![]() ![]() Wonder’s first Motown Records contract ended as he turned 21 in 1971. 1 song with an irresistibly exuberant live recording: “Fingertips, Pt. And its album cover - which showed Wonder wearing African-style robes and braided hair in a quasi-Biblical desert landscape (actually Los Angeles) - made clear that Wonder’s futurism was unmistakably Afrofuturism.Īlthough Wonder had just reached voting age, he was no novice when he made “Music of My Mind” and “Talking Book.” They were his 14th and 15th albums in a decade-long career that stretched back to his days as Little Stevie Wonder, who was just 13 when he had his first No. “Talking Book” reaffirmed that, and also extended his sonic and technological ambitions, as he used state-of-the-art synthesizers and an arsenal of studio effects to orchestrate his songs with startlingly novel sounds. Wonder had given signs on earlier albums, particularly his self-produced “Where I’m Coming From” (1971), that he would not just be writing love songs. ![]() ![]() It demonstrated, with the international smash “Superstition,” that Wonder didn’t need Motown’s “hit factory” methods - songwriters and producers providing material that singers would dutifully execute - to have a No. “Talking Book” was a breakthrough on multiple fronts. ![]()
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