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I think this is where it all went wrong for Stevie Wonder. (Actually, it probably started going wrong two years earlier when he recorded "Ebony and Ivory" with Paul McCartney, but that song is officially Not To Be Mentioned nowadays.) Quite apart from its saccharine lyrics, "I Just Called To Say I Love You" sounds like it's being performed by a small child let loose on a cheap 1980s Casio synthesiser, although to be fair it was the 1980s. In fact the end of the track (which I have included on the clip here) seems to run on just slightly too long, as if he's hit the Fill button and finds it's taking a few more beats than expected to kick in.

Stevie Wonder obviously decided that his gear change was so good that he'd do it twice, and it's grotesque each time. I'd normally only hear this song playing over the speakers in a bad pub, so I've never listened as closely to it as I have for the purposes of this posting. Which probably explains why I'd never noticed that after the second gear change there is a whole load of totally unjustified vocoder treatment on the backing vocals. Truly dreadful – and I mean it from the bottom of my heart.

Listen!

Related stuff

This song is from the soundtrack to The Woman in Red, Gene Wilder's sanitised Hollywood remake of the 1976 French comedy Un éléphant ça trompe énormément (aka Pardon mon affaire). Despite persistent rumours to the contrary, The Woman in Red is unrelated to Chris de Burgh's "Lady in Red".