You Are the Sunshine of My Life - Stevie Wonder

[Figarosmom]

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[ProfessorGAC]

1. My Favorite SW Album

For me, this album & Innervisions was his zenith. He had later great records, but still thought those 2 were the best.

[Figarosmom]

2. I agree

To this day Fingertips Part 2 is still my favorite song of his.

But this album was his best.

Songs in the key of Life was okay but not as great as reviewed in my opinion.

[keep_left]

3. For music theory nerds, the song is a good example...

...of the whole-tone scale (in measures 3-4 and 7-8 of the intro). It's very rare in pop music; offhand, I can only think of three examples: this song, the last few measures of the guitar solo in "Simply Irresistible" (Robert Palmer), and an obscure guitar solo I heard years ago by George Lynch. There are others, I'm sure, but you certainly don't hear whole-tone scales on Top 40 songs with any regularity. (The scale is heard quite often in the music of the French Impressionists, particularly Ravel and Debussy).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole-tone_scale#Jazz

I remember being a kid and first hearing that intro. It really spun my head around, as I was just starting to learn music theory (mostly by checking out lots of books from the library). This song is probably at least part of why I got interested in weird scales like the whole-tone, double harmonic, etc.