LogFAQs > #956477982

91. Stevie Wonder Living for the City (1973)
from the album Innervisions

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rc0XEw4m-3w

Key lyrics:
His father works some days for fourteen hours
And you can bet he barely makes a dollar

Living for the City is Stevie Wonders sprawling, dystopic epic. The lyrics tell of a poor young black man who tries to escape the south, only to find similar hardship in the city. The early verses paint a stunning image of his family, the promise of the city acting as a beacon of hope. The middle takes a sharp turn, as the man arrives and is subsequently framed and arrested. Wonders vision of America is as bleak as they come for black people, there is no safe haven. The closing verse is a desperate plea this can change, but we must act swiftly and with care.

The instrumentation matches the massive narrative scale. Wonder himself played all the instruments and delivers all the vocals aside from the spoken interlude. Wonder really shows his vocal chops here, adding layer upon layer during the bridge until he is a one-man funk collective. His vocals beyond the interlude section find him singing with a hoarse croak, elevating the already desperate lyrics to a true nightmare. The layered vocals surrounding this sequence help form an incomparable climax.

The electronic soundscape similarly casts this as a key moment in popular music. Wonder suggests the same monolithic, futurized version of modern life that Kraftwerk would soon embody. For Living in the City, this glossy production is a sinister lure the extended spoken sequence absolutely shatters the illusion, revealing all the grit hiding just beneath the surface. By briefly shedding his typically uplifting nature, Wonder managed to craft a poignant masterpiece.

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My top 100 games (with write-ups): https://foolfantastic.com/top-100-video-games-project/