Every Moment Has A Song

Somehow when the discussion turns to the greatest songwriters, a conversation revisited again recently on the occasion of the passing of Brian Wilson, this guy often gets overlooked. Today we just want to remind you that in addition to his ten #1 hits, 20 R&B #1’s, and 100+ million records sold as a musician, Stevie Wonder was responsible for lots of hits and great tracks by other artists.

Here are just a few:

Art Garfunkel: “I Believe (When I Fall in Love it Will Be Forever)” (1975)

Non-charting fourth single from Art Garfunkel’s hit Breakaway LP. This one deserved a better fate.

Appeared on Wonder’s 1972 Talking Book album.

Smokey Robinson & The Miracles: “Tears of a Clown” (1967/1970)

Stevie Wonder, who was discovered by Ronnie White of the Miracles, had written the music for “Tears of a Clown” and brought it to the 1966 Motown Christmas party, hoping Smokey Robinson would have a good lyric idea. He did–a tried-and-true one.

He’d previously written “My Smile is Just a Frown (Turned Upside Down)” and “Tracks of My Tears”, so he trotted out a now-familiar lyrical trope for “Tears of a Clown”.

It appeared as a Miracles album track in 1967 (with a slightly different melody). Then upon Smokey’s decision to retire from touring and recording with the group in ’69, the record company (in the absence of new product) resurrected and remixed the song. Ironically on its release in 1970 it became the group’s first and only number one hit with Smokey as lead singer, though released after he’d left the band.

Cashbox called “Tears of a Clown” a “brilliant return to the heyday sound of the Miracles” and listeners may have thought its sound was a bit of a throwback in 1970. To this listener at least, it always seemed to have the sound of a song a half decade older. But “dated” and “brilliant return to the heyday sound” are two sides of the same coin I suppose.

I wonder how many listeners caught the name drop of Pagliacci in the bridge, or the song’s use of the bassoon–a rarity in pop recordings to say the least.

Spinners: “It’s a Shame” (1970)

The Detroit group’s biggest hit with Motown before moving on to Atlantic Records (at Aretha Franklin’s urging) and their period of greatest success.

Rufus: “Tell Me Something Good” (1974)

The first and only hit credited simply to “Rufus”, before the next album re-branded them “Rufus featuring Chaka Khan”. It peaked at #3 in the Hot 100.

This song is packed to capacity with funky ingredients: from the two-guitar interplay (with wah-wah and talk box effects) to the Hohner clavinet keys to the heavy breathing and the extra 5th count leading into the chorus. Pretty “dirty” for a top ten pop record.

Jeff Beck: “Cause We’ve Ended as Lovers” (1975)

As we’ve elsewhere discussed, Jeff Beck gave Stevie Wonder the groove that Wonder shaped into his number one hit “Superstition”.

Stevie returned the favor by contributing two songs to Beck’s Blow by Blow album, “Cause We Ended as Lovers” and “Thelonious”.

Roberta Flack featuring Donny Hathaway: “You Are My Heaven” (1980)

From Flack’s Grammy-nominated 1980 album, and featuring posthumous vocals from Hathaway, who’d passed away the previous year. A #8 R&B hit.

Aretha Franklin: “Until You Come Back to Me (That’s What I’m Gonna Do” (1973)

Co-written by Morris Broadnax and Clarence Paul, this song was recorded by Wonder in 1967, but not issued until it appeared on his 1977 Looking Back compilation album.

Franklin’s sublime, million-selling version peaked at #3 on the pop charts and #1 R&B.

The number of songs Stevie Wonder contributed to others’ careers is truly staggering. These are just a few highlights–a list of well over one hundred songs Stevie wrote for other artist can be found here.

Strawbs founder, singer and guitarist Dave Cousins has died, aged 85

13 Jul 2025 Leave a comment

by Ed Cyphers in General Posts Tags: david cousins, strawbs

RIP, Dave. Death holds no fear for those who see clear.

On Music…

13 Jul 2025 Leave a comment

by Ed Cyphers in General Posts Tags: on music

Recommended Albums #100

12 Jul 2025 Leave a comment

by Ed Cyphers in Recommended Albums Tags: jethro tull, songs from the wood

Jethro Tull: Songs from the Wood (1977)

Never has an album more directly and more perfectly issued its mission statement from the outset.

Like the sound of an old English street herald, Ian Anderson’s a cappella voice opens Jethro Tull’s Songs from the Wood with a friendly hail:

Let me bring you songs from the wood
To make you feel much better than you could know…

And indeed what follows is a genre-birthing masterpiece blending British folk and progressive rock into something that could be fairly termed Elizabethan Rock–surely making fans of both folk and prog feel better than they could know.

Even many serious Tull fans feel that by 1976 and Too Old to Rock and Roll, Too Young to Die, things had grown a bit stale. Actually, taken as a batch of songs, and featuring as it did the guitar work of Martin Barre, it was a rather nice record.

But as a conceptual work about an aging rock star, coming at the height of the punk movement, Too Old… may have put Anderson and the band on the wrong side of Cool Street.

Having met, and produced albums by, English folk rock musicians, and having himself recently moved to the countryside, Anderson was inspired to take Tull in a fresh direction.

And as it turns out, the solution to Tull’s music beginning to sound old may have been to make it sound really old. Like, centuries old.

Let me bring you all things refined
galliards and lute songs served in chilling ale…

No one has electrified British folk more credibly with original compositions than Jethro Tull did on Songs from the Wood. It’s unique even within the band’s catalogue. What Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span did in plugging ancient songs into rock band arrangements was amazing. But the songs here aren’t based on centuries-old verse or inspired by particular traditional folk songs. This is all from Ian Anderson’s imagination–like J.R,R, Tolkien creating his own mythology as a setting for his characters. The fact that Anderson isn’t borrowing or reworking old traditionals–combined with the quality of the songwriting–makes this all the more astonishing.

McCartney could write timeless melodies. Brian Wilson could write heavenly harmonies. Cohen and Dylan could write inspired lyrics. But perhaps no other songwriter but Ian Anderson could have given us Songs from the Wood, with its highly literate lyrical sensibilities, evocative settings, its tinge of escapism, and its fantastically complex arrangements, performed by one of the best band lineups ever assembled.

It’s a wonderful blend of the gentle acoustic and the hard rock, along with some lovely singing and harmonizing. At turns mirthful and morose, regal and bawdy, natural and supernatural. Elsewhere we’ve opined on how Prince was comparatively minor league compared to Anderson in terms of dirty-minded double entendre. “Hunting Girl” takes low-minded lust into highbrow territory and is a showcase for guitarist Barre.

A singer of these ageless times.
With kitchen prose and gutter rhymes…

Full disclosure: for decades now I’ve considered this my favorite album by any artist in any genre, and I’ve listened to it literally hundreds of times. And yet I still will hear detail in the arrangements for the first time. How many bands in the current era make rock music so complex, with so many overlapping layers, that you’ll come across musical Easter eggs decades and hundreds of listens later?

One caveat: Like most progressive rock, Songs from the Wood has an appeal that takes multiple listens to be assimilated. I didn’t love it at first. Let it repeat, marinate and sink in.

This is an album that richly rewards repeated listening.

Songs from the wood make you feel much better…