, a specific response to the repercussions of modern bohemian culture as the counterculture became more fractured and paranoid, but it still rings true in its quest for peace and love in the shadow of the systemic racism and widespread political corruption.

three days later Inner visions was released, Stevie Wonder was traveling through North Carolina on his way to a benefit concert for an independent black radio station when his driver hit a flatbed truck full of wood logs, sending a fairing through the bumper. -Breaks in Wonder’s forehead, causing a brain contusion. (It is said that upon hearing “Higher Ground” while in a coma, Stevie moved his fingers.) Maybe he was right to be terrified in 1973. He was right that America was in dire straits. Nixon resigned in 1974 with Inner visions“He’s Misstra Know-It-All”—”He’s a man with a plan/Got a fake dollar in his hand”—still going to be Stevie’s final single. The album’s progress in exploring a wider palette of instruments for black funk music was met and matched in the brilliance of Parliament-Funkadelic and Prince in later years. (The LinnDrum, American designer Roger Linn’s drum machine, is as crucial to Prince’s ’80s as TONTO is to Stevie’s ’70s.) Inner visions endures as a touchstone for young songwriters creating expansive orchestral music and songwriters tackling big issues without overwhelming listeners.

Genius shines in any environment. It’s music malleable enough to have been reworked by Barbra Streisand, who had a hit in 1974 when she recast Wonder’s conciliatory break-up tune “All Is Fair in Love” into an orchestral ballad; Madlib, whose side project Yesterday’s New Quintet turned “Visions” into a Brazilian jazz workout on the 2004 covers album Steve; and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, whose rendition of “higher ground” on the years 1989 Breastmilk added screeching guitars and gang vocals. When the R&B group Troop sang “live for the cityin the 1991 detective film by Mario Van Peebles Jack’s New Townhe pointed out how little the character of New York has changed since Stevie sang about the city destroying young black men nearly two decades earlier, a truth reinforced by hundreds of other accounts of horrific murders by the police and brutality that extend into the 21st century. Inner visions touched on the musical tastes and political concerns of 1973, but foresight keeps it relevant. He implores us to keep fighting.