Stevie Wonder’s furious lament of President Nixon: “I’m sick and tired”
Protest has always been a significant part of soul music, and while the early years of Stevie Wonder’s career didn’t delve too much into socio-political issues, his output in the 1970s as he matured as a person and developed a consciousness around these topics became a lot more invested in spreading messages of this kind.
The first song of this nature that really explored themes of government control and authority came in the form of ‘Big Brother’ on his 1972 album, Talking Book. Referencing themes from George Orwell’s 1984, the song is a lot more obvious in how it tackles social issues rather than relying on themes of love and relationships as he had done in his previous work.
Moving forward, tracks like ‘Living For The City’ from his 1973 album Innervisions tackled race relations through harrowing storytelling about a boy and his family growing up impoverished and trying their best to live the ‘American Dream’, meeting police corruption and unfair judicial systems along the way.
‘He’s Misstra Know-It-All’, which was taken from the very same album, looked at the effects of being duped by confidence tricksters, and served as a warning to not be fooled by their outward charm. There have been certain theories banded about that this song in particular was being directed towards the controversial presidency of Richard Nixon, who would later become embroiled in the Watergate scandal that led to his impeachment and resignation
However, there’s one song from his follow-up album that was more explicitly about Nixon’s shadiness and ineptitude as a leader, and one that saw Wonder at his absolute angriest when addressing the state of the world in his lyrics.
‘You Haven’t Done Nothin’’ was released as the lead single from Fulfillingness’ First Finale in 1974, and while it wasn’t directly responsible for the President stepping down, he did end up resigning just two days after the song’s release.
This song is far more direct in its attack of Nixon than ‘He’s Misstra Know-It-All’ is, calling out the Republican leader for his lies and deceit in lyrics like: “It’s not too cool to be ridiculed, but you brought this upon yourself / The world is tired of pacifiers, we want the truth and nothing else.” His fury was palpable from the song, but following Nixon’s resignation, he would end up releasing a statement about his views on US politics.
“Everybody promises you everything but in the end, nothing comes out of it,” Wonder proclaimed. “I don’t vote for anybody until after they have really done something that I know about. I want to see them do something first. The only trouble is that you always hear the president or people say that they are doing all they can. And they feed you with hopes for years and years. I’m sick and tired of listening to all their lies.”
This would hardly be the last time that Wonder tackled social and political themes in his music, with several songs from Songs In The Key Of Life such as ‘Black Man’ and ‘Village Ghetto Land’ also zooming in on matters close to his heart, but this was perhaps as scathing as he got during his golden period in the 1970s, and a powerful indictment of a man he deemed unfit to run the country.
