Songs for Obama: A Presidential Playlist

MSN's picks from the President's favorite artist, Stevie Wonder

By Rickey Wright
Special to MSN Music

When Barack Obama told Rolling Stone last year of his devotion to Stevie Wonder as the now president-elect's favorite artist in all of music, he wasn't kidding. Obama even name-checked the relatively unsung "Music of My Mind," the 1972 album that marked Wonder's independence from the Motown system in much the same way that socially conscious "What's Going On" did for Marvin Gaye.

Here we choose some tracks that demonstrate various facets of Wonder's genius, thoughtfulness and political savvy while resonating with the incoming 44th president's aspirations for hope and change.

"Signed, Sealed, Delivered (I'm Yours)" (from "Signed, Sealed and Delivered," 1970) earns first place here, as Obama used it as a signature 2008 campaign song. Wonder himself delivered it before the man's acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention last August. A hit in the summer of 1970, "Signed" displays the blazing rhythmic chops of late-era classic Motown -- even before those horns come in. Other high-energy jams from this period: "Shoo-Be-Doo-Be-Doo-Da-Day," "You Met Your Match" (both from "For Once in My Life," 1968).

"We Can Work It Out" (from "Signed, Sealed and Delivered," 1970) might have ended up just an album-filler cover of the Beatles. Stevie, however, remade it in his own image with a fuzz-keyboard hook that Lennon and McCartney couldn't have imagined only a few years before -- and that the Grammys recognized when it asked Wonder to recreate it for a special McCartney tribute 20 years after his own original. Oh yeah, it wouldn't exactly be wrong if you imagined this as a bipartisan Obama plea.

"Heaven Help Us All" (from "Signed, Sealed and Delivered," 1970): "Keep hatred from the mighty, and the mighty from the small." "Heaven help the man who gave that boy a gun." Need more be said? Ray Charles, always aware of a good thing, quickly covered this dramatic single from the pen of Ron Miller, co-writer of "For Once in My Life."

"Big Brother" (from "Talking Book," 1972) proved a hidden gem of this brilliantly titled LP. At least one listener has compared this track's delicate groove to West African music, while its simmering anger champions the forgotten Americans to whom Obama paid heed during last year's campaign. "My name is Secluded," goes the final verse. "We live in a house the size of a matchbox!" "Talking Book" also introduced the signature songs "You Are the Sunshine of My Life" and "Superstition."

"Living for the City" (from "Innervisions," 1973) is one of the greatest triumphs of Wonder's one-man-band approach. The story of a young man whose attempt to better himself fails tragically with the kid in prison, it was so much an icon that no less than Richard Pryor borrowed its opening lines. (His inner-city preacher character cited them as coming from "The Book of Wonder.")

"Golden Lady" (from "Innervisions," 1973) appeared on an album so filled with riches that there wasn't room for it on the singles release schedule. Someone else could've covered it and had a hit, as others later did with "You and I" and "Creepin'," but just who would have reached the jazzy perfection of the original? Stevie sings of "looking in your eyes" with enough belief that you buy into the impossible, and the whole thing ends with a long fade that takes the song into ever more soaring territory.

"Boogie on Reggae Woman" (from "Fulfillingness' First Finale," 1974) debuted at a time when the Jamaican sound wasn't yet a U.S. household word. Stevie's indubitably funky track -- dig that burping synth bass! -- did its bit for the music and was one of his many '70s statements of pan-universal commitment. It was also one of a dozen Top 10 pop-chart entries for him during the decade.

"Bird of Beauty" (from "Fulfillingness' First Finale," 1974) also showed off Wonder's love for music outside the American R&B and pop mainstream. A foray into bossa nova, it inspired a liner note thanking Sergio Mendes for translating a verse into Portuguese so that the artist could "speak to my people of Mozambique and ... Brazil." The tune champions the examined life over the use of drugs.

"I Wish" (from "Songs in the Key of Life," 1976) opens with more daring synth work, as Stevie practically drags the machine through the funky dirt itself. The lyrics celebrate the minor sins of childhood -- playing doctor, holding out change from the collection plate for candy -- and the happy side of ghetto life. Perhaps one of the most well-remembered hits of Wonder's '70s streak.

"Have a Talk With God" (from "Songs in the Key of Life," 1976) credits Wonder and his mother Lula Mae Hardaway as co-writers, and features the then 26-year-old Wonder drumming so far behind the beat that even Charlie Watts would have had to bow in tribute. Agree or not with the song's call to prayer as a healer of ills, its flow is hard to argue with. This cut is the kind of thing that led "Still Crazy After All These Years" Grammy Album of the Year winner Paul Simon to thank Stevie "for not making an album" during the two-year hiatus between "Finale" and "Songs."

"Easy Goin' Evening (My Mama's Call)" (from "Songs in the Key of Life," 1976) is a languid, harmonica-led instrumental that could feature as the soundtrack for every mellow, porch-bound summer night you've enjoyed. Or perhaps as alternate music for one of those Charlie Brown holiday specials. Nearly orchestral in its overdubbed mouth organs, this was originally included on a bonus EP that accompanied the already swelling double album that was "Songs in the Key of Life."

"Happy Birthday" (from "Hotter Than July," 1980): Wonder was in the forefront of efforts to win a national holiday for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. This joyous song became an anthem of the cause, and an inescapable fixture of the January day itself. It sounds every bit as giddy as the singer no doubt felt, and surely must remain one of the compositions for which he's proudest.

"Master Blaster (Jammin')" (from "Hotter Than July," 1980) was Wonder's salute to Bob Marley (hear also: Marvin Gaye's "Third World Girl") and the then newly liberated state of Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia). "Master Blaster" proved one of the skanking-est tracks of the new decade's ever more internationalized charts. (For a while, Elvis Costello incorporated it into his live performances of "Watching the Detectives.") Other "Hotter" highlights included the ready-for-Nashville drawl of "I Ain't Gonna Stand for It" and the ballad "All I Do."

"Skeletons" (from "Characters," 1987) got in a dig at the Reagan Administration -- not yet out of power -- for its involvement in the Iran-Contra scandal. One of the funkiest things Wonder did in this period, which was also marked by romantic ballads such as "I Just Called to Say I Loved You" and "Overjoyed," it was a reminder that you couldn't count out any side of the man while he still drew breath.

"So What the Fuss" (from "A Time to Love," 2005) was a collaboration with Prince (on bass) that also served notice in a new century that Stevie Wonder wasn't finished. Here he preaches peace, responsibility, voting and wearing the right shoes to dance in. And: "If we're jammin' the music, and somebody's got the audacity to say that they can jam it better than us/Shame on them." Yeah.

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