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Much of Stevie Wonder's stuff from the 1970s is absolutely fantastic, charting new funk-and-soul-with-a-social-conscience territory, but he did often lapse into cheesy schmaltz like "You Are The Sunshine Of My Life". Still, if you're going to do schmaltz, you might as well go the whole hog, and crank in a predictable truck driver's gear change.

This version is different from the one on my (vinyl) copy of Talking Book, and so I assume it's the live version off 1995's Natural Wonder album. (Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.) Unlike the original, this has lots of entertaining Bacharach-and-David-style backing vocals, irrelevant blasts from the horn section, and mysterious sniggering noises. Nonetheless, the gear change is retained in all its unsettling glory.

Listen!

Related stuff

Stevie Wonder's website is at www.stevie-wonder.com. Of course, being the pedant that I am, this prompted me to visit the unhyphenated www.steviewonder.com to see if there was any comedic cybersquatting going on, but it seems to be empty (though someone has registered it – perhaps they're still holding out for a fast buck). The real Stevie Wonder site is actually very thorough, and has an excellent A–Z listing of all his songs, detailing the lyrics, which album(s) they appeared on, who all the musicians were, and also information about each of the musicians. However, under the entry for Ray Parker, Jr – who played guitar on Talking Book's funkfest "Maybe Your Baby" – it fails to mention that bustin' makes him feel good.