Innervisions

Innervisions is the sixteenth studio album by American singer, songwriter, and musician Stevie Wonder, released on August 3, 1973, by Tamla, a subsidiary of Motown Records. A landmark recording of Wonder's "classic period", the album has been regarded as completing his transition from the "Little Stevie Wonder" known for romantic ballads into a more musically mature, conscious, and grown-up artist. On Innervisions, Wonder continued to experiment with the revolutionary T.O.N.T.O. (The Original New Timbral Orchestra) synthesizer system developed by Malcolm Cecil and Robert Margouleff. Wonder's previous two albums, 1972’s Music of My Mind and Talking Book, boosted his standing in the music industry, transforming him from a reliable hitmaker into a "master" of the new album format. Ahead of Innervisions, Cecil and Margouleff were pushing Wonder to shift his lyrical themes, allowing for political and metaphysical issues to be discussed in his music instead of primarily singing about romance. The album's second single, “Living for the City” is considered its centerpiece. Innervisions peaked at number four on the Billboard Top LPs & Tape chart and number one on the Billboard Soul LPs chart. At the 16th Grammy Awards, it won Album of the Year and Best Engineered Non-Classical Recording, while "Living for the City" won Best R&B Song. The album is widely considered by fans, critics, and colleagues to be one of Wonder's finest works and one of the greatest albums of all time. It was ranked number 34 on Rolling Stone's list of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time" in 2020 and was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999. The album became hugely influential on the future sound of commercial soul and black music.