A 1963 live harmonica instrumental that made a thirteen-year-old the youngest artist ever to top the American singles chart (1963)
'Fingertips (Pt. 2)' — the record still stands.
Popular music · Soul, funk & R&B
Stevie Wonder
born 1950 · American
Motown soul, funk and progressive R&B
Stevie Wonder, blind from infancy and a Motown signing at eleven, topped the American chart at thirteen and then, having won creative control of his own records at twenty-one, produced a run of albums in the 1970s that is among the most admired in popular music. He has won twenty-five Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year three times in four years.
How to spot them
- ▸Born Stevland Hardaway Judkins, later Morris; billed at first as Little Stevie Wonder
- ▸Blind from soon after birth; the side-to-side sway at the keyboard, and the braided hair with beads
- ▸Chromatic harmonica, clavinet, Moog and ARP synthesisers, and Rhodes piano — often playing every instrument himself
- ▸Motown, then the 'classic period' of 1972–76 after he renegotiated his contract
- ▸Political songwriting: the Martin Luther King holiday campaign, apartheid, Nixon
Songs & albums
A 1966 single co-written with Sylvia Moy in which a poor boy reassures a rich girl that all is well (1966)
'Uptight (Everything's Alright)' — one of the Motown sides regularly played on Britain's Northern soul all-nighter circuit.
A 1972 hit built on a stabbing clavinet riff, warning against faith in broken mirrors and writing on the wall (1972)
'Superstition', from Talking Book; he had originally promised it to Jeff Beck.
A 1973 narrative of a boy raised in hard times in Mississippi who is arrested within minutes of arriving in New York (1973)
'Living for the City', from Innervisions, with a dramatised street scene in the middle.
A 1976 double album with a bonus four-track EP, which entered the American chart at number one (1976)
Songs in the Key of Life — only the third album ever to debut at number one in the US.
A 1976 horn-driven tribute naming Basie, Miller, Armstrong and an aristocratic bandleader (1976)
'Sir Duke', his salute to Duke Ellington, who had died in 1974.
A 1980 song written not for a person but to campaign for a national holiday honouring a civil-rights leader (1980)
'Happy Birthday' — part of the campaign that made Martin Luther King Jr Day a federal holiday.
A 1984 film ballad about a gesture requiring no special occasion, which won an Academy Award (1984)
'I Just Called to Say I Love You', from The Woman in Red; his biggest-selling single.
Quick-fire facts
- •Born six weeks premature in Saginaw, Michigan, in 1950; he lost his sight to retinopathy of prematurity
- •Motown signed him at eleven and billed him as Little Stevie Wonder; 'Fingertips' made him the youngest artist to top the Billboard Hot 100, a record he still holds
- •On his 21st birthday in 1971 his Motown contract lapsed; he renegotiated it to win full artistic control and publishing rights
- •He built much of Music of My Mind and Talking Book around TONTO, the giant synthesiser of Malcolm Cecil and Robert Margouleff
- •A car crash in North Carolina in August 1973 left him in a coma for several days and permanently without a sense of smell
- •He won Album of the Year three times in four years, for Innervisions, Fulfillingness' First Finale and Songs in the Key of Life
- •He has won twenty-five Grammy Awards, and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989, inducted by Paul Simon
- •He received the Kennedy Center Honors in 1999, the Gershwin Prize in 2009 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2014
- •In 2026 he announced an eighteen-date tour performing Songs in the Key of Life in full for the album's fiftieth anniversary
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