What is the Spanish lyric in Stevie Wonder’s ‘Don’t You Worry ‘Bout a Thing’?
Stevie Wonder is a genius in countless ways, but fluency in Spanish doesn’t seem to be one of them. He more than makes up for it, though, with the Latin-infused brilliance of ‘Don’t You Worry ’Bout a Thing’, taken from his iconic 1973 album Innervisions. Still, his attempt at a bit of continental flair does raise some questions.
For starters, what actually is the Spanish lyric that he speaks at the start of the song? In its introduction, Wonder says the words: “Todo está bien chévere”, translating to, “Everything’s really great” or “Everything’s cool”, but in doing so creating somewhat of a ruse that his Spanish abilities are somewhat better than they really are.
As it turns out, those words are about as much of the language that Wonder can actually speak, and he doesn’t know much else. Admitting this, he told NPR previously: “I didn’t speak Spanish. But that’s, I think, part of the whole excitement of me being raised in the Midwest. You had radio stations that you have maybe a couple hours of Spanish music. You have all these various varieties of music. You hear all of the various accents.”
Wonder continued: “I never imagined that I would be going to these places, but I’ll praise to God I was able to – being able to travel to so many places. And so that was me mocking sort of the sound of it.” Clearly taking a global approach to his breadth of musical inspiration, ‘Don’t You Worry ‘Bout a Thing’ is as much an ode to world culture as it is a classic Wonder love song.
Where did Stevie Wonder get the Spanish lyric from?
However, Wonder’s infatuation with Spanish music still doesn’t fully explain where he gleaned those words that open the song, but as it turns out, they, too, have a very specific backstory. He claimed the words came from a Puerto Rican woman he met in a record store while recording the song, saying: “I remember the night I was going to do this song. And I just so happened to meet this girl named Rain. And she was beautiful.”
He continued to recall the seminal moment, explaining that he told her: “‘I’ll let you come to the studio if you have anything to say. I’ll say some things, and it will be a wonderful day’. And she said, ‘todo esta bien chevere.’ And that’s how I got that in a song. And, you know, we fell in love, and it was a beautiful thing.”
As such, this was not only Wonder’s breakthrough into new continental, soulful lands but also a key to personal benefits within his romantic life. The song itself implores his then-figurative lover to explore the world fearlessly with him by her side, which seemed to come to fruition in a much more realistic way than Wonder himself may even have imagined. Even though his Spanish may not be completely up to scratch, it was clearly enough to score him another top hit and a woman in the process.
