Stevie Wonder- Where I'm Coming From

Stevie's overlooked masterpiece

Much is made of Stevie Wonder’s classic run of albums from 1972’s Music of my Mind to the sprawling double album Songs in the Key of Life from 1976, but the signs of his genius were there the year before, when he wrote and produced the brilliant Where I’m Coming From.

The classic run 1972-1976

When I discovered it, I spent hours poring over the cover: Stevie’s utterly sharp suit (are they double creases in his trousers?), those cool shoes… and what was he looking at in the picture in the top corner? An Oreo cookie? A mirror? I loved it.

The cover of Where I’m Coming From (1971)

The music is definitely a step forward from his earlier soul tracks too, with experimental sounds and styles.

Side one

It opens with the moodily melodic harpsichord sounds of Look Around, striving to build up a picture of “human history”. It steps up on the stunning follow up track, Do Yourself a Favor, which is a psychedelic masterpiece, Stevie, for the first time, playing with sounds and stereo, as the instruments leap from ear to ear. It’s a marvellous track, layering keyboard sounds on top of each other in an overwhelming noise. One of his most underrated moments.

I love the wistful and melodic Think of Me As Your Soldier, with its plaintive chorus

And we'll be lovers seeing love by heaven's light
Lovers dreaming dreams each blessed by night
I will find the promised paradise
With you there I'll spend my life

It’s a touching song, and it’s followed by the gentle pop ballad Something Out of the Blue, a mature and well written track that hints at some of the more expansive ballads of his mid-70s period.

Side one ends with what is probably the most explicitly “Motown” track: the punchy and upbeat If You Really Love Me. It drives with an almost Northern Soul beat, but slows touchingly on each verse, as if stopping to take a breath. Stevie’s voice is blistered with joy as he sings with power and energy. All the songs on the record were written by Stevie and Syreeta Wright, and on this track they capture joy in three wonderful minutes.

Side two

This side opens with the piano heavy satire I Wanna Talk To You, where Stevie sings both as himself and as a hectoring Southern man from the Bible Belt states. The song is great fun, although lyrically it’s a bit clunky and naive.

Got a woman that love me
Feed me beans every night
Twelve babies look up at me
With big grey hungry eyes
Oh but I just can't complain
You see ya, said I ain't allowed
Oh but pretty soon will come a change
When I gain the biggest mouth

I love the jaunty pop of the next track, Take Up a Course in Happiness, with its almost ukulele-sounding guitar, and follow up I Never Dreamed You’d Leave In Summer is a superb and powerful ballad. Once again, you hear the echoes of this later work in his piano lines and the controlled power in his voice. It works perfectly, a dark and tender counterpart of the sunny joy of …Happiness, and the perfect track before the ambitious Sunshine in Their Eyes.

This final track is an attempt at the kind of social commentary Marvin Gaye was playing at the time. The 21-year-old Stevie doesn’t quite have the sharpness for that, or the experience, so it’s lyrically clumsy at times

Cost of living’s up, but the pay is low down
Hate to see the babies starve cause mamma can't be found

However, it wins with its ambitious style, jumping tempos and forms, adding the strange choir of children, and, of course, with Stevie’s amazing voice.

I always put this as part of the classic run, not before, as it was the first album that demonstrated his real independence from Motown and without it I don’t know how far he’d have dared to go.

Essential for fans of Stevie Wonder.

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