The artist Stevie Wonder called the almighty emperor of pop: “Took music to a whole other place”
There aren’t many people who could possibly hope to reach the same level that Stevie Wonder was whenever he made his classic albums.
Some people are just touched by a musical god whenever they walk into the studio, and even though Songs in the Key of Life was really the high point of his career in lots of ways, the fact that he could keep experimenting and pulling off one classic after the next is still unheard of in music history. You can hear him smiling through every one of his songs, but the pop sphere had a lot more ambitious artists than him when he had his ears open.
He didn’t want to make music just thinking about one specific genre, and a lot of the reason why his albums sounded great is because of his taking influence from everything around him. ‘For Once in My Life’ wouldn’t have happened without him taking inspiration from the more uptempo soul songs that he was hearing, and had he not started jamming with people like Jeff Beck, there’s a good chance that we wouldn’t have had ‘Superstition’ in its final form today.
But pop music is a different thing from making a catchy tune. It’s about getting everyone’s attention by thinking outside the box, and there were already people fawning over what people like Michael Jackson were doing after Wonder’s legendary period ended. ‘The King of Pop’ was notching up one hit after another every single time he came out with a new record, and while Wonder was happy to perform with his cousin whenever he asked, he felt a greater kinship with what someone like Prince was doing.
There’s already the long-running joke that Jackson said God would give the greatest music in the world to Prince if he didn’t make his masterpieces, but ‘The Purple One’ didn’t really need Jackson as competition to be the greatest. He was a true marvel on every single instrument he played, and even when working on music outside of his Minneapolis, there aren’t many people on this Earth that could play slick funk, blistering rock and roll, and heartbreaking ballads over the course of one album.
And while Wonder meant no disrespect at all when paying tribute to Prince, he said that there were many facets of the music world where Prince towered over Jackson, saying, “If Michael was the King of Pop, Prince should be the Emperor. Prince fought for his artistic freedom. He didn’t allow anyone or anything to get in his way. By following his own path, Prince took music to a whole other place, like the Beatles did. He wanted to change the way things were, like Marvin Gaye did. When you do that, you have to be very sure of yourself.”
If it comes down to the conversation of choosing between Prince and Jackson, Prince has more bases covered than Jackson ever could. For one thing, the volume of his work is staggering compared to ‘The King of Pop’. No one could have managed to put out 40 albums over the course of their life, but what’s even crazier is that Prince never released an all-out dud in his catalogue, either.
Emancipation was always going to be a mixed bag, considering it’s three hours long, but even when he was sticking to his signature sound on his later records, the fact that Musicology still sounded like it could have come out of his classic period is the kind of unthinkable quality that most people wish they could have.
So while Prince was more than happy to play with Wonder on occasion, the reason why they worked so well was because of their work ethic when it came to writing. They lived and breathed music with every fibre of their being, and they weren’t going to let a shred of inspiration elude them throughout their life.
